Semantic Gaps in Ahmed Khalaf's Stories "The Stick of Madness"

Abstract

The reader did not receive the attention they deserve in literary criticism for a long time, and was seen only as a consumer of the literary text, the attention was focused on the author, as a creator of the literary text, and it continued in this way until the beginning of the twentieth century, as there were signs of interest in the literary text and care for it, with the impact of linguistic studies, and the efforts of the Russian formalists, and even then ignoring the reader remained a reality in literary criticism, but in the sixties of the last century there was an important development in The University of Constance, Germany, through the writings of Ingarden and Iser, so interest in the reader and reading became at the forefront of the critical scene, and the reader became the subject of the first attention, while interest in the author and the text declined since the text is an entity closed to itself to the external influences surrounding it, and the semantic gaps are one of the most prominent techniques that contributed to activating the reader's imagination, with the questions they raise, requiring answers. Also, the term ‘semantic gaps’ was defined by Iser, one of the poles of the theory of reception, which he took from Ingarden, and the function of the semantic gaps is to participate with the reader actively. Therefore, this research deals with semantic gaps in the stories titled (Stick of Madness) authored by the novelist and storyteller Ahmed Khalaf in two main topics, that are, the semantic gaps in the titles of the stories and the semantic gaps in the story.