Implied reader
Iser puts forward the concept of “implied reader”. The implied reader is not a real reader, but a real reader that may exist, or an ideal reader that the author expects to design and hopes in the creation process, that is, the implied recipient. It is the potential consideration of readers’ acceptance ability and vision, which runs through the whole process of artistic creation, dominating and restricting artists’ selection of ideas, materials, styles, language use and meaning expression.
It exists in the work, and is the ideal embodiment of the artist’s conception and pre-set complete understanding of the story work based on experience or hobby. Moreover, this implied reader has been involved in the creation activities, has been pre-designed in literary works, has become an important component in the structure of works. Obviously, this “implied reader” eliminates many interference factors and is more in line with the “ideal” and “demand” of the author. It can even be said that it is the internal logical requirements of the second author, that is, the author’s theoretical structure.
Iser, points out that the implied readers include: structure character readers (work itself contains Such as the somebody so long The authors consider the how to draw it better The author has been arranged To make the reader to see the appearance of someone) and tectonic structure of readers role (which can take into account the different readers see after will produce different thought). Readers’ acceptance of literary works is not only shown through reading, but runs through the whole process of artistic creation. Literature is a process of communication, and its relationship with readers is a dialogue relationship. Therefore, whether the author is aware of it or not, he will design the “reception mode” in advance in the process of creating the work, which is the “implied reader”.
“An implied reader is a hypothetical figure who is likely to get most of what the author intended” (Iser, 1974).
“The concept of the implied reader is therefore a textual structure anticipating the presence of a recipient without necessarily defining him” (Iser, 1980, pp. 34)
Horizon of expectation
Gadamer argues that people have a “sense of historical influence” and that they are embedded in the particular history and culture that shaped them. Thus, interpreting a text involves a convergence of perspectives in which scholars find ways to combine the history of the text with their own context.
All history is contemporary, and all historical interpretations are based on contemporary interpretations. Influenced by this view, Hans Robert Jauss proposed the concept of “horizon of expectation” : Personal expectations are always influenced by public expectations, and public expectations and personal expectations are different in different historical stages. Therefore, do not go back to the past, but stand in the present, the key is the present interpreter’s point of view.
Every time the understanding is different
Gadamer argues that literature does not come into the world as a finished thing, a carefully packaged meaning that actually depends on the historical situation of the interpreter.
Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics admits that the meaning of works is historical, and human knowledge always starts and moves within the prejudice, and the historicity of understanding constitutes the prejudice of understanding, which determines the creativity and generation of understanding. Understanding is entirely historical. Gadamer perfected: the meaning of a literary work is never exhausted by the intentions of its author. When a work is placed in a different cultural and historical context, people may extract new meanings from it. The variability and instability of meaning have its historical particularity and historical limitation that cannot get rid of.
Mimesis
Its core idea is that fictional works imitate reality.
Reference:
GADAMER, H.-G. (2003). Truth and method. [Online]. New York: Continuum. Available at: https://mvlindsey.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/truth-and-method-gadamer-2004.pdf [Accessed 16 December 2021]
HALLIWELL, S., & ARISTOTLE. (1998). Aristotle’s Poetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
ISER, W. (1974). The implied reader: patterns of communication in prose fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Md, Johns Hopkins University Press.
ISER, W. (1980). The act of reading: a theory of aesthetic response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.