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TH E READING PROCESS: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL APPROACH
Wolfgang her

he phenomenological theory of art lays full stress on the idea that, in considering a literary work, one must take into account not only the actual text but also, and in equal measure, the acd^jisjnvolyecLin responding to that text. Thu s Roman Ingarde n confronts the structure oTTrielitefary text with the ways in which it can be konkretisiert (realized).1 Th e text as such offers different "schematised views"2 throug h which the subject matter of the work can come to light, but the actual bringing to fight is an action of Konkretisation. If this is so, then the literary work-has, jtwo poles^-sghidi-Me..might call the artistic,amLth¸..esthetic: the artistic refers to the text created by the authqr^andjhe^esthetic to the realization i this polarity it follows that the literary work cannot be completely identical with the text, or with the realization of the text, but in fact must lie halfway between the two. Th e work is more than the text, for the text only takes on life when it is realized, and furthermore the realization is by no means independent of the individual disposition of the reader--though this in tur n is acted upon by the different patterns of the text. Th e convergence of text and reader brings the literary work into existence, and this convergence can never be pre cisely pinpointed, but must always remain virtual, as it is not to be identified either with the reality of the text or with the individual disposition of the reader. It is the virtuality of the work that gives rise to its dynamic nature , and this in tur n is the precondition for the effects that the work calls
Reprinted from Wolfgang Iser, The Implied Reader: Patterns in Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974), pp . 274-94. 50

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forth. As the reade r uses the various perspectives offered him by the text in orde r to relate the patterns and the "schematised views" to one another, he sets the work in motion, and this very process results ultimately in the awakening of responses within himself. Thus , reading causes the literary workjxrunfjald it&inherently dynamk.C-haracLex.-That this is no new discovery is apparen t from references made even in the early days of the novel. Laurence Sterne remarks in Tristram Shandy: "no author, who understands the jus t boundaries of decorum and good breeding, would presume to think all: Th e truest respect which you can pay to the reader's understanding, is to halve thi^i matter amicably, and leave him something to imagine, in his turn , as well as yourself. For my own part, I am eternally paying him compliments of this kind, and do all that lies in my power to keep his imagination as busy as my own."3 Sterne's conception of a literary text is that it is something like an arena_ in which reade r and author participate in a game of the imagination. If ] the reader were given the whole story, and ther e were nothing left for/ him to do, then his imagination would never ente r the field, the resultj would be the boredom which inevitably arises when everything is laid out! cut and dried before us. A literary text must therefore be conceived in/ oe us. A literary text must therefore be conceived in/ such a way that it will engage the reader's imagination i n the task of such a way that it will engage the reader's imagint i ih -*"¸"- " I C icauer s imaginatio working things out for himself for reading jsonjy a l n in the htask of working things out for himself, for reading js_anly_a.pleasure when it is artiye and creative ...In this process of creativity, the text may either not go far enough, or may go too far, so we may say that boredom and overstrain form the boundaries beyond which the reader will leave the field of play. Th e extent to which the "unwritten" part of a text stimulates the reader's creative participation is brought out by an observation of Virginia Woolf s in he r study of Jane Austen: Jane Austen is thus a mistress of much deeper emotion than appears upon the surface. She stimulates us to supply what is not there. What she offers is, apparently, a trifle, yet is composed of something that expands in the reader's mind and endows with the most enduring form of life scenes which are outwardly trivial. Always the stress is laid upon character... . The turns and twists of the dialogue keep us on the tenterhooks of suspense. Our attention is half upon the present moment, half upon the future.. .. Here, indeed, in this unfinished and in the main inferior story, are all the elements of Jane Austen's greatness.4 Th e unwritten aspects of apparently trivial scenes and the unspoken dialogue within the "turn s and twists" not only draw the reade r into the 5 action but also lead him to shade in the many outlines suggested by the giv- . > en situations, so that these take on a reality of their own. But as the reader's imagination animates these "outlines," they in turn will influence the effect of the written part of the text. Thus begins a whole dynamic process: the written text imposes certain limits on its unwritten implica

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in orde r to prevent these from at the same time these implications, \ tion, set the given situation against v far^greater significance than it migh In this way, trivial scenes suddenly form of life." What constitutes this plained in the text, although in fact tion between text and reader.

becoming too blurred and hazy, bu t worked out by the reader's imaginaa background which endows it with t have seemed to possess on its own. take on the shape of an "endurin g form is never named, let alone exit is the end product of the interac-

II Th e question now arises as to how far such a process can be adequately described. For this purpose a phenomenological analysis recommends itself, especially since the somewhat sparse observations hitherto made of the psychology of reading tend mainly to be psychoanalytical, and so are restricted to the illustration of predetermined ideas concerning the unconscious. We shall, however, take a closer look later at some worthwhile psychological observations. As a starting point for a phenomenological analysis we might examine the way in which sequent sentences act upo n one another. This is of especial importance in literary texts in view of the fact that they do not correspond to any objective reality outside themselves. Th e world presented by literary texts is constructed out of what Ingarde n has called intentionale Satzkorrelate (intentional sentence correlatives): Sentences link up in different ways to form more complex units of meaning that reveal a very varied structure giving rise to such entities as a short story, a novel, a dialogue, a drama, a scientific theory.... In the final analysis, there arises a particular world, with component parts determined in this way or that, and with all the variations that may occur within these parts--all this as a purely intentional correlative of a complex of sentences. If this complex finally forms a literary work, I call the whole sum of sequent intentional sentence correlatives the "world presented" in the work.5 This world, however, does not pass before the reader's eyes like a film. Th e sentences are "component parts" insofar as they make statements, claims, or observations, or convey information, and so establish various perspectives in the text. But they remain only "component parts"--they are not the sum total of the text itself. For the intentional correlatives disclose subtle connections which individually ar e less concrete tha n the statements, claims, and observations, even though these only take on their real meaningfulness throug h the interaction of their correlatives. How is one to conceive the connection between the correlatives? It marks those points at which the reade r is able to "climb aboard" the text.

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He has to accept certain given perspectives, but in doing so he inevitably causes them to interact. When Ingarde n speaks of intentional sentence correlatives in literature, the statements made or information conveyed in the sentence is already in a certain sense qualified: the· sentence^does not consist solely of a staternent--which, after all, would be absurd, as one can only make statements about things that exist--but aims at something beyond what it actually says. This is tru e of all sentences in literary works, and it is through the interaction of these sentences that their common aim is fulfilled. This is what gives them their own special quality in literary texts. In their capacity as statements, observations, purveyors of information, etc., they ar e always indications of something that is to come, the structure of which is foreshadowed by their specific content. They set inmotio n a process .out of which emerges the actual content of the text itself. In describing man's inne r consciousness of time, Husserl once remarked : "Every originally constructive process is inspired by pre-intentions, which construct and collect the seed of what is to come, as such, and bring it to fruition."6 For this bringing to fruition, the literary text needs the reader's imagination, which gives shape to the interaction of correlatives foreshadowed in structure by the sequence of the sentences. Husserl's observation draws our attention to a point that plays a not insignificant part in the process of reading. Th e individual sentences ] not only work together to shade in what is to come; they also form an f / expectation in this regard. Husserl calls this expectation "pre-intentions." * As this structure is characteristic of all sentence correlatives, the interac- \ tion of these correlatives will not be a fulfillment of the expectation so^j much as a continual modification of it. For this reason, expectations are scarcely ever fulfilled in truly literary texts. If they were, then such texts would be confined to the individualization of a given expectation, and one would inevitably ask what such an intention was supposed to achieve. Strangely enough, we__feelAt that any confirmative effect--such as we implicitly demand of expository ,, , texts, as_w.e refer to the objects they are meant to present--is a defect in a ^Jbrt'" literary text^o r the more a text individualizes or confirms an expecta/ ev / , ? tion it has initially aroused, th e more aware we become of its didactic purpose, so that at best we can only accept or reject the thesis forced ~ . upon us. More often than not, the verv_clarity of such texts will _^ " / want to free ourselves from their clutches. But generally the sentence "correlatives of literary texts do not develop in this rigid way, for the expectations they evoke ten d to encroach on on e anothe r in such a manner tha t they are continually modified as one reads. One might simplify by saying that each intentional sentence correlative opens up a particular horizon, which is modified, if not completely changed, by succeeding sentences. While these expectations arouse interest in what is
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to come, the subsequent modification of them will also have a retrospective effect on what has already been read. This may now take on a dif\ ferent significance from that which it had at the moment of reading. Whatever we have read sinks into our memory and is foreshortened. It may later be evoked again and set against a different background with the result that the reader is enabled to develop hitherto unforeseeable connections. Th e memory evoked, however, can never reassume its original shape, for this would mean that memory and perception were identical, which is manifestly not so. Th e new background brings to light new aspects of what we had committed to memory; conversely these, in turn , shed their light on the new background, thus arousing more complex anticipations. Thus , the reader , in establishing these inter-relations be- ^ tween past, present, and future, actually causes the text to reveal its potential multiplicity of connections. These connections are the product of the reader's mind working on the raw material of the text, though they are not the text itself--for this consists jus t of sentences, statements, j information, etc. This is why the reader often feels involved in events which, at the time of reading, seem real to him, even though in fact they are very far from his own reality. Th e fact that completely different readers can be differently affected by the "reality" of a particular text is ample evidence of the degree to which literary texts transform reading into a creative process that is far above mere perception of what is written. Th e literary text activates ou r own faculties, enabling us to recreate the world it presents. Th e product of this creative activity is what we might call the virtual dimension of the text, which endows it with its reality.JTbis_virtual jjieJxxluJts^^ As we have seen, the activity of reading can be characterized as a sort of kaleidoscope of perspectives, preintentions, recollections. Every sentence contains a preview of the next and forms a kind of viewfinder for what is to come; and this in tur n changes the "preview" and so becomes a "viewfinder" for what has been read. This whole process represents the fulfillment of the potential, unexpressed reality of the text, but it is to be seen only as a framework for a great variety of means by which the virtual dimension may be brough t into being. Th e process of anticipation and retrospection itself does not by any means develop in a smooth flow. Ingarde n has already drawn attention to this fact and ascribes a quite remarkable significance to it: Once we are immersed in the flow of Satzdenken (sentence-thought), we are ready, after completing the thought of one sentence, to think out the "continuation," also in the form of a sentence--and that is, in the form of a sentence that connects up with the sentence we have just thought through.

In this way the process of reading goes effortlessly forward. But if by chance the following sentence has no tangible connection whatever with the sentence we have just thought through, there then comes a blockage in the stream of thought. This hiatus is linked with a more or less active surprise, or with indignation. This blockage must be overcome if the reading is to flow once more.7 Th e hiatus that blocks the flow of sentences is, in Ingarden's eyes, the product of chance, and is to be regarded as a flaw; this is typical of his adherence to the classical idea of art. If one regards the sentence sequence as a continual flow, this implies that the anticipation aroused by one sentence will generally be realized by the next, and the frustration of one's expectations will arouse feelings of exasperation. And yet literary texts are full of unexpected twists and turns, and frustration of expectations. Even in the simplest story there is bound to be some kind of blockage, if only because no tale can ever be told in its entirety. Indeed, it is only throug h inevitable omissions that a story gains its dynamism. Thu s whenever the flow is interrupte d and we are led off in unexpected directions, the opportunity is given to us to bring into play ou r own faculty for establishing connections--for filling in the gaps left by the text itself.8 These gaps have a different effect on the process of anticipation and retrospection, and thus on the "gestalt" of the virtual dimension, for they may be filled in different ways. For this reason, one text is potentially capable of several different realizations, and no reading can ever exhaust the full potential, for each individual reade r will fill in the gaps in his own way, thereby excluding the various other possibilities; as he reads, he will make his own decision as to how the gap is to be filled. In this very act the dynamics of reading are revealed. By making his decision he implicitly acknowledges the inexhaustibility of the text; at the same time it is this very inexhaustibility that forces him to make his decision. With "traditional" texts this process was more or less unconscious, but modern texts frequently exploit it quite deliberately. They are often so fragmentary that one's attention is almost exclusively occupied with the search for connections between the fragments; the object of this is not to complicate the "spectrum" of connections, so much as to make us aware of the nature of ou r own capacity for providing links. In such cases, the text refers back directly to ou r own preconceptions-- which are revealed by the act of interpretation that is a basic element of the reading process. With all literary texts, then, we may say that the reading process is selective, and the potential text is infinitely richer than any of its individual realizations. This is borne out by the fact that a second reading of a piece of literature often produces a different impression from the first. Th e reasons for this may lie in the reader's own


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change of circumstances, still; the text must be such as to allow this variation. On a second reading familiar occurrences now tend to appear in a new light and seem to be at times corrected, at times enriched. In every text there is a potential time sequence which the reade r must inevitably realize, as it is impossible to absorb even a short text in a single moment. Thu s the reading process always involves viewing the text throug h a perspective that is continually on the move, linking up the different phases, and so constructing what we have called the virtual Thi dimension, of varies th e we e reading L dimension.whens we have finishecourse,text, anall reaedtimagain,arclearly our. However, d the d it extra knowledge will result in a different time sequence; we shall tend to establish connections by referring to our awareness of what is to come, and so certain aspects of the text will assume a significance we did not attach to them on a first reading, while others will recede into the background. It is a common enough experience for a person to say that on a second reading he noticed things he had missed when he read the book for th e first time, bu t this is scarcely surprising in view of the fact that the second time he is looking at the text from a different perspective. Th e time sequence that he realized on his first reading cannot possibly be repeated on a second reading, and this unrepeatability is bound to result in modifications of his reading experience. This is not to say that the second reading is "truer " than the first--they are, quite simply, different: the reader establishes the virtual dimension of the text by realizing a new time sequence. Thu s even on repeated viewings a text allows and, indeed, induces innovative reading. In whatever way, and unde r whatever circumstances the reader may link the different phases of the text together, it will always be the process lu T~of anticipation an d retrospection tha t leads to the formation of the v_4 virtual dimension, which in tur n transforms the text into an experience for the reader. Th e way in which this experience comes about throug h a process of continual modification is closely akin to the way in which we gather experience in life. Andj;lrusJ*ie^raih^ ^ ence can illuminate We have the experience of a world, not understood as a system of relations which wholly determine each event, but as an open totality the synthesis of which is inexhaustible.... From the moment that experience--that is, the opening on to our de facto world--is recognized as the beginning of knowledge, there is no longer any way of distinguishing a level of a priori truths and one of factual ones, what the world must necessarily be and what it actually is.9 · Th e manne r in which the reade r experiences the text will reflect his own disposition, and in this respect the literary text acts as a kind of mirror; but at the same time, the reality which this process helps to create is one

that will be different from his own (since, normally, we tend to be bored by texts that present us with things we already know perfectly well ourselves). Thu s we have the apparently paradoxical situation in which the reade r is forced to reveal aspects of himself in order to experience a reality which is different from his own. Th e impact this reality makes on him will depend largely on the extent to which he himself actively provides the unwritten part of the text, and yet in supplying all the missing links, he must think in terms of experiences different from his own; indeed, it is only by leaving behind the familiar world of his own experience that the reade r can truly participate in the adventure the literary text offers him. Il l We have seen that, durin g the process of reading, ther e is an active interweaving of anticipation and retrospection, which on a second reading may tur n into a kind ofjidvance retrosgectipn. Th e impressions that arise as a result of this process will vary from individual to individual, but only within the limits imposed by the written as opposed to th e unwritten text. In the same way, two people gazing at the night sky may both be looking at the same collection of stars, but one will see the image of a plough, and the other will make out a dipper. Th e "stars" in a literary text are fixed; the lines that joi n them are variable. Th e autho r of the text may, of course, exert plenty of influence on the reader's imagination--he has the whole panoply of narrative techniques at his disposal--but no author worth his salt will ever attempt to set the whole picture before his reader's eyes. If he does, he will very quickly lose his reader, for it is only by activating the reader's imagination that the author can hope to involve him and so realize the intentions of his text. Gilbert Ryle, in his analysis of imagination, asks: "How can a person fancy that he sees something, without realizing tha t he is not seeing it?" He answers as follows: Seeing Helvellyn [the name of a mountain] in one's mind's eye does not entail, what seeing Helvellyn and seeing snapshots of Helvellyn entail, the having of visual sensations. It does involve the thought of having a view of Helvellyn and it is therefore a more sophisticated operation than that of having a view of Helvellyn. It is one utilization among others of the knowledge of how Helvellyn should look, or, in one sense of the verb, it is thinking how it should look.'The expectations which are fulfilled in the recognition at sight of Helvellyn are not indeed fulfilled in picturing it, but the picturing of it is something like a rehearsal of getting them fulfilled.jSo far from picturing involving the having of faint sensations, or wraiths of sensations, it involves missing just what one would be due to get, if one were seeing the mountain.10


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If one sees the mountain, then of course one can no longer imagine it, and so th e act of picturing the mountain presupposes its absence. Similarly, with a literary text we can only picture things which are not there; th e written par t of th e text gives us the knowledge, but it is the unwritten part that gives us the opportunity to picture things; indeed without the elements of indeterminacy, the gaps in the texts, we should not be able to use our imagination.11 Th e trut h of this observation is borne out by the experience many people have on seeing, for instance, the film of a novel. While reading Tom Jones, they may never have had a clear conception of what the hero actually looks like, but on seeing the film, some may say, "That's not how I imagined him." Th e point her e is that the reade r of Tom Jones is able to visualize the hero virtually for himself, and so his imagination senses the vast numbe r of possibilities; th e moment these possibilities are narrowed down to one complete and immutable picture, the imagination is put out of action, and we feel we have somehow been cheated. This may perhaps be an oversimplification of the process, but it does illustrate plainly the vital richness of potential that arises out of the fact that the hero in the novel must be pictured and cannot be seen.JWith the novel the reader must use his imaginattiQn_tQJY^thesize the information given him^and so Kjs~perceptioji j.ssimultaneously_rich¸r and more private; with the^JIlrn, Keisconfine d merelyjtojDhysical perception, and so whateygr_h¸_r¸members_of the world he had picturecHsbrutally cancelled out.

IV Th e "picturing" that is don e by ou r imagination is only one of the activities throug h which we form the "gestalt" of a literary text. We have already discussed th e process of anticipation and retrospection, and to this w e must add the process c ^ gigt ^ form thje consjsjtejicytbatth^ je~"continually modified, and images continually expanded, the reade r will still strive, even if unconsciously, to fit everything together in a consistent pattern. "In the reading of images, as in the hearing of speech, it is always hard to distinguish what is given to us from what we supplement in the process of projection which is triggered off by recognition . .. it is th e guess of the beholder that tests the medley of forms and colours for coherent meaning, crystallizing it into shape when a consistent interpretation has been found."12 By grouping together the written parts of the text, we enable them to interact, we observe th e direction in which they are leading us, and we project onto them the consistency which we, as readers, require. This "gestalt" must inevitably be colored by ou r own characteristic selection

process. For it is not given by the text itself; it arises from the meeting between the written text and the individual mind of the reade r with its own particular history of experience, its own consciousness, its own look. Th e "gestalt" is not the tru e me^rjjjjg^QLjhe^text; at best it is configurative meaning; "comprehension is an individual act of seeing- 21 things-together, and only that."13 With a literary text such comprehen- J sion is inseparable from the reader's expectations, and where we have expectations, there too we have one of the most potent weapons in the writer's armory--illusion. Whenever "consistent reading suggests itself.. . illusion takes over."14 Illusion, says Northro p Frye, is "fixed or definable, and reality is best understood as its negation."15 Th e "gestalt" of a text normally takes on (or, rather, is given) this fixed or definable outline, as this is essential to ou r own understanding, but on the other hand, if reading were to ; an uninterrupte d building up of illusions, it would __... ,, .,,..1^*»¸^111¸^[^1. int o conjtactwith realitv^jtjwould wean u^Jiw^yj^rriLrealities^ Of course, / ther e is an element of "escapism" in all literature, resulting from this very creation of illusion, but ther e are some texts which offer nothing ( but a harmonious world, purified of all contradiction and deliberately excluding anything that might disturb the illusion once established, and these are the texts that we generally do not like to classify as literary. \ Women's magazines and the brasher forms of the detective story might \ cited as examples. However, even if an overdose of illusion may lead to triviality, this does not mean that the process of illusion-building should ideally be dispensed with altogether. On the contrary, even in texts that appear to resist the formation of illusion, thus drawing ou r attention to the cause of this resistance, we still need the abiding illusion that the resistance itself is the consistent pattern underlying the text. This is especially true of modern texts, in which it is the very precision of the written details which increases the proportion of indeterminacy; one detail appears to contradict another, and so simultaneously stimulates and frustrates ou r desire to "picture," thus continually causing our imposed "gestalt" of the text to disintegrate. WJjjh¸^l_lh?-fr>rmat'Qn of ^llvlsjlfi^.th¸^JJl^fmjjjJr world of the text would remain unfamiliar; through the illusions, the / experience offered by the text becomes accessible to us, for it is only the x Tnti^^^onjit s different levels of consistency,, that makes the experience "rejadable/' If we cannot find (or impose) this consistency, sooner or later we will put the text down. Th e process is virtually hermeneutic. Th e text provokes certain expectations which in tur n we project onto the text in such a way that we reduce the polysemantic possibilities to a single interpretation in keeping with the expectations aroused, thus extracting an individual, configurative meaning. Th e polysemantic natur e of the text

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and the illusion-making of the reade r are opposed factors. If the illusion were complete, the polysemantic natur e would vanish; if the polysemantic nature were all-powerful, the illusion would be totally destroyed. , Both extremes are conceivable, but in the individual literary text we I always find some form of balance between the two conflicting tenden-1 cies. Th e formation of illusions, therefore, can never be total, but it is/ this very incompleteness that in fact gives it its productive value. I With regard to the experience of reading, Walter Pater once observed: "For to the grave reader words too are grave; and the ornamental word, the figure, the accessory form or colour or reference, is rarely content to die to thought precisely at the right moment, but will inevitably linger awhile, stirring a long 'brainwave' behind it of perhaps quite alien associations."16 Even while the reade r is seeking a consistent pattern in the text, he is also uncovering other impulses which cannot be immediately integrated or will even resist final integration. Thu s the semantic possibilities of the text will always remain far richer than any configurative meaning formed while reading. But this impression is, of course, only to be gained through reading the text. Thu s the configurative meaning can be nothing but a pars pro toto fulfillment of the text, and yet this fulfillment gives rise to the very richness which it seeks to restrict, and indeed in some modern texts, ou r awareness of this richness takes precedence over any configurative meaning. This fact has several consequences which, for the purpose of analysis, may be dealt with separately, though in the reading process they will all be working together. As we have seen, a consistent, configurative meaning is essential for the apprehension of an unfamiliar experience, which through the process of illusion-building we can incorporate in our own imaginative world. At the same time, this consistency^ conflicts with the many other possibilities of fulfillment it seeks to \ exclude, with the result that the configurative meaning is always accom- j panied by "alien associations" that do not fit in with the illusions formed,J { Th e first consequence, then, is the fact that in forming our illusions, we! i also produce at the same time a latent disturbance of these illusions.! Strangely enough, this also applies to texts in which our expectations are actually fulfilled--.though one would have thought that the fulfillment of expectations would help to complete the illusion. "Illusion wears off once the expectation is stepped up ; we take it for granted and want more. Th e experiments Art and Illusion make aware of the fact that not, strictly speaking, in gestalt psychology referred to by Gombrich in one thing clear: "though we may be intellectually any given experience must be an illusion, we canwatch ourselves having an illusion."18 Now, if illu-

sion were not a transitory state, this would mean that we could be, as it were, permanently caught up in it. And if reading were exclusively a matter of producing illusion--necessary though this is for the under ^standing of an unfamiliar experignce^jve'should ru n the risk of falling victim to a gross deception. But it is precisely durin g our reading that the transitory natur e of the illusion is revealed to the full. ' As the formation of illusions inconstantly accompanied asso¸Jatio,ns!Lj^lii¸li cannoTbeL mad^jco^peTJFl^TT E readj^TJ^SStaj^Jiai-toJij^ of the text. Since it is he who builds the illusions, he oscillates between involvement in and observation of those illusions; he opens himself to the unfamuTaF world withoufbeingTm^ris^n^TrTit! Throug h this process the reade r moves into the presence of the fictional world and so experiences the realities of the text as they happen. In the oscillation between consistency and "alien associations," tween involvement in and observation of the illusion, the reader is / bound to conduct his own balancing operation, and it is this that forms jthe_estheUc experience. offerexL_b_y_the literary texfa However, if thej reader were to achieve a balance, obviously he would then no longer be engaged in the process of establishing and disrupting consistency. And since it is this very process tha t gives rise to the balancing operation, we may say that the inherent nonachievement of balance is a prerequisite for the very dynamism of the operation. In seeking the balance we inevitably have to start out with certain expectations, the shattering of which is integral to the esthetic experience. Furthermore, to say merely that "our expectations are satisfied" is to be guilty of another serious ambiguity. At first sight such a statement seems to deny the obvious fact that much of our enjoyment is derived from surprises, from betrayals of our expectations. The solution to this paradox is to find some ground for a distinction between "surprise" and "frustration." Roughly, the distinction can be made in terms of the effects which the two kinds of experiences have upon us. Frustration blocks or checks activity. It necessitates new orientation for our activity, if we are to escape the ml de sac. Consequently, we abandon the frustrating object and return to blind impulse activity. On the other hand, surprise merely causes a temporary cessation of the exploratory phase of the experience, and a recourse to intense contemplation and scrutiny. In the latter phase the surprising elements are seen in their connection with what has gone before, with the whole drift of the experience, and the enjoyment of these values is then extremely intense. Finally, it appears that there must always be some degree of novelty or surprise in all these values if there is to be a progressive specification of the direction of the total act.. . and any aesthetic experience tends to exhibit a continuous interplay between "deductive" and "inductive" operations.19 It is this interplay between "deduction" and "induction" that gives rise to the configurative meaning of the text, and not the individual


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expectations, surprises, or frustrations arising from the different perspectives. Since this interplay obviously does not take place in the text itself, but can only come into being throug h the process of reading, we may conclude that this process formulates something that is unformulated in the text and yet represents its "intention." Thus , by reading we uncover the unformulated par t of the text, and this very indeterminacy is the force that drives us to work out a configurative meaning while at the same time giving us the necessary degree of freedom to do so. As we work out a consistent pattern in the text, we will find our "interpretation" threatened, as it were, by th e presence of other possibilities of "interpretation," and so there arise new areas of indeterminacy (though we may only be dimly aware of them, if at all, as we are continually making "decisions" which will exclude them). In th e course of a novel, for instance, we sometimes find that characters, events, and backgrounds seem to change their significance; what really happens is that the other "possibilities" begin to emerge more strongly, so that we become more directly aware of them. Indeed, it is this very shifting of perspectives that makes us feel that a novel is much more "true-to-life." Since it is we ourselves who establish the levels of interpretation and switch from one to another as we conduct ou r balancing operation, we ourselves impart to the text th e dynamic lifelikeness which, in turn , \ enables us to absorb an unfamiliar experience into our personal world. As we read, we oscillate to a greater or lesser degree between the * building and th e breaking of illusions. In a process of trial and error , we organize and reorganize th e various data offered us by th e text. These are the given factors, the fixed points on which we base ou r "interpretation," trying to fit them together in the way we think the author meant them to be fitted. "For to perceive, a beholder must create his own experience. And his creation must include relations comparable to those which the original producer underwent. They are not the same in any literal sense. But with the perceiver, as with th e artist, ther e must be an ordering of the elements of th e whole that is in form, although not in details, the same as the process of organization the creator of the work consciously experienced. Without an act of recreation the object is not perceived as a work of art."20 Th e act of recreation is not a smooth or continuous process, but one whicTiT^nTti^^Sencesrelies on interruptions of the flow to rende r it efficacious. We look forward, we look back, we decide, we change our decisions, we form expectations, we are shocked by their nonfulfillment, we question, we muse, we accept, we reject; this is the dynamic process of recreation. This process is steered by two main structural components within the text: first, a repertomTot tamihaFliterary pattemsjamrTecxirren t literary themes,~togetrTer with allusions to Familiar social and historical contexts; second, techniques or strategies used to set the familiar

against the unfamiliar. Elements of the repertoire are continually backgrm!n7ie7n5Fiofe^Founded with a resultant strategic over magnification, trivialization, or even annihilation of the allusion. This defamiliarization ofjdiai-th^j^a^exlhxju^hxhe^r^TOgnized is^b^und_to_cxeate^^tension^ that will intensify his expectations as well as his distrust of those expectations. Similarly, we may be confronted by narrative techniques that establish links between things we find difficult to connect, so that we are forced to reconsider data we at first held to be perfectly straightforward. One need only mention the very simple trick, so often employed by novelists, whereby the autho r himself takes par t in the narrative, thus establishing perspectives which would not have arisen out of th e mere narration of the events described. Wayne Booth once called this the technique of the "unreliable narrator,"21 to show the extent to which a literary device can counter expectations arising out of the literary text. Th e figure of the narrato r may act in permanen t opposition to the impressions we might otherwise form. Th e question then arises as to whether this strategy, opposing the formation of illusions, may be integrated into a consistent pattern, lying, as it were, a level deeper than ou r original impressions. We may find that our narrator, by opposing us, in fact turn s us against him and thereby strengthens the illusion he appears to be out to destroy; alternatively, we may be so much in doubt that we , begin to question all the processes that lead us to make interpretative decisions. Whatever the cause may be, we will find ourselves subjected to this same interplay of illusion-forming and illusion-breaking that makes f . reading essentially a recreative process. J We might take, as a simple illustration of this complex process, the incident in Joyce's Ulysses in which Bloom's cigar alludes to Ulysses's spear. Th e context (Bloom's cigar) summons up a particular element of the repertoire (Ulysses's spear); the narrative technique relates them to one another as if they were identical. How are we to "organize" these divergent elements, which, throug h the very fact that they ar e pu t together, separate one element so clearly from the other? What are the prospects here for a consistent pattern? We might say that it is ironic--at least that is how many renowned Joyce readers have understood it.22 In this case, irony would be the form of organization that integrates the material. But if this is so, what is th e object of th e irony? Ulysses's spear, or Bloom's cigar? Th e uncertainty surrounding this simple question already puts a strain on the consistency we have established and, indeed, begins to puncture it, especially when Qther problems make themselves felt as regards the remarkable conjunction of spear and cigar. Various alternatives come to mind, but the variety alone is sufficient to leave one with the impression that the consistent pattern has been shattered. And even if, after all, one can still believe that irony holds the key to the mystery, this irony must be of a very strange nature ; for the formulated


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Ph.

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text does not merely mean the opposite of what has been formulated. It may even mean something that cannot be formulated at all. Th e moment we try to impose a consistent pattern on the text, discrepancies are bound to arise. These are, as it were, the reverse side of the interpretative coin, an involuntary product of the process that creates discrepancies by trying to avoid them. And it is their very presence that draws us into the text, compelling us to conduct a creative examination not only of the text but also of ourselves. This entanglement of the reade r is, of course, vital to any kind of text, but in the literary text we have the strange situation that the reader cannot know what his participation actually entails. We know that we share in certain experiences, but we do not know what happens to us in the course of this process. This is why, when we have been particularly impressed by a book, we feel the need to talk about it; we do not want to get away from it by talking about it--we simply want to understand more clearly what it is in which we have been entangled. We have undergone an experience, and now we want to know consciously what we have experienced. Perhaps this is the prime usefulness of literary criticism--it helps to make conscious those aspects of the text which would otherwise remain concealed in the subconscious; it satisfies (or helps to satisfy) our desire to talk about what we have read. \- ' ll7 n Th e efficacy of a literarvtex t is brough t aboutb y the evocation and subsequent negation of the familiar. What at first seemed to be an affirmation of our assumptions leads to ou r own rejection of them, thus tending to prepar e us for a re-orientation. And it is only when we have outstripped ou r preconceptions and left the shelter of the familiar that we are in a position to gather new experiences. As the literary text involves the reade r in the formation of illusion and the simultaneous formation of the means whereby the illusion is punctured, reading reflects the process by which we gain experience. Once the reade r is entangled, his own preconceptions are continually overtaken, so that the text becomes his "present " while his own ideas fade into the ) "past"; as soon as this happens he is open to the immediate experience of thejDexj^ which was impossible so long as his preconceptions were his "present."



Any "living event" must, to a greater or lesser degree, remain open. In reading, this obliges the reade r to seek continually for consistency, because only then can he close up situations and comprehend the unfamiliar. But consistency-building is itself a living process in which one is constantly forced to make selective decisions--and these decisions in their tur n give a reality to the possibilities which they exclude, insofar as they may take effect as a latent disturbance of the consistency established. This is what causes the reade r to be entangled in the text-"gestalt" that he himself has produced. Throug h this entanglement the reader is bound to open himself up to the workings of the text and so leave behind his own preconceptions. This gives him the chance to have an experience in the way George Bernard Shaw once described it: "You have learnt something. Tha t f ways feels at first as if you had lost something."23 Reading reflects the structure of experience to the extent that we must suspend the ideas and attitudes that shape our own personality before we can experience the unfamiliar world of the literary text. But durin g this process, something happens to us. This "something" needs to be looked at in detail, especially as the incorporation of the unfamiliar into our own range of experience has been to a certain extent obscured by an idea very common in literary discussion: namely, that the process of absorbing the unfamiliar is labeled as the identification of the reader with what he reads. Often the term "identification" is used as if it were an explanation, whereas in actual fact it is nothing more tha n a description. What is normally meant by "identification" is the establishment of affinities between oneself and someone outside oneself--a familiar groun d on which we are able to experience the unfamiliar. Th e author's aim, though, is to convey the experience and, above all, an attitude toward that experience. -"~ sequently, "identification" is not an end in itself, but a strategem by I means of which the author stimulates attitudes in the reader. This of course is not to deny that there does arise a form of participation as one reads; one is certainly drawn into the text in such a way that one has the feeling that ther e is no distance between oneself and the events described. This involvement is well summed up by the reaction of a critic to reading Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre: "We took up Jane Eyre one winter's evening, somewhat piqued at the extravagant commendations we had heard, and sternly resolved to be as critical as Croker. But as we read on we forgot both commendations and criticism, identified ourselves with Jan e in all he r troubles, and finally married Mr. Rochester about four in the morning." 2 4 Th e question is how and why did the critic A identify himself with Jane?

jt

In our analysis of important aspects tha and text: the process unfolding of the text lifelikeness.

the reading process so far, we have observed three t form the basis of the relationship between reader of anticipation and retrospection, the consequent as a living event, and the resultant impression of


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In orde r to understand this "experience," it is well worth considering Georges Poulet's observations on the reading process. He says that books only take on their full existence in the reader.25 It is tru e that they consist of ideas thought out by someone else, but in reading the reader becomes the subject that does the thinking. Thu s there disappears the subject-object division that otherwise is a prerequisite for all knowledge and all observation, and the removal of this division puts reading in an apparently unique position as regards the possible absorption of new experiences. This may well be the reason why relations with the world of the literary text have so often been misinterpreted as identification. From the idea tha t in reading we must think the thoughts of someone else, Poulet draws the following conclusion: "Whatever I think is a part of my mental world. And yet here I am thinking a thought which manifestly belongs to another mental world, which is being thought in me jus t as though I did not exist. Already the notion is inconceivable and seems even more so if I reflect that, since every thought must have a subject to think it, this thought which is alien to me and yet in me, must also have in me a subject which is alien to me... . Whenever I read, I mentally pronounce an /, and yet the / which I pronounce is not myself."26 But for Poulet this idea is only par t of the story. Th e strange subject that thinks the strange thought in the reader indicates the potential presence of the author, whose ideas can be "internalized" by the reader: "Such is the characteristic condition of every work which I summon back into existence by placing my consciousness at its disposal. I give it not only existence, but awareness of existence."27 This would mean that consciousness forms the point at which author and reader converge, and at the same time it would result in the cessation of the temporary selfalienation that occurs to the reader when his consciousness brings to life the ideas formulated by the author. This process gives rise to a form of communication which, however, according to Poulet, is dependen t on · two conditions: the life-story of the author must be shut out of the work and the individual dispositionafth e reader must be shut out of the act of_ of the author take place subjectively in the reader, who thinks what he is not. It follows that the work itself must be thought of as a consciousness, because only in this way is there an adequate basis for the author-reader relationship--a relationship that can only come about through the negation of the author's own life-story and the reader's own disposition. This conclusion is actually drawn by Poulet when he describes the work as the self-presentation or materialization of consciousness: "And so I ought not to hesitate to recognize that so long as it is animated by this vital inbreathing inspired by the act of reading, a work of literature becomes (at the expense of the reader whose own life it suspends) a sort of human being, that it is a mind

conscious of itself and constituting itself in me as the subject of its own objects."28 Even though it is difficult to follow such a substantialist conception of the consciousness that constitutes itself in the literary work, there are, nevertheless, certain points in Poulet's argument that are Worth holding onto . But they should be developed along somewhat different lines. If reading^removes the subjgct=objert division_that constitutes all perception, it follows that the reader will be "occupied" by the thoughts oTthelmthor , and these in their tur n will cause the drawing of new "boundaries." Text and reade r no longer confront each other as object and subject, bu t instead th e "division" takes place within the reader himself. In thinking the thoughts of another, his own individuality temporarily recedes into the background, since it is supplanted by these alien thoughts, which now become the theme on which his attention is focussed. As we read, there occurs an artificial division of ou r personality, because we take as a theme for ourselves something that we are not. Consequently when reading we operate on different levels. For although we may be thinking the thoughts of someone else, what we are will not disappear completely--it will merely remain a more or less powerful virtual force. Thus , in reading there are these two levebr=the alien "me" '--which are never completely cut off from each other. Indeed , we can only make someone else's thoughts into an absorbing theme for ourselves, provided the virtual background of our own personality can adapt to it. Every text we read draws a different boundary within ou r personality, so that the virtual background (the real "me") will take on a different form, according to the theme of the text concerned. This is inevitable, if only for the fact that the relationship between alien theme and virtual background is what makes it possible for the unfamiliar to be understood. In this context there is a revealing remark made by D. W. Harding, arguing against the idea of identification with what is read: "What is sometimes called wish-fulfilment in novels and plays can .. . more plausibly be described as wish-formulation or the definition of desires. Th e cultural levels at which it works may vary widely; the process is the same It seems nearer the truth.. . to say that fictions contribute to defining the reader's or spectator's values, and perhaps stimulating his desires, rathe r than to suppose that they gratify desire by some mechanism of vicarious experience."29 In the act of reading, having to think something that we have not yet experienced does not mean only being in a position to conceive or even understand it; it also means that such acts of conception are possible and successful to the degree that they lead to something being formulated in us. For someone else's


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thoughts can only take a form in ou r consciousness if, in the process, our unformulated faculty for deciphering those thoughts is brought into play--a faculty which, in the act of deciphering, also formulates itself. Now since this formulation is carried out on terms set by someone else, whose thoughts are the theme of ou r reading, it follows that the formulation of our faculty for deciphering cannot be along ou r own lines of orientation. Herein lies the dialectical structure of reading. Th e need to decipher gives us the chance to formulate our own deciphering capacity--i.e., we bring to th e fore an element of ou r being of which we are not directly conscious. Th e production of the meaning of literary texts--which we discussed in connection with forming the "gestalt" of the text--does not merely entail the discovery of the unformulated, which can then be taken over by the active imagination of the reader; it also entails the possibility that we may formulate ourselves and so discover what had previously seemed to elude ou r consciousness. These are the ways in which reading literature gives us the chance to formulate the unformulated.

15. Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (New York: Atheneum, 1967), pp . 169 ff. 16. Walter Pater, Appreciations, With an Essay on, Style (London: Macmillan and Co., 1895), p- 1517. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, p. 54. 18. Ibid., p. 5. 19. B. Ritchie, "The Formal Structure of the Aesthetic Object," in The Problems of Aesthetics, ed. Eliseo Vivas and Murray Krieger (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1965), pp. 230 ff. 20. John Dewey, Art as Experience (New York: Capricorn Books, 1958), p. 54. 21 . Cf. Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), pp. 21 Iff., 339 ff. 22. Richard Ellmann, "Ulysses, Th e Divine Nobody," in Twelve Original Essays on Great English Novels, ed. Charles Shapiro (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1960), p. 247, classified this particular allusion as "Mock-heroic." 23. George Bernard Shaw, Major Barbara (London: Penguin, 1964), p. 316. 24. William George Clark, review article in Fraser's (December, 1849), p. 692, quoted by Kathleen Tillotson, Novels of the Eighteen-Forties (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1961), pp. 19 ff. 25. Cf. Georges Poulet, "Phenomenology of Reading," New.Literary History 1 (Autumn 1969): 54. 26. Ibid., p. 56. 27. Ibid., p. 59. 28. Ibid. 29. D. W. Harding, "Psychological Processes in the Reading of Fiction," British Journal of Aesthetics 2 (April 1962): 144.

Notes
1. Cf. Roman Ingarden, Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1968), pp . 49 ff. 2. For a detailed discussion of this term see Roman Ingarden, Das literarische Kunstwerk (Tubingen: Niemeyer, 1960), pp. 270 ff. 3. Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy (London: Dent, 1956), p. 79. 4. Virginia Woolf, The Common Reader, First Series (London: Hogarth, 1957), p. 174. 5. Ingarden, Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks, p. 29. 6. Edmund Husserl, Zur Phdnomenology des inneren Zeitbewusstseins, Gesammelte Werke, 22 vols. (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1966), 10:52. 7. Ingarden, Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks, p. 32. 8. Fo'f a more detailed discussion of the function of "gaps" in literary texts see Wolfgang Iser, "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction," in Aspects of Narrative, ed. J. Hillis Miller (New York: Columbia University Press, 1971), pp . 1-45. 9. Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception, trans. Colin Smith (New York: Humanities Press, 1962), pp. 219-21. 10. Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind (Harmondsworth, Great Britain: Penguin, 1968), p. 255. 11. Cf. Iser, "Indeterminacy," pp . 11 ff., 42ff. 12. E. H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology ofPictoral Representation (London: Phaidon Press, 1962), p. 204. 13. Louis O. Mink, "History and Fiction as Modes of Comprehension," New Literary History 1 (Spring, 1970):553. 14. Gombrich, Art and Illusion, p. 278.