Textual Lacunae and Blank Spaces: Constructing meaning in Abu Al-Ala Al-Ma'arri's Epistle of Forgiveness (449 AH)

Abstract

Modern theories of reading and reception have emphasized the reader as a fundamental element in the process of reading and interpreting literary texts, shifting the focus from the author and the text structure to the conditions surrounding them in both Western and Arab literary criticism. German aesthetic reception, in particular, has been a key theory that highlights the reader's role in reading, constructing meanings and interpretations of literary texts. In this context, Wolfgang Kaiser ) 1925 -2007(, one of the prominent theorists in this critical direction, delved into the methods and processes through which the reader interacts with the text's structure to achieve literary communication. This was based on phenomenological philosophy, which doesn't consider the intentional subject to be confined solely within the self or the object but rather at their intersection, with neither existing independently. Consequently, Kaiser proposed several procedural concepts to support his theory of literary interaction and
communication, including "the implicit reader," "mobile perspective," and "textual lacunae and blank spaces".
This research paper aims to leverage the concepts of "textual lacunae and blank spaces" and their potential for literary interaction between the text and the reader, to interpret and contribute to the construction of meaning within a literary text belonging to the ancient Arabic prose. Specifically, it focuses on Abu Al-Ala AlMa'arri's Epistle of Forgiveness (449 AH) to examine the structural lacunae and blank spaces that the text presents to the presumed reader who seeks to read and interpret its meanings.
interpret its meanings.