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The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett
TLDR
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.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.read more
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Dissertation
Literary subjectivity : a Lacanian approach to authoriality & postcards from desolation row : twelve stories
TL;DR: In this article, the reader and the author are seen as one and the same figure, albeit at different stages of their psycho-literary development, and the authors suggest ways in which this application of Lacan's theory can be used to support current creative writing pedagogies.
Book ChapterDOI
The Scope of Literary Theory
TL;DR: In this article, the authors take up the target orientations of literary study, organizing them into literature-oriented study (e.g., understanding poems) and world-oriented studies (eg, understanding emotions) and show that these broadened conceptions of the functions of theory and their orientations open up potentially valuable research programs beyond the theoretical practices of recent decades.