Wolfgang Iser

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Wolfgang Iser (born July 22, 1926 in Marienberg ; † January 24, 2007 in Konstanz ) was a German English scholar and literary scholar .

Life

Iser studied English , philosophy and German in Leipzig , Tübingen and Heidelberg . In 1950 he received his doctorate in Heidelberg , where he also completed his habilitation in 1957. Since 1960 he has been a full professor at the University of Würzburg . In 1963 he went to the University of Cologne . From 1966 to 1991 Wolfgang Iser taught at the University of Konstanz . Together with Hans Robert Jauß and Hans Blumenberg, he was one of the founders of the research group “ Poetics and Hermeneutics ”.

Act

Iser gained international recognition through his theory of aesthetic effect , which he in the short text The appeal structure of the text (1970) first outlined to them two years later, the implicit reader by playing at various literary examples, and finally in 1976 in the act of reading theoretically work out . Later he opened up a new field of research with his theory of literary anthropology (sketches of this literary anthropology can, however, already be found in the works of the 1970s, for example in The Act of Reading ).

Stays abroad

Essential theoretical models

  • In his aesthetic of effect , Iser formulated the theory that a literary text only develops its effect in the act of reading. As a result, Iser significantly upgrades the reader compared to the two instances of author and text , since the text created by the author can never develop its effect without a reader. In examining this act of reading , Iser comes to the theory of the blank space in the text, as well as the implicit reader, following Roman Ingarden . Texts create the opportunity for dialogue with the reader. Literature becomes communication.
  • Literary anthropology : Since all cultures have always been producing literature, Iser asks himself the question of the special performance of literature. In his work The Fictional and the Imaginary (1991) he works out the need for fiction as an anthropological constant.

Awards and memberships

Fonts (selection)

  • Henry Fielding's Worldview (1952)
  • Walter Father. The autonomy of the aesthetic (1960)
  • Spenser's Arcadia Fiction and History in the English Renaissance (1970)
  • The appeal structure of the texts . Indeterminacy as a condition for the effect of literary prose. (1970)
  • The implicit reader. Forms of communication in the novel from Bunyan to Beckett (1972)
  • The act of reading. Theory of Aesthetic Effects (1976)
  • The Artistry of Failure (1979)
  • Laurence Sternes "Tristram Shandy". Staged Subjectivity (1987)
  • Shakespeare's Histories. Genesis and Validity (1988)
  • Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology (1989)
  • The Fictional and the Imaginary - Perspectives on Literary Anthropology (1991)
  • The Range of Interpretation (2000)
  • How to do theory (2005)
  • Emergence: Postponed and Scattered Published Essays (2013)

literature

  • Julia Amslinger: A new form of academy. Poetics and Hermeneutics - the beginnings. Wilhelm Fink Verlag, Paderborn 2017, ISBN 978-3-7705-5384-6 . (At the same time dissertation at Humboldt University Berlin, 2013).
  • Ben De Bruyn: Wolfgang Iser: A Companion , Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Wolfgang Iser , New Bulgarian University.
  2. ^ Siegner Zeitung of February 20, 2007
  3. ^ Deceased Fellows. British Academy, accessed June 13, 2020 .
personal data
SURNAME Iser, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German English and literary scholar
DATE OF BIRTH July 22, 1926
PLACE OF BIRTH Marienberg
DATE OF DEATH January 24, 2007
Place of death Constancy