Semester IV 2020

CC XIII

Some Thoughts on Reading Wolfgang Iser’s ‘Interaction between Text and Reader’
[1980]

Wolfgang Iser [1926- 2007] adopts a model of Transactional Reader-response—give

and take between text and reader—and focusses on the reading process from a
Phenomenological approach. Phenomenology was propounded by Husserl and applied to
Literature by Roman Ingarden. The idea is that while reading a text [let us assume that it is a
work of fiction] the reader concretizes the ‘schematized aspects’ already present in the text.
In other words, in the tradition of Formalism or New Criticism, the text guides the reader by
providing a blueprint to construct a ‘virtual’ text in his/her imagination. Reader-response
criticism is opposed to Wimsatt and Beardley’s notion of “Affective Fallacy” which
dismisses consideration of the reader as a ‘confusion between the poem and its results’.
[Norton:1671]. I may illustrate with the help of children’s drawing books where in order to
draw a picture, the child is asked to join the dots in a numbered sequence. Now, remove the
numbering, imagine new ways to join the dots, new pictures will emerge. In a work of fiction,
according to Iser, on the level of the plot, happenings or textual segments that break off or
take a different turn, are the dots we join in our imagination, each individually. Is then
Reader-response a free-for-all? How does meaning emerge? Perhaps that is why Iser insists
that reading is neither purely subjective or objective but somewhere in-between.

I move on to the essay in the syllabus, ‘Interaction between Text and Reader’ that
summarizes the theoretical argument offered in Iser’s The Act of Reading [1976, trans. 1978].
A thing to note is that Iser uses terms he finds elsewhere so that his writing seems to suffer
from what Robert C. Holub calls ‘terminological overload’ [Holub:100]. In my attempt to
summarize the essay as simply as possible, I’m breaking it up into four sections.

• Section I: Iser introduces the two poles of a literary work and how the work is
‘virtual’, he explains with the help of the psychology of social communication
[Tavistock School] and develops the notion of the gap or blank in the text—
 indeterminacy. It ends on p.1676 with ‘Whenever the reader bridges the gaps,
communication begins.’
• Section II: Iser explains further the nature of the ‘blank’ and various types of negation
that result from the reading process. Discusses blank, vacancy, theme and background
structures of reading, ends p. 1679, second paragraph.
• Section III: Illustrative references from Fielding’s novel, Tom Jones. Ends on p.1680.
• Section IV: A summary and clarification of all he explains above.

Section I

The essay begins by referring to the Phenomenological theory of Art which considers
that the work is created in the reader’s consciousness through reading. Iser uses the notion of
two poles [ I think of the North and South Pole], the artistic pole which is the author’s text
and the aesthetic pole which is the realization accomplished by the reader. The reader sets the
work ‘’in motion’’ when he relates the different patterns and perspectives present in the text.
So the interaction between the subject [reader] and the object [text] posits the work as virtual.
Think of the globe and how we draw imaginary lines, the parallels and the meridians to map
the space.

Reader

The virtual
work

Text
This aids in visually grasping the metaphor of the poles and helps us to move on to the next
point Iser is making—in the case of the globe, there is an accepted method of drawing the
lines or a code common to all geographers. But, in the case of reading a text, there is no
common code because the imaginary lines are not fixed or determined—each reader may
draw the structure in her individual way, even in new ways each time she reads the text.
When you read Feluda Stories as a child and when you read as an adult, isn’t there a
difference in perception or appreciation?

Iser now turns to psychology to explain his ideas of interaction between text and
reader with the help of social communication. Drawing upon the work of Laing, he writes of
how in one-to-one communication, neither of us know what the other is experiencing. So we
seem to be invisible or ‘no-thing’ to each other—but we build upon our perception of what
the other might be thinking in order to fill in the nothing. Thus, in communication,
interpretation is part of the interaction, ‘pure’ perception is not possible.

However, in reading there is no face-to-face as in social communication. There are

two points to be grasped here: i) the reader cannot ask the text to verify her views; ii) there is
no context or frame of reference governing the text-reader relationship. [ A word here,
Stanley Fish would not agree about the absence of the common frame of reference because
the ‘interpretive community’ cannot be wished away.]

Anyway, Iser says that in social communication gaps arise because we cannot
experience each other’s thoughts and are filled according to a common situation and
conventions. So the gaps function as ‘a basic inducement to communication’. Similarly, gaps
or a “fundamental asymmetry” between text and reader caused by the lack of a common
situation gives rise to communication in the reading process. Iser now insists that in order for
meaning to emerge, the text must control the reader’s activity. This control is not specific as
the response from the other person in social communication, nor it is determinate as a social
code.

[‘Would you like an ice-cream cone?’ Social code dictates you answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’.
But in a book, if the response is ‘Only if it is mango flavoured’, then you require prior
knowledge of the respondent’s history to understand the preference. But it could equally be,
that in the book, set in Greenland, there is no mango-flavoured ice-cream, so the response is
actually either wit or sarcasm. You might object, this is my inference, it is not stated in the
query and response.] Iser uses a more complex example here to illustrate his point. He quotes
from Virginia Woolf’s The Common Reader, an excerpt where Woolf writes of Jane Austen,
‘… She stimulates us to supply what is not there.’ [Norton: 1676]. Thus, the trivial expands
in the mind to become an experience of life. The unsaid in dialogue or what is missing, the
gaps, expand while reading Austen’s novels. The richness of the reading experience is not on
the printed page, it is a product arising out of interaction between text and reader. Iser now
theorizes what he has been outlining till now, ‘Communication in literature… the reader
bridges the gaps, communication begins.’ [1676]. This is crucial to our understanding of the
next section. Pay attention to the notion of explicit and implicit meaning and to the notion of
mutual transformation.

Section II

Holub in Reception Theory [p.92] explains that in order to explain the “manner in
which the text exerts control over the dialogue” in the communication between text and
reader, Iser assigns the structure of “blanks” the “central regulatory function”. Blanks are,
according to Iser, the ‘unseen joints’ of the text, they indicate that the different segments and
patterns of the text are to be connected, even though the text itself does not say so. When the
textual perspectives have been linked, the blanks ‘disappear’. Iser points to the segments on
the level of the story or the plot. The thread of the plot can be suddenly broken off and
continued in unexpected directions. He says that a narrative text has four main perspectives:
i) of the narrator, ii) of the characters, iii) of the plot, iv) of the fictitious reader. The meaning
emerges from intertwining the divisions between all these perspectives, for instance, the
hero’s may be set against that of the minor characters. [Darcy vs Wickham?] Iser says, as the
reader’s wandering viewpoint travels between all the textual segments, or we read back and
forth, anticipate and retrospect in our imagination, a network of connections emerge due to
the intertwining of perspectives.

Let me explain with the help of Pride and Prejudice. Remember the textual segment
where Elizabeth visits Darcy’s estate and hears his praise from the housekeeper? It opens up
a new perspective by changing her prejudiced opinion of Darcy. So,
 Segment C

Segment A Segment B

Elizabeth’s prejudice Darcy’s praise

Here, in the above representation of textual segments organized into a referential field, the
empty space or blank is filled as soon as the new segment ‘C’ comes into being. When ‘B’ is
preferred over ‘A’, it becomes the “theme” and the background against which the next
segment takes on its actuality, here ‘C’.

New Blank

Segment B Segment C

Theme or background Change in Elizabeth’s perception

The new blank is conducive to further development of the Elizabeth-Darcy relationship.

Segment A is now a thematically vacant position, this marginal position is called a

“vacancy”.

Definition of Blank: Blanks refer to suspended connectivity in the text.

Definition of Vacancy: Vacancies refer to nonthematic segments within the referential field
of the wandering viewpoint. [Norton: 1679]

Holub states: “The blanks and vacancies thus chart a course for reading a text by organizing
the reader’s participation with their structure of shifting positions. At the same time they
compel the reader to complete the structure and thereby produce the aesthetic object.”
[Holub: 94]

Section III
[A note: Please read this portion of the essay carefully as it cannot be explained. It requires
prior acquaintance with Tom Jones. I have already explained Iser’s terms with the help of
Pride and Prejudice, which I assume most of you have read.]

Section IV

Since here Iser summarizes the reading process involving blanks and ideation by the reader, I
think a note on what he means by ‘ideation’ is required.

I am quoting Holub:

While we read, we are continuously and unconsciously constructing images… These

images should be distinguished from perceptions we have while encountering empirical
reality; for the image “transcends” the sensory… [Here Iser is drawing on the difference
between the German words for perception and ideation.] … The former occurs only when an
object is present to be perceived, while the latter presupposes the absence or non-existence of
an object. Reading entails ideation because, aside from the marks on the page, the reader
must bring forth or ideate the “object”, usually thought of in terms of a world suggested by
the “schematized aspects” of the text. Ideation, in other words, is an essential part of the
creative imagination that ultimately produces an aesthetic object. [pp 90-91]

References

1. Textual references are to Iser’s ‘Interaction between Text and Reader’ in the Norton
edition [p 1670-1682]
2. Holub. Robert C. Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction [London and N.Y.:
Methuen, 1984]

Please refer to any glossary [ M.H. Abrams or the Bedford Glossary] for Phenomenology and
to L.Tyson on critical theory for Reader-response criticism.

You may of course refer to any other critical material.

All best wishes.
Rangana Banerji