The most worn out debate in the field of language and literary critical theory centres upon the production of meaning. The dichotomy lies in the fact that on one hand, the meaning can be viewed as being intrinsically present in the text while on the other, it can also be something that is derived upon or interpreted by the reading public. This brings about the question of priority – does the text ( and indirectly the author ) or the interpretation ( conversely, the reader ) come first? It is a difficult choice to prioritise the two because of their inseparable nature. However, since “the explanation of a work is always sought in the man or woman who produced it “ ( Roland Barthes, “The Death of the Author”, 168 ), there is the implication that very little attention has been paid to the reader over the years.

THESIS

This paper shall argue, with a close analysis of Patchwork Girl by Shelley Jackson, that hypertext is the perfect medium whereby the role of the reader is elevated not necessarily above, but more so equal to that of the role of the author in the process of meaning production. Another focal point of this paper would be to prove that in hypertext fictions like Patchwork Girl, for example, neither the author nor the reader takes centrestage. In fact, according to Ricouer, meaning does not lie in the author’s intentions and neither does it rest upon the reader’s perception but rather, it is a phenomenological event produced by a convergence of the author’s textual world and that of the reader’s own. Therefore, Shelley Jackson’s electronic narrative Patchwork Girl is very dependent on the dynamic interaction between the reader and the text to get its message or intended meaning across.