Journal Article

The Role of the Reader in T. S. Eliot and Wolfgang Iser

Sarhan, Houreya Hassan

2015

Overview

In his essay \"Tradition and the Individual Talent\" Eliot says that tradition cannot be inherited; it is obtained by hard labour. Tradition, which is necessary for every poet, involves the historical sense which involves a perception, not only of the pastiness of the past, but of its presence; the historical sense compels a man to write not merely with his own generation in his bones, but with a feeling that the whole of the literature of Europe from Homer and within it the whole of the literature of his country has a simultaneous existence and composes a simultaneous order.\" Eliot believes that \"the past should be altered by the present as much as the present is directed by the past.\" This argument leads to the recent concept of the text, the author and the reader in Wolfgang Iser's writings and in the reader response criticism. The text can be endlessly interpreted. It is impossible to have one meaning or one author for the literary text. In \"The Reading Process: a phenomenological approach\" he says that the dynamic nature of the work offers the reader various perspectives to read this work and to put it in motion. Iser says that reading causes the literally work to unfold its inherently dynamic character. Reading varies from one individual to another. He says \"In the same way two people gazing at the night sky maybe looking at the same collection of the stars, but one will see the image of a plough the other will make out a dipper.\" This theory of the reader which differs from Eliot's concept of tradition and the interaction between the past and the present. Iser thinks that the convergence of text and reader brings the literary work into existence. This convergence is virtual which makes the work dynamic.

• Publisher: رابطة الأدب الحديث
• Subject: أيزر، ولفجانج / إليوت، توماس ستيرنز، 1888 - 1965 م / القارئ / النظريات الأدبية / النقد الأدبى