Paulo Coelho＇s novels call into question the nature of the literary text and the act of reading in a post-Einsteinian world. Amidst the debate over his popular writings （Albanese; Ndagano）, the discussion turns to ...Paulo Coelho＇s novels call into question the nature of the literary text and the act of reading in a post-Einsteinian world. Amidst the debate over his popular writings （Albanese; Ndagano）, the discussion turns to whether Coelho continues a poetics of narrative developed by Jorge Luis Borges. This paper explores how Coelho＇s work may depart from a reading of Borges, yet goes beyond it into what Bakhtin established as ＂the Einsteinian universe applied to literary studies＂, as posited by Stone （2008）. Coelho＇s work is affected by hypertexts, new ways of connecting and perceiving subjectivities, and cross-cultural pilgrimages. A hermeneutic reading of his novel, The Zahir： A Novel of Obsession （2005b）, allows us to delve into the Coelhian the notion of the zahir as a tensional metaphor （Ricouer） of world-making （Valdes）. This underscores the postmodern assumption of the author as just another reader, albeit an ably active one. Through the courageous act of making his reading（s） transparent through writing, he invites other readers into the dialectical presumptions of his world.展开更多
文摘Paulo Coelho＇s novels call into question the nature of the literary text and the act of reading in a post-Einsteinian world. Amidst the debate over his popular writings （Albanese; Ndagano）, the discussion turns to whether Coelho continues a poetics of narrative developed by Jorge Luis Borges. This paper explores how Coelho＇s work may depart from a reading of Borges, yet goes beyond it into what Bakhtin established as ＂the Einsteinian universe applied to literary studies＂, as posited by Stone （2008）. Coelho＇s work is affected by hypertexts, new ways of connecting and perceiving subjectivities, and cross-cultural pilgrimages. A hermeneutic reading of his novel, The Zahir： A Novel of Obsession （2005b）, allows us to delve into the Coelhian the notion of the zahir as a tensional metaphor （Ricouer） of world-making （Valdes）. This underscores the postmodern assumption of the author as just another reader, albeit an ably active one. Through the courageous act of making his reading（s） transparent through writing, he invites other readers into the dialectical presumptions of his world.
