Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology

by Wolfgang Iser

Overview

Why do we need literature, and what does this need tell us about human nature? Wolfgang Iser shows how these questions grew out of his pioneering work in reader-response criticism and how the answers to them may lie in the new field of literary anthropology. Iser's recent work spans a wide range of viewpoints and subject matter, from sixteenth- to twentieth-century literature, from Spenser and Shakespeare to Joyce and Beckett. In thirteen chapters that chart his intellectual development over the past decade, Iser sets forth what reader-response theory has accomplished—and where it has fallen short. Reevaluating such time-honored concepts as representation, he sketches out a new "play theory" of the text that sees literature as an ongoing enactment of human possibilities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780801845932
Publisher:	Johns Hopkins University Press
Publication date:	02/01/1993
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	328
Sales rank:	1,093,197
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.73(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Wolfgang Iser, who has taught at leading universities in the United States and Europe, is currently professor of English and comparative literature at the University of Constance.

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

Prospecting contains fine examples of Iser's ability to relate theoretical issues to analyses of individual works. It will deservedly enhance his reputation as a critic and theorist who writes with equal skill and learning about Renaissance, Neoclassic, and modernist texts.
—Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia

Ralph Cohen

Prospecting contains fine examples of Iser's ability to relate theoretical issues to analyses of individual works. It will deservedly enhance his reputation as a critic and theorist who writes with equal skill and learning about Renaissance, Neoclassic, and modernist texts.

— Ralph Cohen, University of Virginia

Editorial Reviews

An important transitional book, usefully summarizing the past and thoughtfully mapping out the future of a significant critic's theoretical project.
—Modern Philology

There is a much greater emphasis on the reader's function as 'performer' of the text in Prospecting than in Iser's other books. The two brilliant chapters on Beckett's fiction and drama are crucial here . . . Literature becomes 'play' and 'game,' and the reader becomes a performer of himself. This idea of performance becomes central to Iser's new theory. Art does not present life; it performs it.
—Yearbook of English Studies.

From the Publisher

An important transitional book, usefully summarizing the past and thoughtfully mapping out the future of a significant critic's theoretical project.

Modern Philology

There is a much greater emphasis on the reader's function as 'performer' of the text in Prospecting than in Iser's other books. The two brilliant chapters on Beckett's fiction and drama are crucial here . . . Literature becomes 'play' and 'game,' and the reader becomes a performer of himself. This idea of performance becomes central to Iser's new theory. Art does not present life; it performs it.

Yearbook of English Studies.