I, like Steph, thought immediately of Joyce in my reading of Ricoeur. I agree with Ricoeur's idea that once a text is separated from its author (and/or from its reader) it becomes a separate entity. However, I feel that once the reader picks it up, it becomes one with the world of language in which the text, reader, and author exist.

Ricoeur writes that:

In what follows, I shall elaborate the notion of the text
in view of that to which it testifies, the positive
and productive function of distanciation at the heart of
the human experience. I propose to organise this
problematic around five themes: (1) the realisation of
language as discourse; (2) the realisation of
discourse as structured work; (3) the relation
of speaking to writing in discourse and in the
works of discourse; (4) the work of discourse as the
mediation of self-understanding. Taken together,
these features constitute the criteria of textuality.

This description of textuality encompasses the life of text as it stretches from person to person, from text to person, and person to text. It is like a web which connects us to ourselves, others, books, and, essentially, everything. For, as Lacan states and as Joyce explores in his most democratic writing, not only are books structured on language, but so is the human unconscious and the world in which we exist.

--Lori