One Text and Multiple Readers: Reading “the Adventures of Hajji Baba of Isphahan” in the Light of Ricoeurian Hermeneutics

The English narrative of "the adventure of Hajji Baba of Ispahan"[1] seems to be one of the controversial literal texts for the Iranian readership with social criticism interest. This paper intends, not to refute or redeem the validity claims of this historical actualized reading or to offer an alternative, but, to put it into perspective of a spectrum of possibilities and to show how and under what contingencies, the text can actualize some other rival and salient interpretations that reverberate our contemporary horizons of social reality. Using the Ricoeurian theories of literature by applying his theory of "surplus of meaning" on the text we suggest how "The World of Text " has the potential to have different readings and in the next step, by analyzing "The World of Reader" and its dialectical relations with the world of text, we exhibit the important role of "reading" as the act of Self Reflection.

One Text and Multiple Readers: Reading “the Adventures of Hajji Baba of Isphahan” in the Light of Ricoeurian Hermeneutics Keywords:

Text , World of Text , World of Reader , Ipse , Idem , Self-Reflection , Phenomenology , Hermeneutics , متن , جهان متن , خود یکتا انگار , خود یکسان انگار , تامل در خود , پدیدارشناسی , هرمنوتیک