Analysis Of Wolfgang Iser's Essay: The Reading Process

There are several theories on the reading process and these different theories give different set of controls to the reader. But one thing is evident that there is no denying that the reader plays a role greater or equal to that of the author in realizing a text. Wolfgang Iser in his essay 'The Reading Process- a phenomenological approach' talks about how a text stays a text and doesn’t become a literary work until someone reads it. He talks about several parts of a work that remain blank until a reader comes into scene and makes the literary work continuous and alive. Wolfgang Iser explains the reading process in detail talking about the author’s mindset while writing and reader’s state of mind while reading a text.
Iser takes help from Husserl's …show more content…
Since this is the first chapter of the book, the reader has no knowledge about anything but even then, his mind forms a picture of the characters and other details of the scene. This is called intentional correlate, the content that our mind provides for each sentence we read. With each correlate our mind tries to understand what we are reading and what we have read. In the book, the trial by Franz Kafka, Kafka introduces us to the main character Joseph K. Two unknown men enter into his room and tell him that he has been arrested. Kafka doesn’t try to explain the events of the first chapter. No detail is given to the reader regarding the unknown men and the trial. We are given unnecessary details about joseph’s landlady, his job etc. but the readers mind cannot take rest after reading about the arrest. His mind has to explain this to itself. The reader looks for clues in the text and when he doesn’t find any, he brings his own imagination to play. He tries and explores every possibility. He anticipates the future according to his present understanding. He can think of the arrest as some prank by a friend of joseph or he may start suspecting joseph of any