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European Journal of English Studies

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Control, Information, and Literary Meaning: A

Systems Model of Literature as Communication
Piotr Sadowski
Published online: 09 Aug 2010.

To cite this article: Piotr Sadowski (2001) Control, Information, and Literary Meaning: A Systems Model of Literature as
Communication, European Journal of English Studies, 5:3, 289-301

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 European Journal of English Studies 1382-5577/01/0503-289$16.00
2001, Vol. 5, No. 3, pp. 289301 Swets & Zeitlinger

Control, Information, and Literary Meaning:

A Systems Model of Literature as Communication

Piotr Sadowski
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American College Dublin, Ireland

Systems theory denes its basic concept the system as a set of inter-
related elements,1 with the emphasis on interrelatedness between all ele-
ments involved. Such a holistic approach precludes either the possibility of
regarding empirical reality as a simple conglomeration of elements thrown
together at random, or an exclusive focus on a selected element or factor
and a disregard for other elements involved. For example, a collection of
words picked up randomly from a dictionary lacks any rules which would
tie one word to another, and therefore such a set of words is not a literary
text conceived as a system. Also, in literary analysis a reduction of the
texts meaning to a single factor, be it the socio-economic conditions in
which the text was produced, the authors personality and life history,
the texts intrinsic literary qualities, or the readers subjective response to
the text etc., betokens a fragmentary, and therefore inadequate approach,
which might be called the one factor fallacy. In the holistic view, the liter-
ary process will be seen as consisting of the interrelated systems including
the author and the reader as human beings with their personalities, life
histories and literary competences, the text as a linguistic medium of
communication possessing its own structure and a unique combination of
literary devices, and the socio-cultural context in which both the author,
the reader, and the text are embedded,2 with every system involved affect-
ing and being affected by all the others.

Correspondence: Piotr Sadowski, American College Dublin, 2 Merrion Square, Dublin 2,

Ireland. Fax: 353 1 676 8941; E-mail: psdowski@tcd.ie

1 Ludwig von Bertalanffy, General Systems Theory: Foundations, Development, Appli-

cations (Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1973), pp. 2, 63; Gerald M. Weinberg,
An Introduction to General Systems Thinking (New York/London: John Wiley and
Sons, 1975), p. 9; Ervin Laszlo, Systems Science and World Order: Selected Studies
(Oxford/New York/Toronto: Pergamon Press, 1983), pp. 45.
2 Piotr Sadowski, Interpretation of Literary Process: A Systemic Approach, Studia
Anglica Posnaniensia 24 (1992), 7891.
 290 PIOTR SADOWSKI

Another important premise of the systems approach is that systems

interact with one another by exchanging information and energy,3 and
that interaction affects all the systems involved, in the sense that their
structures undergo changes in the course of interaction. For example, when
a hole is being drilled in a piece of wood the hole gets bigger and bigger,
but the drill also gets worn out and blunted in the process. Or when an
author is writing a novel, his or her personality is naturally affected by
the creative process, as is the readers personality during the process of
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reading and negotiating the meaning. The text too is obviously affected
during its interaction with the author, in the sense that its parameters are
being changed in the writing process (drafting, revising, editing and so
on).
To describe more closely the character of changes taking place in
interacting systems it is useful to talk about interaction as control, dened
accordingly as a behaviour of one system leading towards specic changes
in another system.4 Control can be regarded as a cybernetic version of
communication models used in linguistics (de Saussure, Jakobson), and
in semiotics (Peirce, Eco).5 For the cyberneticist Marian Mazur control
involves an exchange of physical states; or rather, an exchange of a differ-
ence between these states. For control to take place, a difference between
physical states at the output of the controlling system X must correspond
to the difference between physical states at the input of the controlled
system Y, as shown in Figure 1.

Fig. 1. Information in the control line.6

3 Marian Mazur, Cybernetyczna Teoria Ukladow Samodzielnych [A Cybernetic Theory

of Autonomous Systems] (Warsaw: Panstwowe Wydawnictwo Naukowe, 1966), pp.
51ff.
4 Mazur, Cybernetyczna Teoria, pp. 12, 29.
5 Douglas Greenlee, Peirces Concept of Sign (The Hague: Mouton, 1973), p. 48; Um-
berto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (London: The Macmillan Press, 1977), pp. 3247.
6 Marian Mazur, Jakosciowa Teoria Informacji [A Qualitative Theory of Information]
(Warsaw: Wydawnictwa Naukowo-Techniczne, 1970), p. 26.
 CONTROL, INFORMATION AND LITERARY MEANING 291

In the diagram (Fig. 1) Ix represents a transformation of signal (physical

state) x1 into x2 in system X, and Iy represents a corresponding transforma-
tion of signal y1 into y2 in system Y, due to the codes Q1 and Q2. Mazur
denes information as a transversal transformation (difference) between
signals in the control line.7 To put it more simply: information is anything
that is different from something else. For example, a letter on a page as
compared to a blank page is information. Systems are said to exchange
information when the difference between signals at the output of the
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controlling system X corresponds to the difference between signals at

the input of the controlled system Y. For example, a letter mailed by the
sender is the one received by the addressee, or a poem composed by a poet
corresponds to the one found by a reader in an anthology. Information here
refers to the perception of physical form: the shape of letters on a page,
or the acoustic properties of speech sounds, but it does not refer to the
meaning of this form. In this sense, Mazurs information corresponds
to Ecos non-signicant pieces of information,8 or to the signier in
Saussurian structural linguistics.
To account for the possibility of understanding information the model
of control has to be extended, to allow the signals in both systems to be
transformed into other signals, as shown in Figure 2.

Fig. 2. Information and parainformation in the control line.9

7 Mazur, Jakosciowa Teoria Informacji, pp. 348.

8 Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, p. 41.
9 Mazur, Jakosciowa Teoria Informacji, p. 35.
 292 PIOTR SADOWSKI

In the diagram (Fig. 2) pIx represents a transformation of signal x2 into

x3 in system X, and pIy represents a transformation of signal y2 into y3 in
system Y. These transformations are only due to the processes occurring
inside those systems, and not due to the coding of signal x3 into y3, as
was the case with the earlier model of information (Fig. 1). This means
that signals x3 and y3 are associations attached to information, or what
Mazur calls parainformation,10 referring to the understanding of the
direct, literal, or denotative meaning of information. Parainformation in
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Mazurs cybernetic model corresponds to signicant pieces of informa-

tion in Ecos communication model,11 to objects in Peirce,12 or to the
signied in structural linguistics. In practice, if information describes the
sheer physical difference between signals (form), parainformation is the
direct meaning (content) associated with these signals.
It is clear from the above model that both the ability to control other
systems and to understand information is limited to empirical systems
equipped with organs necessary for these functions. For example, due to
their physical constitution (the brain, the speech organs etc.) humans are
able to communicate both by exchanging information and by understand-
ing that information. A written text as a set of graphic signs on a page
is information, but as such it contains no meaning, because for physical
reasons the text as a material object is incapable of making associations
(generating parainformation). The meaning of the text can only be pro-
vided by a system capable of having associations, such as the author and
the reader as human beings, that is, as systems capable of controlling
other systems and of acting purposefully. Such systems are referred to in
Mazurs cybernetic theory as autonomous, equipped with a homeostatic
mechanism of self-regulation to maximize their existence in interactions
with other systems.13 Examples of autonomous systems include individual
human beings, social groups, animals and vegetables; in fact, all organisms
traditionally referred to as living. For this reason written texts are not
autonomous systems, and on their own are unable to contain, generate,
or exchange meaning. Any suggestion to the contrary can only be of
metaphorical nature, as in Umberto Ecos novel The Name of the Rose,
where books in the monastic library are described as speaking among
themselves.14

10 Mazur, Jakosciowa Teoria Informacji, p. 40.

11 Eco, A Theory of Semiotics, p. 41.
12 Greenlee, Peirces Concept of Sign, p. 48.
13 Mazur, Cybernetyczna Teoria, p. 47.
14 Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose (London: Picador, 1983), p. 286.
 CONTROL, INFORMATION AND LITERARY MEANING 293

Written texts cannot therefore be said to contain or possess meaning,

and indeed the common use of words indicating possession or inclusion
with regard to meaning in texts (the meaning of the text), only shows
how persistent certain misunderstandings are. The text as a system of
graphic signs on a page is in itself meaningless, although it contains
information (or rather, the text is information), while meaning is comprised
of parainformation that both the author and the reader have potentially in
the form of associations deposited in their brains.
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Let us accommodate the above distinction into author/reader as autono-

mous systems and the text as a non-autonomous system into a more com-
plex model of control, introducing also an important extension of signals
in systems X and Y (Fig. 3).
The rst new element in the diagram (Fig. 3) is system Z, corresponding
with the text conceived as information (differences between the physical
shapes of letters). Codes Q1 and Q2 ensure that the text as produced by
the author (system X) is the same (or analogous) as the one perceived by
the reader (system Y), as when the original manuscript or its facsimile

Fig. 3. Information, parainformation, and metainformation in the literary process.

 294 PIOTR SADOWSKI

is available to the reader, or when the authors text is published without

distortion to the original (that is, Ix=Iz=Iy). Censorial deletions or substitu-
tions, intrusive editorial interventions, accidental damages to the manu-
script, corrupt printing and so on are cases in which the transmission codes
distort information (that is, IxIzIy), and consequently meaning.
Another new element in the model of literature as communication is
the extension of parainformation (pIx, pIy) as literal, denotative meaning
into a new type of association, marked by the transformation of signal
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x3 into x4 in system X, and of signal y3 into y4 in system Y. This new

type of association will be called metainformation (mIx and mIy). While
parainformation accompanies information as its direct meaning, metain-
formation can occur independently from information (that is, from percep-
tion), because it can be prompted from within the system (hence the
feedback loops between signals x3 and x4, and between signals y3 and y4).
Thus if parainformation is an association prompted by perceived informa-
tion (text), metainformation is an association either prompted by an earlier
association or appearing independently from any prior association. It is
as if the literal, explicit meaning of the text was accompanied by another
meaning: less direct, more implicit and connotative,15 because more dis-
tanced from the text and more dependent on what is going on in the
authors and the readers minds.
The distinction between parainformation and metainformation in the
understanding of linguistic texts (oral or written) is an important and
useful one, in that it helps to distinguish between non-literary and literary
texts or other forms of communication. Parainformation is used whenever
explicit meaning and unambiguous understanding are required: in most
of everyday verbal discourse, in sign language, in Braille, Morses code,
mathematical symbols, trafc signs, public notices and so on. Parainforma-
tion is also widely used by animals, as exemplied by a complicated
system of dance-signs among the bees, or by other, often very sophisticated
systems of communication based on body language, sounds, smells, visual
signs used by other species. For example, a urinating wolf is not only
relieving its bladder but is also marking the boundary of its living territory,
a sign that will be understood as such by another wolf. In the human world
a shopping or a laundry list, an ofce memo, an instruction manual, a

15 Cf. Ecos connotation, A Theory of Semiotics, pp. 547. Siegfried J. Schmidt analo-
gously talks about relations between the meaning and knowledge stored in memory,
and about assigning further sense relations to meaning, Foundations for the Empirical
Study of Literature: The Components of a Basic Theory (Hamburg: Helmut Buske
Verlag, 1982), pp. 334.
 CONTROL, INFORMATION AND LITERARY MEANING 295

scientic report, a legal document and so on are examples of texts based on

parainformation, meant to be understood in the literal, denotative sense. In
fact, mutual understanding and agreement in most typical social situations
are entirely based on communication through parainformation, without
which the social fabric would simply disintegrate.
Metainformation on the other hand requires the mental capacity to
develop associations about associations, or to generate spontaneous asso-
ciations, and this appears to be a specically human faculty, made pos-
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sible by consciousness, which distances a person from perception and

from immediate, adaptive responses to typical life situations. For example,
while a dolphin can send a warning signal to its partner, saying something
like: Look out, a shark!, it cannot send another signal saying: I was only
kidding! Such instances of communication as humour, allusions, hints,
understatements, sarcasm etc., as well as poetic and literary language, seem
to belong exclusively to the human domain and to the psychic distance
from perceptual reality afforded by consciousness and its capacity to gener-
ate associations (to imagine), independently from external circumstances.
With non-literary texts based mainly on parainformation (the paralin-
guistic artefacts), and the literary texts based mainly on metainformation
(the metalinguistic artefacts),16 it is possible to distinguish theoretically
between theological tracts and devotional poetry, between textbooks in
psychology and psychological ction, between scientic reports and sci-
ence ction, between medical reports and health advertisements, between
cook books and food advertisements, between sex guides and erotic poetry,
or between literary criticism and works of literature.
Nor is the distinction between paralinguistic and metalinguistic arte-
facts always maintained. While it can still be clear in the case of, say,
an architects technical description of a building on the one hand, and of
Coleridges poetic depiction of a stately pleasure-dome of Kubla Khan
on the other hand (representing a paralinguistic and a metalinguistic text
respectively), a text like John Ruskins The Seven Lamps of Architecture
mingles the literal and technical facts (parainformation) with aesthetic
impressions and moral and philosophic evaluations expressed through
ornate and amboyant language (metainformation). Ruskins treatise on
architecture can be of limited use for architects and builders seeking

16 In another article I dened literature in terms of systems theory as a system of socially

organised self-regulation by means of metalinguistic artefacts, Piotr Sadowski, What
is Literature? A Systems Denition, Semiotica 123,1/2 (1999), 46, 4951; see also
my Systems Theory as an Approach to the Study of Literature: Origins and Functions
of Literature (Lampeter: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1999), esp. pp. 14851.
 296 PIOTR SADOWSKI

precise, technical information, but for a poet and an aesthete like Oscar
Wilde it is Ruskins subjective impressions that are of greater interest:
Who cares whether Mr. Ruskins views on Turner are sound or not? What
does it matter? That mighty and majestic prose of his, so fervid and so
ery-coloured in its noble eloquence, so rich in its elaborate symphonic
music, so sure and certain, at its best, in subtle choice of word and epithet
. . ..17 Because metainformation is not directly tied to information, it is
free from the constraints of perception and is as a result characterized by
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greater suggestiveness and imaginativeness.

While the presence of meta-meaning in poetry and works of ction is
a condition sine qua non of the genre, in strictly non-literary texts metain-
formation is, or should be, normally avoided, as in scientic or journalistic
reports, designed to communicate objective facts in a clear, unambiguous
style. But whenever factuality is not the issue metainformation is used lav-
ishly to create intentionally elusive, suggestive meanings. A good instance
of a type of text remaining in between the factuality of journalism or busi-
ness information and the imaginativeness of literature is advertising, espe-
cially when it combines different modes: visual, cinematic, verbal, and
musical, as in TV commercials. The advertised product is usually pictured
realistically (information), and it is also accompanied by a brief and literal
verbal description (parainformation) for identication, while the various
images convey a range of evocative associations (metainformation), often
totally unrelated to the advertised product in any direct sense.
Traditional literary criticism too consists for the most part of paralin-
guistic artefacts (unambiguous communicability of style and argument),
which sets it distinctly apart from literature as metalanguage with its
permissible and in fact expected suggestiveness, elusiveness, paradox, and
ambiguity. Just as literariness consists in stirring manifold and complex
meta-associations by the text in the authors and readers minds, so the
primary function of literary criticism is to translate those meta-associations
into paralinguistic accounts: that is, to articulate directly (interpret) what
otherwise remains an unverbalized, often emotive, impression provoked
by the literary text. The blurring of the distinction between paralinguistic
and metalinguistic modes of writing, often found in postmodernist literary
criticism, produces texts that are semi-literary and semi-critical at the same
time, with the resulting semantic elusiveness, ambiguity, and confusion,
as evidenced especially by deconstructive analyses.

17 The Critic as Artist in Oscar Wilde, Complete Works (Glasgow: Harper Collins
Publishers, 1994), p. 1126.
 CONTROL, INFORMATION AND LITERARY MEANING 297

As is also clear from the model (Fig. 3), in the simplest case of literary
communication (one author, one text, one reader) we are effectively deal-
ing with two meanings of the text: one determined by the author, and the
other by the reader. Since in practice there are usually many readers of
one text, there will consequently be as many potential readings as there
are readers. However, different readings of the same text, as long as they
are in some way relevant to that text, will never be vastly or innitely
different, because all potential, or permissible readings are necessarily
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constrained by the conditions presented by the text. Freedom of response

is limited by the very fact that parainformation does not occur on its own,
but always accompanies information (text), which means in practice that
any (relevant) interpretation must be in some way related to the text.
Even in the realm of metainformation, where the freedom of association
is greater, an interpretation is constrained rst of all by the primary, lit-
eral meaning (parainformation) of the text, and secondly by the readers
assumptions about the possible meta-meanings on the part of the author
(provided of course that the critic is prepared to accept the latter factor as
a constraint in interpretation). In other words, the text is not a vacuum,
a black hole that can absorb any conceivable interpretation, because it
has its properties and parameters which participate in the negotiation of
meaning. Also, an interpretation cannot be a free play of the signier
and of wild associations, because a permissible reading must be of some
relevance to the text and its author. For example, while there can be disa-
greement among critics whether some of Shakespeares sonnets describe
heterosexual or homosexual love (permissible readings), all readers will
agree that the sonnets are about love and not about the possibility of life
on Mars (an impermissible reading).
Since theoretically we can always talk about the authors intention
and the readers response to the text, let us differentiate between the two
respective types of meaning by calling the authors associations related to
the text as the meaning of this text, and the readers associations provoked
by the text as the signicance of this text. The distinction is analogous to
the one made by E. D. Hirsch, Jr., who spoke of meaning as a determinate
and permanent aspect of the text, corresponding with the authors original
design, and of signicance as a changeable, relative dimension of the text,
dened in terms of critical response.18 It remains up to the recipient of
literature, be it a critic, a literary historian, or an ordinary reader, to decide

18 E.D. Hirsch, Jr., Validity in Interpretation (New Haven/London: Yale University Press,
1967), pp. 57, 62ff; The Aims of Interpretation (Chicago/London: The University of
Chicago Press, 1976), pp. 79ff.
 298 PIOTR SADOWSKI

which of the two types of meaning is to be regarded as the more important:

the problem ultimately boils down to the traditional dilemma in literary
studies of weighing ones own individual response to the text (signicance)
against the authors possible intention (meaning). The systems model
does not postulate in favour of either type of literary interpretation, but it
makes it clear that the two kinds of meaning are of necessity always there.
Traditional, historical criticism has on the whole had more respect for pos-
sible authorial intention, while the more recent reader-oriented schools of
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criticism have focused more on the signicance of literary works, dismiss-

ing authorial intention as either indeterminable or ultimately irrelevant,
and insisting upon the reading of literature entirely in terms of the critics
own, often highly subjective response. The main thing that can be said in
favour of the latter approach is that ones own associations about a literary
work are for obvious reasons more easily accessible and identiable than
the authors, and it is consequently the only type of meaning that one can
say anything credible about.
On the other hand the authors intended (or sometimes unintended)
meaning is for equally obvious reasons directly inaccessible to the critic,
and any statements about it must of necessity be only conjectural and
tentative. However, it does not automatically mean that authorial intention
is completely indeterminable and unknowable, because there must always
exist some overlap of associations between the author and the reader to
make literature as a form of social communication at all possible. Even a
text produced in a context vastly different from the readers (historically,
geographically, culturally, etc.) will reveal some degree of intelligibility
due to the presence of cultural universals, and due to the human ability to
imagine cultural contexts other than ones own. One can also argue that the
overlap of associations must be greater on the level of direct, literal mean-
ing (parainformation), where we are dealing with comparatively fewer
associations, and that it may differ more widely on the level of implicit,
connotative meaning (metainformation), where we are often dealing with
complex networks of associations with a lesser degree of interpersonal
compatibility. Theoretically speaking, the following types of situations
can occur with regard to the author-reader communication through the
text:

1. The authors associations (meaning) and the readers associations (sig-

nicance) are identical. On the level of parainformation a complete
overlap of associations occurs when, rst of all, both the author and
the reader share the same language and have total agreement about the
basic denotations of the words and phrases they are using. On the level
 CONTROL, INFORMATION AND LITERARY MEANING 299

of metainformation a complete compatibility of associations occurs

when the authors allusion, understatement, or symbol is correctly
identied by the reader. The identity between authorial meaning and
the readers signicance will be called understanding.
2. The authors meaning and the readers signicance are unidentical,
involving the following possible situations:
a. The author possesses certain associations, but the reader has no
associations relating to the same information. On the level of parain-
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formation this occurs when the text is written in a language foreign

to the reader, or when the denotations of some words are unknown
to the reader. On the level of metainformation this situation occurs
when the authors allusion, hint, or understatement is lost on the
reader. Lack of associations in the reader to match the associations
in the author will be called incomprehension;
b. The author possesses no associations relating to particular informa-
tion, but the reader does. On the level of parainformation this occurs
when the author uses, for whatever reason, a foreign word without
knowing its denotative meaning, and the word is then correctly iden-
tied by a reader who is also a speaker of that language. On the level
of metainformation (a more likely possibility) the reader perceives
as an allusion or a metaphor something that has not been intended as
such by the author. Lack of associations in the author to match the
associations in the reader will be called overinterpretation;
c. Both the author and the reader have some associations relating
to particular information, but they are in each case different. An
example from the level of parainformation: the word spelled but is
a coordinating conjunction in English, but in Polish the same written
word means a shoe. Information (the physical appearance of the
word) is the same, but parainformation (denotative meaning) is in
each case different. On the level of metainformation a poetic image
or a symbol can likewise mean different things to the author and to
the reader. Lack of agreement between the authors meaning and the
readers signicance will be called misunderstanding.

A single reading of a literary text will include one, more than one, or all
of the above-mentioned possibilities: that is, understanding, incomprehen-
sion, overinterpretation, and misunderstanding, in varying degrees. More
precisely: a single fact will read as one of the above, but in a text of
sufcient length and complexity all possibilities are bound to occur. From
the point of view of control the most desirable situation is of course a
full compatibility between the authors and the readers associations, that
 300 PIOTR SADOWSKI

is, understanding. This, however, is often difcult to achieve, because

considering the amount and extent of associations involved in communi-
cation through a literary text, in practice we are always dealing with
some degree of incompatibility between the authors and the readers
literary competences. While full compatibility is theoretically and practi-
cally impossible (as this would imply a merger of the authors and the
readers minds), to understand a text means in practice to reduce its
incomprehension as much as possible. This is accomplished when the
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reader acquires enough information about the authors personality, life

history, socio-cultural background, education, extent of reading etc.
None of these things are necessarily required in criticism that
uses literary texts as launching pads for the critics own, subjective
(over)interpretations, in which the authors possible intention is dismissed
as irrelevant, and where the main object of the exercise is to advertise the
critic rather than the author. Such critical subjectivity and individualism
were endorsed, for example, by Oscar Wilde in his idea of critic as artist,
who occupies the same relation to the work of art that he criticises as the
artist does to the visible world of form and colour, or the unseen world
of passion and of thought.19 For Wilde criticism was really a creative
art, a creation within a creation, and the record of ones own soul.20
Stimulating and entertaining as this type of criticism was in the bohemian
Wilde, in more recent decades the often extreme subjective position of
the reader was elevated in some areas of literary criticism to the only
permissible interpretive strategy. The denial of authorial intention and a
complete relativisation of meaning have produced readings of literature
based almost entirely on the readers subjective position as determined by
his or her class, gender, personal history, race etc. While such readings
can be relevant for those who produce them, from the point of view of
literature as communication lack of compatibility between the authors
and the readers associations means that control, as dened earlier, is not
taking place, and literature is not performing its communicative function.
The presented classication of the relations between the author and the
reader with regard to literary meaning is complete as far as theoretical
situations are concerned, and the systems model in itself does not postulate
in favour of either type of relation. It only describes what types of situa-
tions are theoretically possible, and how these situations relate to literature
understood as control in the cybernetic sense. It is ultimately up to a critic
to decide which type of literary meaning and the corresponding interpre-
19 Oscar Wilde, The Critic As Artist, p. 1124.
20 Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist, p. 1125.
 CONTROL, INFORMATION AND LITERARY MEANING 301

tive strategy are the more important: an attempted reconstruction of the

authorial meaning by a historical critic, or an exposition of the critics
own subjective signicance in the reader-response type of criticism. But
as the model demonstrates, in the author-oriented historical criticism we
are mainly dealing either with understanding or with incomprehension of
a literary work, and in reader-response criticism we are mainly dealing
either with overinterpretation or with misunderstanding of a literary work.
In other words, historical criticism in the best case brings us close to the
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meaning of literary texts in their original context, and in the worst case
it admits ignorance (incomprehension), which means that in both cases
the result is of some benet, in that literature is allowed to perform its
function in the social exchange of meaning. On the other hand the reader-
oriented criticism that dismisses authorial intention offers us in the best
case an overinterpretation of a literary text, and in the worst case its
complete misunderstanding (in the sense dened earlier), which means
that in both cases the readers signicance distorts the authors meaning,
and literature is not allowed to perform its communicative function. At
least this is what the systems model of literature as control appears to be
suggesting.
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