Research Information System
IV - INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON LITERATURE, CULTURE AND LANGUAGE, Van, Turkey, 5 - 07 December 2025, pp.114-115, (Summary Text)
This study analyzes Jorge Luis Borges's "The Garden of Forking Paths" within the context of
literary theories that empower the reader. It analyzes the text's multilayered temporal structure,
epistemological ambiguities, and the production of meaning, considered a founding story in
poststructuralist metafiction. Although the story presents an espionage narrative, it rejects a
linear understanding of time at a structural level, prompting the reader to engage in an
ontological inquiry regarding the simultaneous existence of alternative possibilities. This
analysis concludes by shaping the multidimensional temporal structure with Wolfgang Iser's
concepts of "gaps" and "transformation from passive to active reader," placing the text's
message and outcome in the reader's active, co-complementary position. Drawing on Reader-
Response theory, the multiple possible outcomes produced by the heterochronic system
transform the reader from a passive receiver to an active creator. Stanley Fish's "communities
of interpretation" approach examines how meaning in the story is established through an almost
interactive communication with the reader, beyond the author's narrative. The "labyrinth"
metaphor in the story symbolizes not only a real labyrinth but also the cyclical flow of time.
This metaphor explores the infinitely branching timelines and how the reader constructs
alternative semantic trajectories to explore ontological possibilities with each reading. In this
context, the study reveals that the epistemological imbalance in the text is a deliberately
strategic presentation and highlights the contribution of literary theories that position the reader
as the primary interpreter of the story to the reader's experience. Consequently, the article
examines how "The Garden of Forking Paths" transforms from a modernist approach to a
postmodernist narrative.