Abstract
Any theory of interpretation must start from the naïve, empirical experience : what American critic Michael Warner calls uncritical reading, the uncritical, unprofessional reading of the standard reader. The starting point must be the attachment to books that justifies the desire to read. Indeed, the study of literature is unique in that it is based on sensory pleasure.
But the pleasures and interests of reading are multiple and heterogeneous. They go in all directions. In the modern regime of literature, the autonomy of reading makes it a fundamentally solitary and asocial occupation. Everyone follows his or her own pleasure. Pascal Quignard speaks of an " 'unassociated society' of readers ".
The individuation power of reading is such that it is capable of provoking dissociation within the individual, the test of this dissociation being rereading : the text read in childhood provokes different emotions and judgments in adulthood. Montaigne and Proust, each in their own way, testify to the incommensurability between the value of a text and the pleasure it gives. As a sensitive experience, the book reveals the plurality of the self and the passage of time.
