Stepping Forward

Stepping Forward: Essays, Lectures and Interviews

New, unpublished pieces by Wolfgang Iser on reader theory; the novel Tom Jones; fictionalizing; and cultural studies, among others.

Wolfgang Iser is a leading exponent of 'reception theory'. Wolfgang Iser's books include The Implied Reader (1974), The Act of Reading (1978), Prospecting (1989) and The Fictive and the Imaginary (1993). He has written books on Laurence Sterne (1988) and Walter Pater (1987). He is Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Constance in Germany.

EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER ONE

If a literary text does something to its readers, it also simultaneously tells us something about them. Thus literature turns into a divining rod, locating our dispositions, inclinations, and eventually our overall makeup. The question arises as to why we may need this particular medium, in view of the fact that literature as a medium is put on a par with other media, and the ever-increasing role that these play in our civilization shows the degree to which literature has lost its significance as the epitome of culture. The more comprehensively a medium fulfils its sociocultural function, the more it is taken for granted, as literature once used to be. It did indeed fulfil several such functions, ranging from entertainment through information and documentation to pastime, but these have now been distributed among many independent institutions that not only compete fiercely with literature but also deprive it of its formerly all-encompassing function. Does literature still have anything to offer that the competing media are unable to provide?