The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett

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The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett

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The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett

01 Jan 1974-

TL;DR: Iser as mentioned in this paper analyzed major works of English fiction ranging from Bunyan, Fielding, Scott, and Thackeray to Joyce and Beckett, and provided a framework for a theory of such literary effects and aesthetic responses.

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Abstract: Like no other art form, the novel confronts its readers with circumstances arising from their own environment of social and historical norms and stimulates them to assess and criticize their surroundings. By analyzing major works of English fiction ranging from Bunyan, Fielding, Scott, and Thackeray to Joyce and Beckett, renowned critic Wolfgang Iser here provides a framework for a theory of such literary effects and aesthetic responses. Iser's focus is on the theme of discovery, whereby the reader is given the chance to recognize the deficiencies of his own existence and the suggested solutions to counterbalance them. The content and form of this discovery is the calculated response of the reader -- the implied reader. In discovering the expectations and presuppositions that underlie all his perceptions, the reader learns to "read" himself as he does the text.

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Dissertation•

The integration of postmodern values and rhetorical analysis: A case study

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Clint Lyle Heacock

01 Dec 2010

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Narration in Jeanette Winterson's Gut Symmetries

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Piiastiina Tikka

01 Jan 2000

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Book Chapter•DOI•

Not I? Critics Versus Readers

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Catherine Butler¹•Institutions (1)

Cardiff University¹

01 Jan 2018

TL;DR: The authors used a historical analysis to argue that ambiguities and evasions of critical prose reflect contradictions inherent in Literary Studies' status as a university discipline, which requires critics to adopt the roles both of authoritative expert readers and of typical or representative readers able to report on common literary experience.

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Abstract: This chapter uses a historical analysis to argue that the ambiguities and evasions of critical prose (e.g. in its use of phrases such as “the reader”) reflect contradictions inherent in Literary Studies’ status as a university discipline. That status requires critics to adopt the roles both of authoritative expert readers and of typical or representative readers able to report on common literary experience. Attempts to define the identity, role and status of “the reader”, notably within the broad critical movement known as reader-response criticism, have been only partially successful; this is because the possibility of Literary Studies as a profession depends on holding the contradictions of that phrase in unresolved suspension.

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1 citations

Book Chapter•DOI•

The Semiotic Function of Audience

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Kristin M. Langellier¹•Institutions (1)

University of Maine¹

01 Jan 1983

TL;DR: In this article, oral interpretation is taken as paradigmatic for the description of literature and literature is experienced in its performing, and more properly in its being read aloud amidst an audience.

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Abstract: According to Umberto Eco (1976: 276), “The semiotic definition of an aesthetic text gives the structured model for the unstructured process of communicative interplay.” An aesthetic text such as literature presupposes an addressee who collaborates in its production, for example, the spectator of theatre on the reader of poetry. Aesthetic communication thus relies upon two conditions--a performance and an audience. In this study oral interpretation is taken as paradigmatic for the description of literature. Literature is experienced in its performing, and more properly, in its being read aloud amidst an audience. In performance, neither the text nor the audience consumes the other totally in that a complete reduction is impossible. Mikel Dufrenne (1978: 405) states that “the ambiguous and yet irrefutable existence of the phenomenon testifies that the subject which directs its view, and the object as phenomenon towards which this view is directed are at the same time correlative and distinct: existing at the same by the subject and before the subject.” Hence the performance of literature is ongoing and the direction of aesthetic communication unpredictable.

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1 citations

Young Readers Respond to International Children’s Literature

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Catherine Cash Buck¹•Institutions (1)

University of Tennessee¹

01 Jan 2008

1 citations

Cites background from "The Implied Reader: Patterns of Com..."

...According to Iser (1974), all stories contain gaps that must be connected in the process of creating meaning by the reader....
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...14 An implied author, a narrator or narrators, characters, and plot-line are a few of the other “textual perspectives” described by Iser (1978). The implied author is a narrative construct discernable only through clues in the text....
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...(Iser, 1974) Instrumental Case Study: An examination of an identified, selected group engaged in a particular activity for a definite time with the purpose of gaining understanding about an issue....
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...Every text has a “real” author who attempts to communicate a narrative through the words and ideas she situates on the page (Iser, 1978). That author exists outside of the text and as long as that author is living, any reader of the narrative potentially has access to the author’s point of view about the text. Examples of real authors would be J. K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter series and Deborah Ellis, author of The Breadwinner (2000), Parvana’s Journey (2002), and Mud City (2003)....
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