Wolfgang Iser
Biographic Data
| ID | 964447 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Wolfgang Iser |
| GIVEN NAMES | Wolfgang |
| FAMILY NAME | Iser |
| SIGNATURE | ISER W |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Konstanz |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 32 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 106 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 32 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1960 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
How to do theory
Using classic literary texts, including Keats's Ode on a Grecian Urn, Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender, and T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Iser shows what a work of art looks like if viewed in terms of each of the theories concerned. He presents the different theories objectively, leaving it up to readers to decide which, if any, they subscribe to. In this way, he defuses students' fear of theory and demonstrates the potential of different theori…
The resurgence of the aesthetic
CHAPTER Nine. What Is Literary Anthropology? The Difference between Explanatory and Exploratory Fictions
Twenty-Five Years New Literary History a Tribute to Ralph Cohen
IWHEN NEW LITERARY HsronRY entered the stage in 1969, there then, no Critical Inquiry, no Diacritics, no new-policy PMLA; there was then no English literary journal devoted to critical theory or to reconsideration of literary history, its nature and possibilities. New Literary History was conceived as move against the critical current; its aim was to inquire into the theoretical bases of practical criticism and, in doing so, to reexamine the rela…
The Fictive and the Imaginary
The pioneer of "literary anthropology," Wolfgang Iser presents a wide-ranging and comprehensive exploration of this new field in an attempt to explain the human need for the "particular form of make-believe" known as literature. Ranging from the Renaissance pastoral to Coleridge to Sartre and Beckett, The Fictive and the Imaginary is a distinguished work of scholarship from one of Europe's most respected and influential critics.
Given Movement
Staging as an Anthropological Category
IF WE TRY to fathom the historical necessity of the literary medium, a medium that no longer monopolizes the field of entertainment and leisure and is now dwarfed by the competition of the visual media, we shall have to penetrate beyond its former, widely accepted forms of legitimation: its autonomy, its mimetic reflection of social conditions, and even its generative force in constituting reality, as enlightened Marxism (Kosik) would have it.' W…
Concluding Remarks
Non-Negative Negative Atheology
Walter Pater
Foreword Part I. Introduction Section 1. Pater Criticism Section 2. Historical Preliminaries: 1. Art as creation 2. Art as mimesis Part II. Autonomous Art Section 3. The Starting Point: 1. Scepticism 2. The essay 3. Defining human existence 4. Expression Section 4. Defining Art: 1. 'Art for art's sake' 2. Impressionism 3. Style Section 5. The Problem of Orientation: 1. Beauty 2. 'Postscript' Part III. Art and History Section 6. What Is History?: …
Fictionalizing
MOST PEOPLE would associate term fiction with storytelling branch of literature, but in its other guise it is what Dr. Johnson called falsehood; a lye.' The equivocalness of word is very revealing, for each meaning sheds light on other. Both meanings entail similar processes, which we might term what is: lie oversteps truth, and literary work oversteps real world which it incorporates. It is therefore not surprising that literary fictions would s…
Laurence Sterne
Part I. Subjectivity revealed through textual fields of reference: 1. Does Tristram Shandy have a beginning? 2. Subjectivity discovered through Locke's philosophy 3. Locke's philosophy as a pattern of communication 4. Manic subjectivity 5. Melancholic subjectivity 6. Decentred subjectivity 7. Wit and judgment 8. The discovery of communication by verbalising subjectivity 9. The body semiotics of subjectivity as discovery of man's natural morality …
The Interplay between Creation and Interpretation
AT ACKLING the interrelationship between creation and interpretation turned out to be such a formidable task that it appears inappropriate to criticize the ideas advanced in these articles. There is a general trend to be observed in the current critical discussion-at least in the humanities-toward concentrating on showing up the shortcomings of positions put forward by the opponent, implying one has the answer which he, however, refrains from div…
"The Dramatization of Double Meaning in Shakespeare's "As You like It
As You Like It is a dramatic adaptation of a well-known pastoral romance, and as such it testifies to the irresistible wave of shepherds that engulfed the literary scene of the Renaissance.' The pastoral world embraced all genres of the age, and changed the system of genres by introducing a new one in the shape of the pastoral romance, which broke down the boundaries within which the eclogue had been confined. But even the traditional form of the…
Why No One's Afraid of Wolfgang Iser
At a time when we are warned daily against sirens literary theory, Wolfgang Iser is notable because he does not appear on anyone's list. He is not included among those (Derrida, de Man, Bloom, Miller, Fish) who are thought as subverting standards, values and rule common sense; nor do we find him cited as one those (Abrams, Hirsch, Booth, Graff, Crews, Shattuck) who are fighting good fight against forces deconstructive nihilism. His absence from f…
Talk like Whales
The Act of Reading
Der Akt des Lesens
The Intersubjective Structure of the Reading Process
The Ambivalence of Reading
Texts and readers∗
The interaction of readers with fictional literary texts is explored. Such texts must be constituted by readers themselves during a dynamic process of creating both the text‐sense and the larger contextual background. That process includes such tasks as: adopting a viewpoint, creating ideations, images, or integrative gestalts, dealing with empty slots or negations, and co‐ordinating foreground with background, theme with horizion, and current pe…
Interview
Critics in the Act of Reading
The Act of Reading
The Current Situation of Literary Theory
I N THE LAST TEN YEARS, literary theory has made a powerful impact on criticism, giving new direction to a discussion that was losing itself down a very blind alley. But despite this impact, it is still dogged by an unmistakable element of ingenuousness as evinced not least by its opalescent character. What exactly is literary theory? Does it mean theorizing about literature, or about possible means of access to literature? If the distinction bet…
The Reading Process
SHE PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY of art lays full stress on the idea that, in considering a literary work, one must take into account not only the actual text but also, and in equal measure, the actions involved in responding to that text. Thus Roman Ingarden confronts the structure of the literary text with the ways in which it can be konkretisiert (realized).' The text as such offers different schematised views' through which the subject matter of t…
Texts and readers∗
The interaction of readers with fictional literary texts is explored. Such texts must be constituted by readers themselves during a dynamic process of creating both the text‐sense and the larger contextual background. That process includes such tasks as: adopting a viewpoint, creating ideations, images, or integrative gestalts, dealing with empty slots or negations, and co‐ordinating foreground with background, theme with horizion, and current pe…
The Reality of Fiction
SVERY TEXTUAL MODEL involves certain heuristic decisions; the model cannot be equated with the literary text itself, but simply opens up a means of access to it. Whenever we analyze a text, we never deal with a text pure and simple, but inevitably apply a frame of reference specifically chosen for our analysis. Literature is generally regarded as fictitious writing, and indeed, the very term implies that the words on the printed page are not mean…
Interview
Walter Pater
Foreword Part I. Introduction Section 1. Pater Criticism Section 2. Historical Preliminaries: 1. Art as creation 2. Art as mimesis Part II. Autonomous Art Section 3. The Starting Point: 1. Scepticism 2. The essay 3. Defining human existence 4. Expression Section 4. Defining Art: 1. 'Art for art's sake' 2. Impressionism 3. Style Section 5. The Problem of Orientation: 1. Beauty 2. 'Postscript' Part III. Art and History Section 6. What Is History?: …
Fictionalizing
MOST PEOPLE would associate term fiction with storytelling branch of literature, but in its other guise it is what Dr. Johnson called falsehood; a lye.' The equivocalness of word is very revealing, for each meaning sheds light on other. Both meanings entail similar processes, which we might term what is: lie oversteps truth, and literary work oversteps real world which it incorporates. It is therefore not surprising that literary fictions would s…
Twenty-Five Years New Literary History a Tribute to Ralph Cohen
IWHEN NEW LITERARY HsronRY entered the stage in 1969, there then, no Critical Inquiry, no Diacritics, no new-policy PMLA; there was then no English literary journal devoted to critical theory or to reconsideration of literary history, its nature and possibilities. New Literary History was conceived as move against the critical current; its aim was to inquire into the theoretical bases of practical criticism and, in doing so, to reexamine the rela…
Staging as an Anthropological Category
IF WE TRY to fathom the historical necessity of the literary medium, a medium that no longer monopolizes the field of entertainment and leisure and is now dwarfed by the competition of the visual media, we shall have to penetrate beyond its former, widely accepted forms of legitimation: its autonomy, its mimetic reflection of social conditions, and even its generative force in constituting reality, as enlightened Marxism (Kosik) would have it.' W…
The Current Situation of Literary Theory
I N THE LAST TEN YEARS, literary theory has made a powerful impact on criticism, giving new direction to a discussion that was losing itself down a very blind alley. But despite this impact, it is still dogged by an unmistakable element of ingenuousness as evinced not least by its opalescent character. What exactly is literary theory? Does it mean theorizing about literature, or about possible means of access to literature? If the distinction bet…
Walter Pater
The Reading Process
SHE PHENOMENOLOGICAL THEORY of art lays full stress on the idea that, in considering a literary work, one must take into account not only the actual text but also, and in equal measure, the actions involved in responding to that text. Thus Roman Ingarden confronts the structure of the literary text with the ways in which it can be konkretisiert (realized).' The text as such offers different schematised views' through which the subject matter of t…
Cognition and the Implied Reader
The Reality of Fiction
SVERY TEXTUAL MODEL involves certain heuristic decisions; the model cannot be equated with the literary text itself, but simply opens up a means of access to it. Whenever we analyze a text, we never deal with a text pure and simple, but inevitably apply a frame of reference specifically chosen for our analysis. Literature is generally regarded as fictitious writing, and indeed, the very term implies that the words on the printed page are not mean…
Recognizing Recognition
The Implied Reader
Kommunikationsasthetik I
The Act of Reading
The Current Situation of Literary Theory
I N THE LAST TEN YEARS, literary theory has made a powerful impact on criticism, giving new direction to a discussion that was losing itself down a very blind alley. But despite this impact, it is still dogged by an unmistakable element of ingenuousness as evinced not least by its opalescent character. What exactly is literary theory? Does it mean theorizing about literature, or about possible means of access to literature? If the distinction bet…
The Act of Reading
Der Akt des Lesens
The Intersubjective Structure of the Reading Process
The Ambivalence of Reading
Texts and readers∗
The interaction of readers with fictional literary texts is explored. Such texts must be constituted by readers themselves during a dynamic process of creating both the text‐sense and the larger contextual background. That process includes such tasks as: adopting a viewpoint, creating ideations, images, or integrative gestalts, dealing with empty slots or negations, and co‐ordinating foreground with background, theme with horizion, and current pe…
Interview
Critics in the Act of Reading
Why No One's Afraid of Wolfgang Iser
At a time when we are warned daily against sirens literary theory, Wolfgang Iser is notable because he does not appear on anyone's list. He is not included among those (Derrida, de Man, Bloom, Miller, Fish) who are thought as subverting standards, values and rule common sense; nor do we find him cited as one those (Abrams, Hirsch, Booth, Graff, Crews, Shattuck) who are fighting good fight against forces deconstructive nihilism. His absence from f…
Talk like Whales
"The Dramatization of Double Meaning in Shakespeare's "As You like It
As You Like It is a dramatic adaptation of a well-known pastoral romance, and as such it testifies to the irresistible wave of shepherds that engulfed the literary scene of the Renaissance.' The pastoral world embraced all genres of the age, and changed the system of genres by introducing a new one in the shape of the pastoral romance, which broke down the boundaries within which the eclogue had been confined. But even the traditional form of the…
The Interplay between Creation and Interpretation
AT ACKLING the interrelationship between creation and interpretation turned out to be such a formidable task that it appears inappropriate to criticize the ideas advanced in these articles. There is a general trend to be observed in the current critical discussion-at least in the humanities-toward concentrating on showing up the shortcomings of positions put forward by the opponent, implying one has the answer which he, however, refrains from div…
Laurence Sterne
Part I. Subjectivity revealed through textual fields of reference: 1. Does Tristram Shandy have a beginning? 2. Subjectivity discovered through Locke's philosophy 3. Locke's philosophy as a pattern of communication 4. Manic subjectivity 5. Melancholic subjectivity 6. Decentred subjectivity 7. Wit and judgment 8. The discovery of communication by verbalising subjectivity 9. The body semiotics of subjectivity as discovery of man's natural morality …
Non-Negative Negative Atheology
Walter Pater
Foreword Part I. Introduction Section 1. Pater Criticism Section 2. Historical Preliminaries: 1. Art as creation 2. Art as mimesis Part II. Autonomous Art Section 3. The Starting Point: 1. Scepticism 2. The essay 3. Defining human existence 4. Expression Section 4. Defining Art: 1. 'Art for art's sake' 2. Impressionism 3. Style Section 5. The Problem of Orientation: 1. Beauty 2. 'Postscript' Part III. Art and History Section 6. What Is History?: …
Fictionalizing
MOST PEOPLE would associate term fiction with storytelling branch of literature, but in its other guise it is what Dr. Johnson called falsehood; a lye.' The equivocalness of word is very revealing, for each meaning sheds light on other. Both meanings entail similar processes, which we might term what is: lie oversteps truth, and literary work oversteps real world which it incorporates. It is therefore not surprising that literary fictions would s…
Concluding Remarks
Philosophy (19 works) · Art (14 works) · Psychology (11 works) · Linguistics (9 works) · Epistemology (8 works) · Computer Science (7 works) · History (7 works) · Literature (6 works) · History and criticism (5 works) · Sociology (5 works)