Structural Parallels in Perceiving the Fictive in the Thought of St. Augustine and Wolfgang Iser

Abstract

This article reconstructs and compares the hermeneutical premises of St. Augustine’s biblical interpretation and Wolfgang Iser’s reception theory, arguing that both are grounded not in a binary opposition between reality and fiction, but in triadic structures. Iser’s triad of the real, the fictive, and the imaginary ‒ which is rooted in the idea of human plasticity ‒ defines literature as an anthropological mode that stages the transgression of empirical limits. Augustine, while maintaining a dualistic ontology, similarly distinguishes between the extratextual (res), intratextual (signa), and the subjective realm of illumination, which opens access to divine knowledge. The article shows that these isomorphic structures of textual understanding allow for a reassessment of the relationship between early hermeneutics and modern literary theory, and uncover anticipations of reception theory in St. Augustine’s thought.