Prospecting : from reader response to literary anthropology
- Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993
- ix, 316 p. ; ill., 23 cm
Includes indexes.
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.
9780801845932
Literature Criticism Dada/Dadaism Carnivalization Doubling Fantasy Fiction Gestalt theory Illusion Imagery Marxist mirror-reflection theory Metaphor Pastoral poetry Psychoanalysis Schemata Reader response Toppling effect