The implied reader; patterns of communication in prose fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. / By Wolfgang Iser.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Iser, Wolfgang.

Contributor:

The Library of Chaim Potok (University of Pennsylvania)

Standardized Title:

Implizite Leser. English

Language:

English

German

Subjects (All):

Fiction--History and criticism.

Fiction.

English fiction--History and criticism.

English fiction.

Penn Provenance:

Potok, Adena (donor) (Potok Collection copy)

Potok, Chaim (autograph) (Potok Collection copy)

Physical Description:

xiv pages, 2 unnumbered pages, 303 pages, 1 unnumbered page ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Baltimore ; London : The Johns Hopkins University Press, [1974]

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress: The doctrine of predestination and the shaping of the novel

The role of the reader in Fielding's Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones

The generic control of the esthetic response: An examination of Smollett's Humphry Clinker

Fiction

the filter of history: a study of Sir Walter Scott's Waverley

The reader as a component part of the realistic novel: Esthetic effects in Thackeray's Vanity Fair

Self-Reduction

Doing things in style: an interpretation of 'The Oxen of the Sun" in James Joyce's Ulysses

Patterns of Communication in Joyce's Ulysses

Dialogue of the Unspeakable: Ivy Compton-Burnett: A heritage and its history

When is the end not the end? The idea of fiction in Beckett

The reading process: a phenomenological approach.

Notes:

"Originally published 1974 ... Johns Hopkins paperback edition, 1978."

Translation of Der implizite Leser published by Wilhelm Fink, Munich, 1972.

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Local Notes:

Potok Collection copy presented to the Penn Libraries by Adena Potok.

Potok Collection copy has autograph of "Chaim Potok".

Potok Collection copy is "John Hopkins paperback edition, Second printing 1980".

ISBN:

080181569X

0801821509

OCLC:

754495