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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.
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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01 Jan 2005
TL;DR: For instance, the authors proposes that discourse is a unitary process that can be analyzed into three phases-cognition, ethical apperception, and emotion-that roughly correspond to the classical "proofs" of logos, ethos, and pathos.
Abstract: At least since Aristotle identified three modes of artistic proof (pistis), scholars have assumed that ethos, pathos, and logos-usually translated as character, emotion, and reason-are three very different elements with which rhetors "compose" a speech or text. Certainly, scholars have portrayed the three as interrelated: William Grimaldi, for instance, sees logos as the whole in which ethos and pathos, along withpragma (subject matter), are the parts; Antoine Braet, as well as Andrea Lunsford and Lisa Ede, sees ethos, pathos, and logos as being unified in their common presentation through the enthymeme; Martha Nussbaum sees Aristotle's pathos as being linked to both cognition and desire, thus joining logos with ethos, and much contemporary cognitive psychology agrees with her; Susan McLeod, similarly, acknowledges that "we feel as well as think when we write" and agrees with Piaget (among others) that "At no level, at no state, even in the adult, can we find a behavior or state without a cognitive element involved" (qtd. in Derry and Murphy). Yet, through­ out all the scholarship, the assumption seems to be that the associations among thought, emotion, and ethics are merely coincidental-much as one might assume that a car's color, shape, and material are coinciden­ tal-and that one might well alter an argument's ethical appeal without affecting its rational or emotional appeal-just as one might alter a car's color without affecting its shape or material. What I am proposing is very different: discourse is a unitary process that can be analyzed into (at least) three phases-cognition, ethical apperception, and emotion-that roughly correspond to the classical "proofs" of logos, ethos, and pathos. We can think of ethical apperception

2 citations

Book ChapterDOI
01 Jan 2020
TL;DR: In this article, a sum of artistic devices that help cosmopolitan theatre artists put their political and ethical project forward are discussed. But the difficulties of using the term "cosmopolitanism" in today's climate of rising xenophobia and nationalism are highlighted.
Abstract: This chapter studies and contextualizes the socio-cultural context in which theatre of cosmopolitanism emerges. It outlines a sum of artistic devices that help cosmopolitan theatre artists put their political and ethical project forward. It speaks to the difficulties of using the term ‘cosmopolitanism’ in today’s climate of rising xenophobia and nationalism. To explain its etymology and political weight, it puts this term into a historical perspective as well as the philosophical tendencies of the time. This chapter comments on the methodological and epistemological background of the project. It closes with a brief overview of the layout of the book’s chapters.

2 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
01 Mar 1990-Mln
TL;DR: In this article, the authors argue that Realidad is a metaphor for the creativity inherent in the act of reading, and that the generation of Realidad out of La incognita serves as a metaphor of the creative process.
Abstract: La incognita holds a unique position within Gald6s's literary production: it is the only novel which deliberately is left incomplete and requires a companion text, Realidad, to bring it to resolution. As Stephen Miller has pointed out, other interrelated Galdosian texts such as Tormento and La de Bringas or Nazarin and Halma are self-contained novels, while La incognita has no life apart from Realidad. I The complementary relationship between the two texts is stated explicitly in the penultimate chapter of La incognita where that text's narrator, Manolo Infante, speaks of his work as only half of a creation-the body to which Realidad provides the soul. Whereas La incognita is "la cara exterior," "la superficie," "la verdad aparente;" Realidad is "la cara interna," "la descripci6n interior del asunto," "la verdad profunda." This narrative declaration has prompted considerable critical discussion concerning the nature of reality as expressed in these novels and the interplay of the subjective and objective viewpoints provided by the epistolary and dialogue formats.2 Surprisingly, however, in these discussions the fundamental question has not been raised as to why Realidad is presented as a magical transformation of La incognita rather than simply being offered as Equis's written response to Infante's text? Perhaps the answer lies in the metafictional dimension added to La incognita through this narrative premise. Not only does this miraculous violation of verisimilitude call attention to the fictionality of the text, but more importantly, the generation of Realidad out of La incognita serves as a metaphor for the creativity inherent in the act of reading. In her book, Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox, Linda Hutcheon speaks of the acts of writing and reading as mirror images-the same creative process but occurring in reverse. Although this reciprocal procedure is in operation within any fictional work, literary conventions traditionally have sought to conceal it. Metafictional texts, however, ex-

2 citations