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.