How a Story Can Be Recounted or Read Aesthetically?

Drawing on Enunciative Semantics, Discourse Analysis, Reception Aesthetics, and Reader Response Criticism, this paper aims to delineate problematic aspects of the conception that a work of art is autonomous and capable of generating meaning independently, thereby demonstrating the fragility of such invoked autonomy. Given that both the pro duction and reception of art are socio-historically determined activities, this dual deter mination is argued to fundamentally compromise the work’s presumed independence and quality of being aesthetic.