Community Survey
Richard L. W. Clarke LITS3303 Notes 11B
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WOLFGANG ISER "THE READING PROCESS: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH" (1972) Iser, Wolfgang. "The Reading Process: a Phenomenological Approach." The Implied Reader. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974. 274-294. I Here, Iser asserts that the “phenomenological theory of art of art lays full stress on the idea that, in considering a literary work, one must take into account not only the actual text but also, and in equal measure, the actions involved in responding to that text” (274). Alluding to the work of the Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden, Iser argues that the text offers various "schematised views" (275) or "perspectives" (275) that the reader ‘concretises’ in the process of reading: the reader "sets the work in motion" (275). For this reason, the “literary work has two poles, which we might call the artistic and the aesthetic” (274), the former referring to “text created by the author” (274), the latter to the “realisation accomplished by the reader” (274). The work “cannot be completely identical with the text, or with the realisation of the text, but in fact must lie halfway between the two” (274). The "text only takes on life when it is realised” (274). This “realization” (274) is by no means “independent of the individual disposition of the reader” (274) which “in turn is acted on by the different patterns of the text" (275). The "convergence of text and reader brings the literary work into existence" (275), a convergence that “can never be pinpointed, but must always remain virtual” (275) and impossible to identify either with the “reality of the text or with the individual disposition of the reader” (275). It is the "virtuality" (275) of the literary work (he calls the work later a "gestalt" [280]) which renders it “dynamic” (275) which is the “precondition of the effects that the work calls forth” (275): as the reader uses the various perspectives offered him by the text in order to relate the patterns and
1
WOLFGANG ISER "THE READING PROCESS: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH" (1972) Iser, Wolfgang. "The Reading Process: a Phenomenological Approach." The Implied Reader. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974. 274-294. I Here, Iser asserts that the “phenomenological theory of art of art lays full stress on the idea that, in considering a literary work, one must take into account not only the actual text but also, and in equal measure, the actions involved in responding to that text” (274). Alluding to the work of the Polish phenomenologist Roman Ingarden, Iser argues that the text offers various "schematised views" (275) or "perspectives" (275) that the reader ‘concretises’ in the process of reading: the reader "sets the work in motion" (275). For this reason, the “literary work has two poles, which we might call the artistic and the aesthetic” (274), the former referring to “text created by the author” (274), the latter to the “realisation accomplished by the reader” (274). The work “cannot be completely identical with the text, or with the realisation of the text, but in fact must lie halfway between the two” (274). The "text only takes on life when it is realised” (274). This “realization” (274) is by no means “independent of the individual disposition of the reader” (274) which “in turn is acted on by the different patterns of the text" (275). The "convergence of text and reader brings the literary work into existence" (275), a convergence that “can never be pinpointed, but must always remain virtual” (275) and impossible to identify either with the “reality of the text or with the individual disposition of the reader” (275). It is the "virtuality" (275) of the literary work (he calls the work later a "gestalt" [280]) which renders it “dynamic” (275) which is the “precondition of the effects that the work calls forth” (275): as the reader uses the various perspectives offered him by the text in order to relate the patterns and