The Reading Process—A Phenomenological Approach
Written by Wolfgang Iser. Originally from New Literary History Vol. 3.
A literary work is made up of the artistic and the aesthetic: the author’s work and the reader’s work in making meaning.1
!Leave them something to imagine —Laurence Stern
If the author gives away too much, the reader will become bored; too little, and the reader becomes burdened.2
“Intentional sentence correlatives” is was Roman Ingarden and Iser call the way sentences react with each other, which results in a “world presented.” This world is an emergent phenomenon of these correlatives—the sum is greater than its parts.3 Elsewhere, he calls it a “gestalt.”4
The literary work needs the reader’s imagination, which makes sense of the sentence correlatives. The author intentionally orders sentences to guide the reader, to create an expectation, or what Husserl calls a “pre-intention.”5
When a literary text fulfills the expectation it sets up, what Iser calls a “confirmation effect,” we may think it too expository or didactic, at which point we are forced to either accept or reject its thesis (and often we choose to reject it). Art is resistance. In a good literary text, the sentence correlatives are continually changing by their interactions, via anticipation and retrospection. This is why a reader feels involved in the events of a literary story.6
Reading incites our own creative faculties, the product of which is the “virtual dimension” of a text: the coming together of text and imagination.7
When the flow of a text is interrupted, the opportunity is given to the reader to make the connection, filling in the gaps left by the text. This contrasts Ingarden’s classical idea that the flow should not be interrupted.7
On illusion
The reader’s part of the gestalt-making allows writers to use Illusion. Too much illusion can get cheesy, like “brasher forms of detective story.”8
In modern texts, sometimes it is the precision of details that creates confusion and illusion. (I think of Heart of Darkness.) One detail may apparently contradict another detail, causing the reader’s picture to disintegrate.9
Illusion also makes a text readable. Too much, however, undoes the text’s polysemantic nature.9
As a reader is reading, they are finding details that cannot yet, at least easily, be integrated into the meaning they are making. This is part of the retrospective act of making meaning from a literary text.9
In a lot of literary works, there is a balance between illusion and polysemantic meaning. And yet, if it were perfectly balanced, the reader wouldn’t feel the tug of establishing and disrupting meaning.10
The author must subvert expectations in a way that is surprising, not frustrating. Frustrations cause the reader to abandon the frustrating object. Surprise causes a short break from the flow of meaning-making and an impulse to contemplate.10
As we read, our interpretation may be challenged by other interpretations we perceive. This shifting of perspectives makes a novel feel true-to-life.11
!A beholder must create their own experience
The reader’s recreation process relies on interruptions of the flow. The process is helped by employing a repertoire of the familiar (What we think is good is rather just familiar enough) and using techniques and devices that set the familiar against the unfamiliar.11
A reader must also suspend their own preconceptions while reading.12
!You have learnt something —George Bernard Shaw
Georges Poulet, in “Phenomenology of Reading” from New Literary History, says books only take on their full existence in the reader.13
!But as we read on we forgot both commendations and criticism
Poulet goes on to say, “Whenever I read, I mentally pronounce an I, and the the I which I pronounce is not myself.” This is where author and reader converge. For Poulet, the life-story of the author and the disposition of the reader must be shut out for this convergence to happen. The work itself is thought of as a consciousness that unites the two.14
Iser’s conclusion borders on celebrating enmeshment and manipulation. To his credit, he says, “although we are thinking the thoughts of someone else, what we are will not disappear completely.” In the right hands, literature can unite us, as he goes on to say, “the alien ‘me’ and the real, virtual ‘me’ … are never completely cut off from each other.”15