olvasati

Olvasati is a concept in literary theory used to describe the act of reading as a site of meaning-making. It emphasizes that interpretation is not fixed by the text alone but arises in interaction among the text, the reader, and the wider social and historical context. The term draws on Hungarian linguistic roots: from olvasni "to read," with the suffix -ati forming a noun that denotes practice or field.

Scholars use olvasati to analyze how different readers, editions, and cultural moments generate diverse readings of the same text. In this view, a single work can accumulate a history of readings, sometimes called reception or reception history. Olvasati positions reader response alongside, and sometimes in dialogue with, traditional author-centered approaches and with textual-faithfulness debates.

In practice, analyses framed by olvasati examine factors such as education, ideology, translation choices, and pedagogy, to understand why readers interpret passages in particular ways. Critics argue it foregrounds subjectivity, but proponents maintain it reveals the relational nature of meaning and the social life of texts. In education, olvasati-informed approaches encourage students to articulate multiple interpretations and to compare how different contexts alter understanding.

See also: reader-response theory, reception theory, hermeneutics, text reception, Hungarian literary criticism.