Summary: Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading
Editor’s Note: For this assignment, I needed to read and summarize the published piece or content listed below, and then provide a response or assessment of the writing.
Summary
Iser states that, although authors in years past have believed their intended message was the only message readers would receive, readers as addressees, in reality, are the people who concretize the text. He defines these two poles as artistic (the author’s text) and the aesthetic (the reader’s interpretation of the text). Although the two poles exist, they do not exist independent of one another. Iser states that the dynamism of the text results when the reader interacts with the author’s text. In this sense, literary text is not a definable entity, but a dynamic event. However, readers are not limited to one personal interpretation of the text; they should look for all potential meanings in the text. The indeterminacy of text allows for multiple performances of the text from all readers. Iser believes there are two categories of readers: the real, who provides a documented analysis of literature, and the hypothetical, which includes the implied reader. Iser states that since the implied reader must share the same codes and intentions of the author, so there is little point in communicating with the implied reader through literature since a person only communicates that which is not shared. Iser sees the intended reader as defined by the author and varied based on the author’s needs. Iser discusses the structure of the reader’s role, and the different ways it can be fulfilled. He covers literary psychoanalysis of the reader and why the reader seeks the unknown and pleasure in reading, including overdetermination, which occurs when readers sense multiple meanings within the text. Iser then discusses structure as defining strategic text analysis, along with the ways literary schemata can be altered to interact with the reader who is interpreting the text based on several factors related specifically to each individual reader.
Response
I keep going back to how I think the reader-response critics work to undermine all other literary critics. When read in a certain light, I could see these reader-response critics on an episode of South Park satirizing the entire idea of literary theory. I could also see them being laughed at by the creators of South Park for doing exactly that with their new and almost non-literary theory that is still a literary theory, so who are they really making fun of anyway? Vicious circle. That being said, as you might imagine, I’m not really buying into the validity of reader-response criticism. Even with Iser’s solid definition and thorough explanation, I just don’t see beyond the individualized and subjectiveness of it. Yes, I understand that an individual critic will include their own personal bias in an analysis that is intended to be a feminist critique or a post-colonial critique, but the parameters of those types of analyses are defined and only allow the critic to venture off in any one direction to a certain degree before the analysis no longer falls under feminism or post-colonialism. So, it doesn’t seem as if the individual critic is given much freedom to enter their subjectivity into those types of analyses. Even with Iser’s definition of indeterminacy and overdetermination, and how the author can alter the text schemata to elicit multiple meanings that are not necessarily individual-based meanings, the theory doesn’t seem to be designed to render an analysis of any text that is of any benefit to anyone other than the person writing the analysis or the people within that person’s interpretive community. For that reason, I don’t see the value in this criticism, and I completely understand why it has died out through the years as a stand-alone theory.
So, as a theory, I think it’s of little value; however, I do think Iser’s book could be beneficial to authors as they try to make their text as dynamic as possible. If authors take stock in Iser’s information on structuring text and schemata, as well as the process that readers go through when consuming any literary text, I think authors could formulate a blueprint for their literary text that best communicates their intended message and the method through which they want to deliver that intended message to the reader. This could be especially beneficial for the author if he or she knows that the types of readers who will likely read their work is varied. It can be difficult for an author to ascertain which particular certain or pieces of information are required to keep the reader active and in a decoding frame of mind, and Iser’s structural analysis of literary text could be a guiding source for their literary success. When I think about writing literature, I never thought about it in such formal terms as Iser defined, but with a an insight into readers and the reading process, as well as different techniques to keep the reader engaged, I can see why it could be beneficial for certain types of literature—fiction, in particular.