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Showing papers in "The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism in 1979"


Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Iser as discussed by the authors describes the "time flow" of reading, the "wandering viewpoint" which the reader must adopt in the "continual interplay between modified expectations and transformed memories" (p. 111).
Abstract: At the heart of this unnecessarily convoluted study of reading is a sensible description of how readers arrive at an understanding of novels, constructing the world implied by a text and "assembling" its meaning. Reading is presented as a purely intellectual, ideational affair. Not a word is said of the emotional component of a reader's response. For Iser fiction is a mode of communication. A novel is "a system of perspectives designed to transmit the individuality of the author's vision" (p. 35), and the reader participates "both in the production and the comprehension of the work's intention" (p. 23). The author's vision is a vision of the social and cultural norms of his time, which he may either "shore up" and affirm, or break down by making us experience their deficiencies. Iser is at his best in explicating the "time flow" of reading, the "wandering viewpoint" which the reader must adopt in the "continual interplay between modified expectations and transformed memories" (p. 111). What we experience while reading is a shifting sequence of points of view—the narrator's, the implied reader's, a particular character's—and a sequence of events that either confirm or disconfirm these points of view. We build up "images" of the characters and events, and of what they seem to mean, and then must correct them as new information is provided. Thus our initial image of Fielding's Squire Allworthy as "the perfect man" must be modified when Captain Blifil dupes him, and modified again when he sees through the appearances of Tom's behavior to his benevolent motives. What makes reading an active, constructive process is the fact that the text does not provide all the necessary links between points of view and the train of events. What it provides instead are "blanks," apparent inconsistencies that the reader must fill in or explain. To do so, driven as we are by the search for consistency, is both to construct the meanings and experience them. As we discover, for example, the deficiencies of the various points of view in Tom Jones, each of which represents a particular eighteenth-century view of human nature, we simultaneously construct one of the central meanings of the novel: that there is a "gulf between the rigid confines of principle and the endless fluidity of human experience" (p. 77). The significance of this meaning is whatever it reveals to the reader about himself: "The reader should see himself reflected in the characters, and so should come to a better

1,437 citations


Journal ArticleDOI

612 citations







Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, a new series of Norton books, devoted to informed discussion of contemporary music, draws principally upon articles first published in Perspectives of New Music, which Richard Kostelanetz has described as among the most consistently interesting magazines in America.
Abstract: This new series of Norton books, devoted to informed discussion of contemporary music, draws principally upon articles first published in Perspectives of New Music, which Richard Kostelanetz has described as among the most consistently interesting magazines in America. The Perspectives books will comprise a repository of the clearest thinking and most serious writing about twentieth-century music, forming an essential addition to the libraries of both professionals and amateurs concerned with understanding recent developments."

24 citations


Journal ArticleDOI
John Reichert1
TL;DR: Louise M. Rosenblatt as mentioned in this paper argued that the reading transaction is a unique event involving reader and text at a particular time under particular circumstances, and that the dualistic emphasis of other theories on either the reader or the text as separate and static entities cannot explain the importance of factors such as gender, ethnicity, culture, and socioeconomic context.
Abstract: Louise M. Rosenblatt s award-winning work continues increasingly to be read in a wide range of academic fieldsliterary criticism, reading theory, aesthetics, composition, rhetoric, speech communication, and education. Her view of the reading transaction as a unique event involving reader and text at a particular time under particular circumstances rules out the dualistic emphasis of other theories on either the reader or the text as separate and static entities. The transactional concept accounts for the importance of factors such as gender, ethnicity, culture, and socioeconomic context. Essential reading for the specialist, this book is also well suited for courses in criticism, critical theory, rhetoric, and aesthetics.Starting from the same nonfoundationalist premises, Rosenblatt avoids the extreme relativism of postmodern theories derived mainly from Continental sources. A deep understanding of the pragmatism of Dewey, James, and Peirce and of key issues in the social sciences is the basis for a view of language and the reading process that recognizes the potentialities for alternative interpretations and at the same time provides a rationale for the responsible reading of texts.The book has been praised for its lucid explanation of the multidimensional character of the reading processevoking, interpreting, and evaluating the work. The nonliterary (efferent) and the literary (aesthetic) are shown not to be opposites but to represent a continuum of reading behaviors. The author amply illustrates her theoretical points with interpretations of varied texts. The epilogue carries further her critique of rival contemporary theories.\

24 citations









Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: The authors suggest some fruitful ways of looking at socialist realism and the socialist realist novel-fruitful, that is, for our understanding of the nature and function of literature as a whole.
Abstract: FOR UNDERSTANDABLE REASONS, most discussions of socialist realism resemble elegies more than analyses. They usually lament the passing of the pre-revolutionary tradition, deplore the brutal methods by which literature has been emasculated and writers silenced, and condemn the government policies that have rewarded a Fadeev with a Stalin prize and removed Dostoevsky from the secondary school curriculum. Now, I also prefer Dostoevsky to Fadeev and think that literature in the Soviet Union is not fulfilling the social functions I would most like to see literature fulfill. That said, however, I also think that the elegiac is not the only mode for writing about socialist realism. There is, or should be, room for the sort of analysis that would treat socialist realism as a literary fact, not simply an unfortunate political consequence, without being accused of apologizing for it. The aim of this essay is to suggest some fruitful ways of looking at socialist realism and the socialist realist novel-fruitful, that is, for our understanding of the nature and function of literature as a whole. However poor socialist realism may be when judged by the standards usually employed in the West to praise Dostoevsky and Dickens, it can still serve as a useful test case for thinking about key problems in contemporary literary theory, literary history, and comparative literature.