CONTENTS

THE READER-ORIENTED PERSPEGTIVE AND TRADITIONAL OBJECTIONS

INTERPRETATION today is beginning to discover its own history-not only the limitations of its respective norms but also those factors that could not come to light as long as traditional norms held sway. The most important of these factors is without doubt the reader himself, the addressee of the text. So long as the focal point of interest was the author's intention, or the contemporary, psychological, social, or historical meaning of the text, or the way in which it was constructed, it scarcely seemed to occur to critics that the text could only have a meaning when it was read. Of course, this was something everyone took for granted, and yet we know surprisingly little of what we are taking for granted. One thing that is clear is that reading is the essential precondition for all processes of literary interpretation. As Walter Slatoff has observed in his book With Respect to Readers:

One feels a little foolish having to begin by insisting that works of literature exist, in part, at least, in order to be read, that we do in fact read them, and that it is worth thinking about what happens when we do. Put so blatantly, such statements seem too obvious to be worth making, for after all, no one directly denies that readers and reading do actually exist; even those who have most insisted on the autonomy of literary works and the irrelevance of the readers' responses, themselves do read books and respond to them. . . . Equally obvious, perhaps, is the observation that works of literature are important and worthy of study essentially because they can be read and can engender responses in human beings.^l

Central to the reading of every literary work is the interaction between its structure and its recipient. This is why the phenomenological theory of art has emphatically drawn attention to the fact that the study of a lit-

erary work should concern not only the actual text but also, and in equal measure, the actions involved in responding to that text. The text itself simply offers "schematized aspects"² through which the subject matter of the work can be produced, while the actual production takes place through an act of concretization.

From this we may conclude that the literary work has two poles, which we might call the artistic and the aesthetic: the artistic pole is the author's text and the aesthetic is the realization accomplished by the reader. In view of this polarity, it is clear that the work itself cannot be identical with the text or with the concretization, but must be ,situated somewhere between the two. It must inevitably be virtual in character, as it cannot be reduced to the reality of the text or to the subjectivity of the reader, and it is from this virtuality that it derives its dynamism. As the reader passes through the various perspectives offered by the text and relates the different views and patterns to one another he sets the work in motion, and so sets himself in motion, too.

If the virtual position of the work is between text and reader, its actualization is clearly the result of an interaction between the two, and so exclusive concentration on either the author's techniques or the reader's psychology will tell us little about the reading process itself. This is not to deny the vital importance of each of the two poles-it is simply that if one loses sight of the relationship, one loses sight of the virtual work. Despite its uses, separate analysis would only be conclusive if the relationship were that of transmitter and receiver, for this would presuppose a common code, ensuring accurate communication, since the message would only be traveling one way.

In literary works, however, the message is transmitted in two ways, in that the reader `receives' it by composing it. There is no common code -at best one could say that a common code may arise in the course of the process. Starting with this assumption, we must search for structures that will enable us to describe basic conditions of interaction, for only then shall we be able to gain some insight into the potential effects inherent in the work. These structures must be of a complex nature, for although they are contained in the text, they do not fulfill their function until they have affected the reader. Practically every discernible structure in fiction has this two-sidedness: it is verbal and affective. The verbal aspect guides the reaction and prevents it from being arbitrary; the affective aspect is the fulfillment of that which has been prestructured by the language of the text. Any description of the interaction between the two must therefore incorporate both the structure of effects ( the text ) and that of response (the reader).

It is characteristic of aesthetic effect that it cannot be pinned to some-

thing existing, and, indeed, the very word `aesthetic' is an embarrassment to referential language, for it designates a gap in the defining qualities of language rather than a definition. Josef Konig summed up the situation as follows: "Certainly . . . the expressions `to be beautiful' and `this is beautiful' are not meaningless. However . . . what they mean is nothing but what is meant through them . . . and this is only something to the extent that it is nothing but what is meant through these expressions."³ The aesthetic effect is robbed of this unique quality the moment one tries to define what is meant in terms of other meanings that one knows. For if it means nothing but what comes through it into the world, it cannot possibly be identical to anything already existing in the world. At the same time, of course, it is easy to see why specific definitions are attributed to this indefinable reality, for one automatically seeks to relate it to contexts that are famihar. The moment one does so, however, the effect is extinguished, because the effect is in the nature of an experience and not an exercise in explanation. Thus, the meaning of a literary text is not a definable entity but, if anything, a dynamic happening.

As has already been suggested, the interpreter's task should be to elucidate the potential meanings of a text, and not to restrict himself to just one. Obviously, the total potential can never be fulfilled in the reading process, but it is this very fact that makes it so essential that one should conceive of meaning as something that happens, for only then can one become aware of those factors that precondition the composition of the meaning. However individual may be the meaning realized in each case, the act of composing it will always have intersubjectively verifiable characteristics. Now the traditional form of interpretation, based on the search for a single meaning, set out to instruct the reader; consequently, it tended to ignore both the character of the text as a happening and the experience of the reader that is activated by this happening. As we have seen, such a referential meaning could not be of an aesthetic nature. However, initially it is aesthetic, because it brings into the world something that did not exist before; but the moment one tries to come to grips with this new experience one is constrained to reach out for nonaesthetic reassurance. Consequently, the aesthetic nature of meaning constantly threatens to transmute itself into discursive determinacy-to use a Kantian term, it is amphibolic: at one moment aesthetic and at the next discursive. This transmutation is conditioned by the structure of fictional `meaning', for it is impossible for such a meaning to remain indefinitely as an aesthetic effect. The very experience which it activates and de-

velops in the reader shows that it brings about something that can no longer be regarded as aesthetic, since it extends its meaningfulness by relating to something outside itself.

This is the point at `which the various techniques of interpretation go their separate ways. The single-meaning technique glosses over the difference, completely ignoring the fact that an aesthetic experience leads to a nonaesthetic experience. Here meaning is understood as the expression, or even representation, of collectively recognized values. An analysis of aesthetic effect takes the difference as its starting-point, for it is only by elucidating the processes of meaning-production that one can come to understand how meaning can take on so many different forms. Furthermore, such an analysis may lay the foundations for an understanding and, indeed, even a theory of how aesthetic effects are actually processed. The single-meaning approach simply took for granted the compilation of meaning, because its sole aim was to convey what it took to be the objective, definable meaning of the text. The history of interpretation shows clearly that such an approach had to be based on external frames of reference, which as often as not were those of a sophisticated subjectivity; thus the insight and `success' of such interpretations sprang from those very factors that they were claiming to eliminate.

These observations are important because a reader-oriented theory is from the very outset open to the criticism that it is a form of uncontrolled subjectivism. Hobsbaum has summed up the two extremes succinctly: "Roughly it can be said that theories of the arts differ according to the degree of subjectivity they attribute to the response of the percipient. Or, what comes to the same thing, they differ according to the extent of the objectivity they attribute to the work of art. Thus the gamut of theory stretches from Subjectivism, where it is felt that each person will recreate the work in his own private way, to Absolutism, where it is felt that an ideal standard has been revealed to which each work of art should conform."⁴

One of the main objections, then, to a theory of aesthetic response is that it sacrifices the text to the subjective arbitrariness of comprehension by examining it in the reflection of its actualization and so denying it an identity of its own. On the other hand, it is obvious that the text as the objective embodiment of an ideal standard incorporates a number of premises that can by no means be taken for granted. Even if we were to accept that there was an ideal standard objectively embodied in the work, this would still tell us nothing about the adequacy of the reader's

comprehension of this standard. And who is to decide on the ideality of the standard, the objectivity of the embodiment, or the adequacy of the interpretation? The natural reply would be the critic, but he, too, is a reader, and all his judgments are based on his reading. This applies even to those judgments that regard the act of reading as irrelevant to their premises. Thus the would-be objective judgments rest on a foundation that appears to be every bit as `private' as tho-se that make no claims to objectivity, and this fact renders it all the more imperative that these seemingly `private' processes should be investigated.

Although it is clear that acts of comprehension are guided by the structures of the text, the latter can never exercise complete control, and this is where one might sense a touch of arbitrariness. However, it must be borne in mind that fictional texts constitute their own objects and do not copy something already in existence. For this reason they cannot have the total determinacy of real objects, and, indeed, it is the elements of indeterminacy that enable the text to `communicate' with the reader, in the sense that they induce him to participate both in the praduction and the comprehension of the work's intention. It is only in this way that he can actually experience the so-called ideal standard postulated by the objectivist theory as an inherent quality of the text. The very fact that this ideality has to be brought out, and indeed conveyed, by interpretation shows that it is not directly given to the reader, and so we can safely say that the relative indeterminacy of a text allows a spectrum of actualizations. This, however, is not the same as saying that comprehension is arbitrary, for the mixture of determinacy and indeterminacy conditions the interaction between text and reader, and such a two-way process cannot be called arbitrary. Precisely the same argument militates against the ideal standard theory of interpretation, for it ignores the part played by the reader, assuming as it does that communication can only be conceived of in terms of a preexisting harmony.

The experience of the text, then, is brought about by an interaction that cannot be designated as private or arbitrary. What is private is the reader's incorporation of the text into his own treasure-house of experience, but as far as the reader-oriented theary is concerned, this simply means that the subjectivist element of reading comes at a later stage in the process of comprehension than critics of the theory may have supposed: namely, where the aesthetic effect results in a restructuring of experience.

Since subjectivist and objectivist theories both tend to distort or ignore important aspects of the reading process, the question arises as to whether it is not the concepts themselves that have produced the problems. ". . . aesthetic theory is a logically vain attempt to define what cannot be

defined, to state the necessary and sufficient properties of that which has no necessary and sufficient properties, to conceive the concept of art as closed when its very use reveals and demands its openness.”⁵ However, in practice literary critics often fail to take this insight into account and continue to aspire to a definition of that which cannot be defined. When, for instance, we say that a literary work is good or bad, we are making a value judgment. But when we are asked to substantiate that judgment, we have recourse to criteria that are not values in themselves, but simply denote features of the work under discussion. We may even compare these features with those of other works, but in differentiating between them we are merely extending the range of our criteria, which still does not constitute a value. The comparisons and differences only serve to condition the value judgment and cannot be equated with it. If, for instance, we praise a novel because its characters are realistic, we are endowing a verifiable criterion with a subjective assessment, whose claim to validity lies at best in a consensus. Objective evidence for subjective preferences does not make the value judgment itself objective, but merely objectifies the preferences. This process brings to light those predilections that govern us. These can then be seen as an expression of personal norms - i.e., not objective value judgments - and in being exposed they open up an intersubjective means of access to our value judgments.

A typical example of this process is the Milton controversy between C. S. Lewis and F. R. Leavis, which Lewis summed up as follows: "It is not that he and I see different things when we look at Paradise Lost. He sees and hates the very same that I see and love.”⁶ It is evident that they have identical criteria, but draw totally different conclusions from them -the act of comprehension itself is obviously intersubjective, since they have responded to the same things. The differences emerge at a level where they should not be possible, if the subjectivist/objectivist dichotomy were relevant. How does it come about that an identical intersubjective perception can have such divergent results? How can value judgments be so subjective if they are based on such objective criteria? The reason may be that a literary text contains intersubjectively verifiable instructions for meaning-production, but the meaning produced may then lead to a whole variety of different experiences and hence subjective judgments. Thus by ridding ourselves of the concept of subjectivism/ objectivism we can establish an intersubjective frame of reference that will enable us to assess the otherwise ineluctable subjectivity of the value judgments.

A further objection to concentrating on the effects of a literary text lies in what Wimsatt and Beardsley call the "Affective Fallacy." This is "a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does) . . . . It begins by trying to derive the standards of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem and ends in impressionism and relativism. The outcome . . . is that the poem itself, as an object of specifically critical judgment, tends to disappear."⁷ The truth of this observation applies as much to the critical judgment as it does to the affective fallacy, for such a judgment also leads to a result. Consequently, the difference between the so-called right and wrong approaches relates only to the nature of the result, and so the question arises as to whether the real problem does not lie in the fact that we tend to equate a work of art with a result, rather than in the quality of that result.

If one classifies texts as represented meaning (what the poem is and what the poem is about) and as potential effects (what the poem does) , in both cases one is identifying the work with a specific intention. The first presupposes a postulated meaning, and the second a postulated recipient. However legitimate or otherwise such postulates may be, their very differences indicate that they do have a common feature: both are acts of definition, determining what elements of the text are to have precedence. Indeed, it is a quality peculiar to literary works that they provoke such acts of definition, which may themselves be varied in character. This is why it is so difficult to grasp literary texts independently of such acts of definition. Their very elusiveness forces the observer to try and pin them down, but the tendency when he does so is to confuse the quality of his definition with the nature of the text, whereas the nature of the text is to induce these acts of definition without ever being identical to their results.

It is this fact that causes most of the problems of literary aesthetics. The constant need for definitions induced by the text seems to jeopardize our attempts to grasp the nature of literature. In this structural sense, the "Affective Fallacy" criticized by Wimsatt and Beardsley is in no way different from the definition they accept as apposite for the study of literature. Where their criticism is justified is in the fact that they regard the disappearance of the work in its result as a problem-in this case-of psychology and not of aesthetics. This criticism will always apply when the work is confused with its result. However, this confusion can only come about because the literary text at least potentially prestructures these `results' to the extent that the recipient can actualize them in accordance with his own principles of selection. In this respect, we can say

that literary texts initiate `performances' of meaning rather than actually formulating meanings themselves. Their aesthetic quality lies in this `performing' structure, which clearly cannot be identical to the final product, because without the participation of the individual reader there can be no performance.

It is, then, an integral quality of literary texts that they produce something which they themselves are not. It follows that the reproach of the "Affective Fallacy" cannot be applied to a theory of aesthetic response, because such a theory is concerned with the structure of the `performance' which precedes the effect. Furthermore, the theory of aesthetic response has an analytical separation of performance and result as a basic premise, and this premise is simply not taken into account when readers or critics ask "What does the text mean?"

READERS AND THE CONCEPT OF THE IMPLIED READER

Northrop Frye once wrote: "It has been said of Boehme that his books are like a picnic to which the author brings the words and the reader the meaning. The remark may have been intended as a sneer at Boehme, but it is an exact description of all works of literary art without exception."⁸ Any attempt to understand the true nature of this cooperative enterprise will run into difficulties over the question of which reader is being referred to. Many different types of readers are invoked when the literary critic makes pronouncements on the effects of literature or responses to it. Generally, two categories emerge, in accordance with whether the critic is concerned with the history of responses or the potential effect of the literary text. In the first instance, we have the `real' reader, known to us by his documented reactions; in the second, we have the `hypothetical' reader, upon whom all possible actualizations of the text may be projected. The latter category is frequently subdivided into the so-called ideal reader and the contemporary reader. The first of these cannot be said to exist objectively, while the second, though undoubtedly there, is difficult to mould to the form of a generalization.

Nevertheless, no one would deny that there is such a being as a contemporary reader, and perhaps an ideal reader too, and it is the very plausibility of their existence that seems to substantiate the claims made on their behalf. The importance of this plausible basis as a means of verification can be gauged from the fact that in recent years another type of reader has sometimes been endowed with more than merely heuristic qualities: namely, the reader whose psychology has been opened up by

the findings of psychoanalysis. Examples of such studies are those by Simon Lesser and Norman Holland,⁹ to which we shall be referring again later. Recourse to psychology, as a basis for a particular category of reader in whom the responses to literature may be observed, has come about not least because of the desire to escape from the limitations of the other categories. The assumption of a psychologically describable reader has increased the extent to which literary responses may be ascertained, and a psychoanalytically based theory seems eminently plausible, because the reader it refers to appears to have a real existence of his own.

Let us now take a closer look at the two main categories of readers and their place in literary criticism. The real reader is invoked mainly in studies of the history of responses, i.e., when attention is focused on the way in which a literary work has been received by a specific reading public. Now whatever judgments may have been passed on the work will also reflect various attitudes and norms of that public, so that literature can be said to mirror the cultural code which conditions these judgments. This is also true when the readers quoted belong to different historical ages, for, whatever period they may have helonged to, their judgment of the work in question will still reveal their own norms, thereby offering a substantial clue as to the norms and tastes of their respective societies. Reconstruction of the real reader naturally depends on the survival of contemporary documents, but the further back in time we go, beyond the eighteenth century, the more sparse the documentation becomes. As a result, the reconstruction often depends entirely on what can be gleaned from the literary works themselves. The problem here is whether such a reconstruction corresponds to the real reader of the time or simply represents the role which the author intended the reader to assume. In this respect, there are three types of `contemporary' reader - the one real and historical, drawn from existing documents, and the other two hypothetical: the first constructed from social and historical knowledge of the time, and the second extrapolated from the reader's role laid down in the text.

Almost diametrically opposite the contemporary reader stands the oft quoted ideal reader. It is difficult to pinpoint precisely where he is drawn from, though there is a good deal to be said for the claim that he tends to emerge from the brain of the philologist or critic himself. Although the critic's judgment may well have been honed and refined by the many texts he has dealt with, he remains nothing more than a cultured reader -if only because an ideal reader is a structural impossibility as far as literary communication is concerned. An ideal reader would have to have

an identical code to that of the author; authors, however, generally recodify prevailing codes in their texts, and so the ideal reader would also have to share the intentions underlying this process. And if this were possible, communication would then be quite superfluous, for one only communicates that which is not already shared by sender and receiver.

The idea that the author himself might be his own ideal reader is frequently undermined by the statements writers have made about their own works. Generally, as readers they hardly ever make any remarks on the impact their own texts have exercised upon them, but prefer to talk in referential language about their intentions, strategies, and constructions, conforming to conditions that will also be valid for the public they are trying to guide. Whenever this happens, i.e., whenever the author turns into a reader of his own work, he must therefore revert to the code, which he had already recoded in his work. In other words, the author, although theoretically the only possible ideal reader, as he has experienced what he has written, does not in fact need to duplicate himself into author and ideal reader, so that the postulate of an ideal reader is, in his case, superfluous.

A further question mark against the concept of the ideal reader lies in the fact that such a being would have to be able to realize in full the meaning potential of the fictional text. The history of literary responses, however, shows quite clearly that this potential has been fulfilled in many different ways, and if so, how can one person at one go encompass all the possible meanings? Different meanings of the same text have emerged at different times, and, indeed, the same text read a second time will have a different effect from that of its first reading. The ideal reader, then, must not only fulfill the potential meaning of the text independently of his own historical situation, but he must also do this exhaustively. The result would be total consumption of the text-which would itself be ruinous for literature. But there are texts which can be `consumed' in this way, as is obvious from the mounds of light literature that flow regularly into the pulping machines. The question then arises as to whether the reader of such works is really the one meant by the term `ideal reader', for the latter is usually called upon when the text is hard to grasp-it is hoped that he will help to unravel its mysteries and, if there are no mysteries, his presence is not required anyway. Indeed, herein lies the true essence of this particular concept. The ideal reader, unlike the contemporary reader, is a purely fictional being; he has no basis in reality, and it is this very fact that makes him so useful: as a fictional being, he can close the gaps that constantly appear in any analysis of literary effects and responses. He can be endowed with a variety of qualities in accordance with whatever problem he is called upon to help solve.

This rather general account of the two concepts of ideal and contemporary readers reveals certain presuppositions, which frequently come into play when responses to fictional texts are to be assessed. The basic concern of these concepts is with the results produced rather than with the structure of effects, which causes and is responsible for these results. It is time now to change the vantage point, turning away from results produced and focusing on that potential in the text which triggers the re-creative dialectics in the reader.

The desire to break free from these traditional and basically restrictive categories of readers can already be seen in the various attempts that have been made to develop new categories of readers as heuristic concepts. Present-day literary criticism offers specific categories for specific areas of discussion: there is the superreader (Riffaterre),¹⁰ the informed reader (Fish),¹¹ and the intended reader (Wolff),¹² to name but a few, each type bringing with it a special terminology of its own. Although these readers are primarily conceived as heuristic constructs, they are nevertheless drawn from specific groups of real, existing readers.

Riffaterre's superreader stands for a "group of informants,"¹³ who always come together at "nodal points in the text,"¹⁴ thus establishing through their common reactions the existence af a "stylistic fact."¹⁵ The superreader is like a sort of divining rod, used to discover a density of meaning potential encoded in the text. As a collective term for a variety of readers of different competence, it allows for an empirically verifiable account of both the semantic and pragmatic potential contained in the message of the text. By sheer weight of numbers, Riffaterre hopes to eliminate the degree of variation inevitably arising from the subjective disposition of the individual reader. He tries to objectify style, or the stylistic fact as a communicative element additional to the primary one of language.¹⁶ He argues that the stylistic fact stands out from its context, thus pointing to a density within the encoded message, which is brought to light by intratextual contrasts that are spotted by the superreader. An approach like this bypasses the difficulties inherent in the stylistics of deviation, which always involves reference to linguistic norms that lie outside the text, in order to gauge the poetic qualities of a text

by the degree it deviates from these presupposed extratextual norms. This argument, however, is not the core of Riffaterre's concept; the most vital point is that a stylistic fact can only be discerned by a perceiving subject. Consequently, the basic impossibility of formalizing the intratextual contrasts manifests itself as an effect that can only be experienced by a reader. And so Riffaterre's superreader is a means of ascertaining the stylistic fact, but owing to its nonreferentiality this concept shows how indispensable the reader is to the formulation of the stylistic fact.

Now even the superreader, as a collective term for a group of readers, is not proof against error. The very ascertaining of intratextual contrasts presupposes a differentiated competence and is dependent not least on the historical nearness or distance of the group in relation to the text under consideration. Nevertheless, Riffaterre's concept does show that stylistic qualities can no longer be exclusively pinpointed with the instruments of linguistics.

To a certain degree this also holds true of Fish's concept of the informed reader, which is not so much concerned with the statistical average of readers' reactions as with describing the processing of the text by the reader. For this purpose, certain conditions must be fulfilled:

The informed reader is someone who 1.) is a competent speaker of the language out of which the text is built up. 2.) is in full possession of "semantic knowledge that a mature . . . listener brings to this task of comprehension." This includes the knowledge (that is, the experience, both as a producer and comprehender) of lexical sets, collocation probabilities, idioms, professional and other dialects, etc. 3.) has literary competence. . . . The reader, of whose responses I speak, then, is this informed reader, neither an abstraction, nor an actual living reader, but a hybrid-a real reader (me) who does everything within his power to make himself informed.¹⁷

This category of reader, then, must not only possess the necessary competence, but must also observe his own reactions during the process of actualization,¹⁸ in order to control them. The need for this self-observation arises first from the fact that Fish developed his concept of the informed reader with close reference to generative-transformational grammar, and second from the fact that he could not take over some of the consequences inherent in this model. If the reader, by means of his competence, structures the text himself, this implies that his reactions will follow one another in time, during the course of his reading, and that it is in this sequence of reactions that the meaning of the text will be generated. To this extent Fish follows the model of transformational grammar. Where he diverges from this model is in his evaluation of surface

structure: "It should be noted however that my category of response, and especially of meaningful response, includes more than the transformational grammarians, who believe that comprehensian is a function of deep structure perception, would allow. There is a tendency, at least in the writings of some linguists, ta downgrade surface structure-the form of actual sentences-to the status of a husk, or covering, or veil; a layer of excrescences that is to be peeled away or penetrated or discarded in favor of the kernel underlying it."¹⁹

The sequence of reactions aroused in the reader by the surface structure of a literary text is often characterized by the fact that the strategies of that text lead the reader astray-which is the prime reason why different readers will react differently. The surface structure sets off in the reader a process which in fact would grind to an almost immediate halt if the surface structure were meant only to unveil the deep structure. Thus, Fish abandons the transformational model at a point that is vital both for it and for his concept. The model in fact breaks down just when it reaches one of the most interesting tasks of all: clarifying the processing of literary texts-an act that would be grotesquely impoverished if reduced to terms of mere grammar. But it is also at this point that the concept of the informed reader loses its frame of reference and changes into a postulate that, for all the plausibility of its premises, is very difficult to consolidate. Fish himself is aware of the difficulty, and at the end of the essay he says of his concept: "In a peculiar and unsettling ( to theorists ) way, it is a method which processes its own user, who is also its only instrument. It is self-sharpening and what it sharpens is you. In short, it does not organize materials, but transforms minds."²⁰ The transformation, then, no longer relates to the text, but to the reader. Viewed from the standpoint of generative-transformational grammar, the transformation is just a metaphor, but it also shows clearly the limited range of the generative-transformational model, as there is no doubt that processing a text is bound to result in changes within the recipient, and these changes are not a matter of grammatical rules, but of experience. This is the problem with Fish's concept-its starts out from the grammatical model, justifiably abandons the model at a particular juncture, but can then only invoke an experience which, though indisputable, remains inaccessible to the theorist. However, we can see even more clearly from the concept of the informed reader than from that of the superreader that an analysis of text processing requires more than just a linguistic model.

While Fish concerns himself with the effects of the text on the reader, Wolff-with his intended reader-sets out to reconstruct the idea of the

reader which the author had in mind.²¹ This image of the intended reader can take on different forms, according to the text being dealt with: it may be the idealized reader;²² or it may reveal itself through anticipation of the norms and values of contemporary readers, through individualization of the public, through apostrophes to the reader, through the assigning of attitudes, or didactic intentions, or the demand for the willing suspension of disbelief.²³ Thus the intended reader, as a sort of fictional inhabitant of the text,²⁴ can embody not only the concepts and conventions of the contemporary public but also the desire of the author both to link up with these concepts and to work on them-sometimes just portraying them, sometimes acting upon them. Wolff outlines the history of the democratization of the `reader idea', the definition of which, however, demands a relatively detailed knowledge of the contemporary reader and of the social history of the time, if the importance and function of this intended reader are to be properly evaluated. But, in any case, by characterizing this fictitious reader it is possible to reconstruct the public which the author wished to address.

There can be no doubting the usefulness, and indeed necessity, of ascertaining this figure, and equally certain is the fact that there is a reciprocity between the form of presentation and the type of reader intended;²⁵ but the question remains open as to why, generations later, a reader can still grasp the meaning (perhaps we should say a meaning) of the text, even though he cannot be the intended reader. Clearly, the historical qualities which influenced the author at the time of writing mould the image of the intended reader-and as such they may enable us to reconstruct the author's intentions, but they tell us nothing about the reader's actual response to the text. The intended reader, then, marks certain positions and attitudes in the text, but these are not yet identical to the reader's role, for many of these positions are conceived ironically (frequently the case in novels), so that the reader is not expected to accept the attitude offered him, but rather to react to it. We must, then, differentiate between the fictitious reader and the reader's role, for although the former is present in the text by way of a large variety of different signals, he is not independent of the other textual perspectives, such as narrator, characters, and plot-line, as far as his function is concerned. The fictitious reader is, in fact, just one of several perspectives, all of which interlink and interact. The role of the reader emerges from this interplay of perspectives, for he finds himself called upon to mediate between them, and so it would be fair to say that the intended reader, as supplier of one perspective, can never represent more than one aspect of the reader's role.

The three concepts of reader that we have dealt with start out from different assumptions and aim at different solutions. The superreader represents a test concept which serves to ascertain the "stylistic fact," pointing to a density in the encoded message of the text. The informed reader represents a self-instructing concept that aims at increasing the reader's `informedness', and hence his competence, through self-observation with regard to the sequence of reactions set off by the text. The intended reader represents a concept of reconstruction, uncovering the historical dispositions of the reading public at which the author was aiming. But for all the diversity of their intentions, these three concepts have one common denominator: they all see themselves as a means of transcending the limitations of (1) structural linguistics, (2) generative-transformational grammar, or (3) literary sociology, by introducing the figure of the reader.

It is evident that no theory concerned with literary texts can make much headway without bringing in the reader, who now appears to have been promoted to the new frame of reference whenever the semantic and pragmatic potential of the text comes under scrutiny. The question is, what kind of reader? As we have seen, the different concepts, of real and of hypothetical readers, all entail restrictions that inevitably undermine the general apphcability of the theories to which they are linked. If, then, we are to try and understand the effects caused and the responses elicited by literary works, we must allow for the reader's presence without in any way predetermining his character or his historical situation. We may call him, for want of a better term, the implied reader. He embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect - predispositions laid down, not by an empirical outside reality, but by the text itself. Consequently, the implied reader as a concept has his roots firmly planted in the structure of the text; he is a construct and in no way to be identified with any real reader.

It is generally recognized that literary texts take on their reality by being read, and this in turn means that texts must already contain certain conditions of actualization that will allow their meaning to be assembled in the responsive mind of the recipient. The concept of the implied reader is therefore a textual structure anticipating the presence of a recipient without necessarily defining him: this concept prestructures the role to be assumed by each recipient, and this holds true even when texts deliberately appear to ignore their possible recipient or actively exclude him. Thus the concept of the implied reader designates a network of response-inviting structures, which impel the reader to grasp the text.

No matter who or what he may be, the real reader is always offered a particular role to play, and it is this role that constitutes the concept of

the implied reader. There are two basic, interrelated aspects to this concept: the reader's role as a textual structure, and the reader's role as a structured act. Let us begin with the textual structure. We may assume that every literary text in one way or another represents a perspective view of the world put together by ( though not necessarily typical of ) the author. As such, the work is in no way a mere copy of the given world – it constructs a world of its own out of the material available to it. It is the way in which this world is constructed that brings about the perspective intended by the author. Since the world of the text is bound to have variable degrees of unfamiliarity for its possible readers ( if the work is to have any `novelty' for them), they must be placed in a position which enables them to actualize the new view. This position, however, cannot be present in the text itself, as it is the vantage point for visualizing the world represented and so cannot be part of that world. The text must therefore bring about a standpoint from which the reader will be able to view things that would never have come into focus as long as his own habitual dispositions were determining his orientation, and what is more, this standpoint must be able to accommodate all kinds of different readers. How, then, can it evolve from the structure of the text?

It has been pointed out that the literary text offers a perspective view of the world ( namely, the author's ) . It is also, in itself, composed of a variety of perspectives that outline the author's view and also provide access to what the reader is meant to visualize. This is best exemplified by the novel, which is a system of perspectives designed to transmit the individuality of the author's vision. As a rule there are four main perspectives: those of the narrator, the characters, the plot, and the fictitious reader. Although these may differ in order of importance, none of them on its own is identical to the meaning of the text. What they do is provide guidelines originating from different starting points ( narrator, characters, etc.), continually shading into each other and devised in such a way that they all converge on a general meeting place. We call this meeting place the meaning of the text, which can only be brought into focus if it is visualized from a standpoint. Thus, standpoint and convergence of textual perspectives are closely interrelated, although neither of them is actually represented in the text, let alone set out in words. Rather they emerge during the reading process, in the course of which the reader's role is to occupy shifting vantage points that are geared to a prestructured activity and to fit the diverse perspectives into a gradually evolving pattern. This allows him to grasp both the different starting points of the textual perspectives and their ultimate coalescence, which is guided by the interplay between the changing perspectives and the gradually unfolding coalescence itself.²⁶

Thus, the reader's role is prestructured by three basic components: the different perspectives represented in the text, the vantage paint from which he joins them together, and the meeting place where they converge.

This pattern simultaneously reveals that the reader's role is not identical to the fictitious reader portrayed in the text. The latter is merely one component part of the reader's role, by which the author exposes the disposition of an assumed reader to interaction with the other perspectives, in order to bring about modifications.

So far we have outlined the reader's role as a textual structure, which, however, will be fully implemented only when it induces structured acts in the reader. The reason for this is that although the textual perspectives themselves are given, their gradual convergence and final meeting place are not linguistically formulated and so have to be imagined. This is the point where the textual structure of his role begins to affect the reader. The instructions provided stimulate mental images, which animate what is linguistically implied, though not said. A sequence of mental images is bound to arise during the reading process, as new instructions have continually to be accommodated, resulting not only in the replacement of images formed but also in a shifting position of the vantage point, which differentiates the attitudes to be adopted in the process of image-building. Thus the vantage point of the reader and the meeting place of perspectives become interrelated during the ideational activity and so draw the reader inescapably into the world of the text.

Textual structure and structured act are related in much the same way as intention and fulfillment, though in the concept of the implied reader they are joined together in the dynamic process we have described. In this respect, the concept departs from the latest postulate that the programmed reception of the text be designated as "Rezeptionsvorgabe" (structured prefigurement).²⁷ This term relates only to discernible textual structures and completely ignores the dynamic act which elicits the response to those structures.

The concept of the implied reader as an expression of the role offered by the text is in no way an abstraction derived from a real reader, but is rather the conditioning force behind a particular kind of tension produced by the real reader when he accepts the role. This tension results, in the first place, from the difference between myself as reader and the often very different self who goes about paying bills, repairing leaky faucets, and failing in generosity and wisdom. It is only as I read that I become the self whose beliefs must coincide with the

author's. Regardless of my real beliefs and practices, I must subordinate my mind and heart to the book if I am to enjoy it to the full. The author creates, in short, an image of himself and another image of his reader; he makes his reader, as he makes his second self, and the most successful reading is one in which the created selves, author and reader, can find complete agreement.²⁸

One wonders whether such an agreement can really work; even Coleridge's ever popular demand for a "willing suspension of disbelief" on the part of the audience remains an ideal whose desirability is questionable. Would the role offered by the text function properly if it were totally accepted? The sacrifice of the real reader's own beliefs would mean the loss of the whole repertoire of historical norms and values, and this in turn would entail the loss of the tension which is a precondition for the processing and for the comprehension that follows it. As M. H. Abrams has rightly stressed: "Given a truly impassive reader, all his beliefs suspended or anesthetized, (a poet) would be as helpless, in his attempt to endow his work with interest and power, as though he had to write for an audience from Mars."²⁹ However, the suggestion that there are two selves is certainly tenable, for these are the role offered by the text and the real reader's own disposition, and as the one can never be fully taken over by the other, there arises between the two the tension we have described. Generally, the role prescribed by the text will be the stronger, but the reader's own disposition will never disappear totally; it will tend instead to form the background to and a frame of reference for the act of grasping and comprehending. If it were to disappear totally, we should simply forget all the experiences that we are constantly bringing into play as we read-experiences which are responsible for the many different ways in which people fulfill the reader's role set out by the text. And even though we may lose awareness of these experiences while we read, we are still guided by them unconsciously, and by the end of our reading we are liable consciously to want to incorporate the new experience into our own store of knowledge.

The fact that the reader's role can be fulfilled in different ways, according to historical or individual circumstances, is an indication that the structure of the text allows for different ways of fulfillment. Clearly, then, the process of fulfillment is always a selective one, and any one actualization can be judged against the background of the others potentially present in the textual structure of the reader's role. Each actualization therefore represents a selective realization af the implied reader, whose own structure provides a frame of reference within which individual responses to a text can be communicated to others. This is a vital function

of the whole concept of the implied reader: it provides a link between all the historical and individual actualizations of the text and makes them accessible to analysis.

To sum up, then, the concept of the implied reader is a transcendental model which makes it possible for the structured effects of literary texts to be described. It denotes the role of the reader, which is definable in terms of textual structure and structured acts. By bringing about a standpoint for the reader, the textual structure follows a basic rule of human perception, as our views of the world are always of a perspective nature. "The observing subject and the represented object have a particular relationship one to the other; the `subject-object relationship' merges into the perspective way of representation. It also merges into the observer's way of 'seeing; for just as the artist organizes his representation according to the standpoint of an observer, the observer - because of this very technique of representation - finds himself directed toward a particular view which more or less obliges him to search for the one and only standpoint that will correspond to that view."³⁰

By virtue of this standpoint, the reader is situated in such a position that he can assemble the meaning toward which the perspectives of the text have guided him.³¹ But since this meaning is neither a given external reality nor a copy of an intended reader's own world, it is something that has to be ideated by the mind of the reader. A reality that has no existence of its own can only come into being by way of ideation, and so the structure of the text sets off a sequence of mental images which lead to the text translating itself into the reader's consciousness. The actual content of these mental images will be colored by the reader's existing stock of experience, which acts as a referential background against which the unfamiliar can be conceived and processed. The concept of the implied reader offers a means of describing the process whereby textual structures are transmuted through ideational activities into personal experiences.

PSYCHOANALYTICAL THEORIES OF LITERARY RESPONSE

The concept of the implied reader enables us to describe the structured effects of and responses to the literary text, and the question arises whether a theory of aesthetic response can or cannot dispense with reference to psychology. There are in fact two complete theories of literary response that argue from a psychoanalytical basis: those of Norman Hol-

land and Simon Lesser. We shall be taking a critical look at these theories -critical, not because their psychological insights are in any way irrelevant to our theme, but because these insights have been obscured through the tendency to categorize in orthodox, psychoanalytical terms something which is liable to distortion if thus categorized.

In both studies, psychoanalytical concepts are used as tools for systematization and not for exploration. But as Pontalis has shown in his book Nach Freud, reification of psychoanalytical concepts has frequently been a hindrance instead of an aid to psychoanalytical insight.³² Pontalis argues that Freud himself imposed no closed system of terminology upon his theory.³³ On the contrary, he borrowed terms from physics, biology, mythology, and everyday language. The fact that he used all these different language systems is an indication for Pontalis that Freud was charting territory that could not be restricted to one system of terms. If, for the sake of simplicity, we call this territory the unconscious-although Pontalis shows that this term denotes that which is to be brought to light from an already systematized philosophical position³⁴ - it is inevitable that elucidation of the unknown will require the heuristic application of a variety of terminologies. The moment the heuristics of this exploratory use of language congeal into a system, psychoanalysis takes on the appearance of an `imperialistic philosophy' asserting itself with a jumbled, bloated terminology. This fact, however, does not characterize Freud so much as those who followed him, turning his exploratory language into systematic concepts, thereby pretending that a fixed and definite reality is denoted, and so burying the original hermeneutic perspective that governed Freud's own heuristic use of language and that has only recently been rediscovered.³⁵

It is necessary to draw attention to this fact, because both Holland and Lesser use psychoanalytical terminology as reified concepts and consequently hinder rather than help the attempt to describe reactions to literature.

Norman Holland describes the purpose of his study as follows:

First, I propose to talk about literature primarily as an experience. I realize that one could talk about literature as a form of communication, as expression, or as artifact. For the special purposes of this book, however, literature is an experience and, further, an experience not discontinuous with other experiences. . . . One can analyze literature objectively, but how or why the repeated images and structures shape one's subjective response-that is the question this book

tries to answer. I shall have to rely rather heavily on my own responses, but 1 do not mean to imply that they are `correct' or canonical for others. I simply hope that if I can show how my responses are evoked, then others may be able to see how theirs are. As with most psychoanalytic research, we must work from a case history, and in this situation, the case is me. . . . To go from the text as an object to our experience of it calls for a psychology of some kind-I have chosen psychoanalytic psychology.³⁶

Holland's primary interest, then, is the experience effected by literature. But even if one simply takes texts as programmed experiences, these must still be communicated before they can take place in the reader's mind. Is it really possible to separate the experience from the way in which it is communicated, as if they were two quite different subjects of investigation? This might be possible with everyday experiences in life, but aesthetic experiences can only take place because they are communicated, and the way in which they are experienced must depend, at least in part, on the way in which they are presented, or prestructured. If aesthetic and everyday experiences are bracketed together, the literary text must lose its aesthetic quality and be regarded merely as material to demonstrate the functioning or nonfunctioning af our psychological dispositions. In this case, of course, one could scarcely argue with those who claim that the study of literature is superfluous, as its results can be obtained from phenomena that are considerably more relevant to society. In his efforts to make literature accessible to `objective' analysis, Holland appears to ignore the difference between aesthetic and everyday experience, thereby hoping to be able to study the response elicited by literary texts in terms culled from psychoanalysis; the result, however, is a loss rather than a gain, as far as heuristic insight is concerned, for, as A. R. Ammons writes, with every literary work "a world (comes) into being about which any statement, however revelatory, is a lessening."³⁷ The world is lessened to point zero, however, if the investigation merely serves to describe something which is already at one's disposal.

Holland's deliberate disregard of the way in which the `experience' is communicated, and his apparent equation of aesthetic and ordinary experiences, leave a distinct mark on his argument. This is particularly clear if one examines the two main aspects of his study: those of meaning and response. Right at the start, he describes the literary text as a hierarchy of sedimented layers of meaning. He takes as his example Chaucer's Wife of Bath, in which he discerns four such layers: that of the medieval reader, that of the modern reader, the mythical, and finally

the psychoanalytical meaning of the text.³⁸ For Holland, meaning is a dynamic process: ". . . all stories-and all literature-have this basic way of meaning: they transform the unconscious fantasy discoverable through psychoanalysis into the conscious meanings discovered by conventional interpretation."³⁹ From this argument, it follows that the psychoanalytical meaning is the origin of all the others. Therefore, if the process is to be elucidated, this is the meaning that must be sought, since the other levels represent only historical or social manifestations, if not actual distortions of the psychoanalytical meaning. In Chaucer's Wife of Bath, this is "Phallic wounding," "Oral submission: ''⁴⁰

Even if one grants the usefulness of such an approach, it produces a number of questions which it is incapable of answering. First, what are the conditions that make it possible for a text to be viewed with the eyes of a medieval reader, also with those of a modern reader, also through a mythical perspective, and also through a psychoanalytical one? Furthermore, how does one distinguish between these individual layers of meaning? Apart from the fact that it might be difficult to make all these neat distinctions between the various layers and their hierarchical set-up, the question arises as to whether the historical meanings grasped by the reader are nothing but an imperfect transformation of fantasy within the conscious mind. If the reader fails to grasp the psychoanalytical meaning, does that imply that the text hides its own meaning, or is the concealment brought about by the reader's own defence mechanism? In fact, it cannot be the text, because for Holland literature represents a relief; what kind of relief would it be if the text contained an inherent true meaning but was so structured that the reader, through the act of grasping it, produced a concealment of the true meaning? This would surely run counter to most authors' intentions.

The problems mount up. If the literary text-for whatever reason keeps its real meaning hidden under a veil of historical or social distortion, we should, according to Holland's theory, use psychoanalytical methods to uncover this meaning. In other words, comprehension of the literary text could only be completed through psychoanalysis. But this cannot be what Holland means, because he says that literature itself transforms the unconscious fantasy into conscious meaning.

Again, if one accepts that the ambivalences of the text prevent the reader ( who must after all take an active part in the process of comprehension ) from realizing the obvious fact that fantasy has been trans-

formed into graspable meaning, it would need an already refined psychoanalytical observer to uncover the true meaning behind the distortions. The psychoanalytical interpretation would then prove to be a diagnosis of the barriers holding the reader back from the truth, and attention would be focused on his reactions and his resistance to the communicative `symbols'.⁴¹ And from diagnosis the interpretation would then have to proceed to therapy (as the two can scarcely be separated) . But the very idea of literary texts changing the psyche of readers, in a therapeutic sense, by virtue of their true meaning being uncovered, is, to say the least, rather far-fetched.

However, even more revealing than these difficulties is Holland's solution to the problem of how a text conveys its meaning, or how this meaning can be ascertained by the reader. Here it is no longer possible for him to get round the process of communication, and so finally he tries to cope with it by means of an explanatory principle that does not stem from psychoanalysis at all.

For Holland the psychoanalytical meaning is the basic foundation which the reader must grasp if he is to realize how unconscious fantasy can be transformed into conscious meaning,; Holland assumes that this process of communication is secured by some kind of correspondence between the textual structure and a related disposition within the reader. This means that psychoanalytical insights that have not originally been gleaned from texts are transposed as a structural condition onto the texts themselves. The texts can then easily be construed along the lines of familiar psychological structures, so that the meaning is conveyed by the text reflecting psychological elements of the reader, or by the reader recognizing structures of his own processes of reaction in the text. Holland gives an explicit account of this pattern of correspondence: "The mental process embodied in the literary work somehow becomes a process inside its audience. What is `out there' in the literary work feels as though it is `in here,' in your mind or mine."⁴² Even if one passes over the embarrassing vagueness of "somehow" and "feels," one is left with the principle that like will recognize like. This, however, is a Platonic rather than a psychoanalytic principle. And one cannot help wondering whether perhaps this need to explain a psychoanalytical form of interpretation in terms of Platonism does not also explain why the processes of literary communication can be so easily ignored by the probings of analysis. In any case, this Platonic mirror image of text and reader will not suffice to explain the effects caused and the responses elicited by literary works. A response that depends upon the reader finding a reflection of himself

could scarcely bring the reader anything new. And Holland himself admits that something does happen to the reader. It should, then, be selfevident that the initial impulse for this `happening' must he not in the sameness but in the difference of the text, albeit a difference that is graduated away from the familiar. The whole process of comprehension is set in motion by the need to familiarize the unfamiliar (and literature would be barren indeed if it led only to a recognition of the already familiar) . In short, the reader will only begin to search for (and so actualize) the meaning if he does not know it, and so it is the unknown factors in the text that set him off on his quest. Even if one were to go along with Holland, subscribing to his basic idea that the literary text is a transformation of fantasy into meaning, his theory would only be truly psychoanalytical if this transformation allowed the reader to perceive something which might have been within himself but which so far he was not prepared to recognize.

Now, although this is a clear contradiction of Holland's thesis, there can be no doubt that in fact he is groping in that very direction. This is evidenced by the various diagrams and drawings in which he attempts to depict the relations between text and reader. But the background to his arguments remains as problematical as that to his discussion of meaning. These arguments are of interest here only in so far as they offer further grounds for a quite different assumption in relation to our theory of response.

For Holland, literature has the effect of relief: ". . . in the last analysis all art is . . . a comfort."⁴³ This comfort is brought about mainly through the solutions that the work offers us and that must correspond to the expectations of the reader: "Even if the work makes us feel pain or guilt or anxiety, we expect it to manage those feelings so as to transform them into satisfying experiences."⁴⁴ It is only when this happens that literature provides the pleasure expected of it. "When literature `pleases', it, too, lets us experience a disturbance, then master it, but the disturbance is a fantasy rather than an event or activity. This pattern of disturbance and mastery distinguishes our pleasures in play and literature from simple sensuous pleasures."'⁴⁵ Holland refers to this pattern of disturbance and mastery - bringing about comfort and relief - in very different contexts of his argument, and so it is clearly representative of both the function of literature and of the reactions it arouses.

The idea that literature should provide pleasure, and that this arises out of a rhythmic alternation of disturbance and solution, was current long before psychoanalysis made its mark on literary criticism, and so cannot be attributed to this approach to literature. In the final analysis,

Holland confirms the emotive theory of I. A. Richards-though with different arguments-for this theory, too, takes disturbance and solution to be the basic condition for the aesthetic effect of a work of art.⁴⁶ And so the core of Holland's psychoanalytical view of literary response is in fact no advance on the old emotive theory.

The only question that remains is the extent to which the form of the literary work, through which the pattern of disturbance and mastery is organized, may offer any specific insights into literary effects and responses. For Holland, with his psychoanalytical interpretation, form is a defensive structure through which the turbulence of an awakened fantasy can be tamed and set at a distance.'⁴⁷ Form does not stimulate, but controls that which has been stimulated, in order to hold it, so to speak, at arm's length. Form channels the agitation. One cannot help wondering whether such a conception of form is really derived from psychoanalysis, for the harmonization of conflicting movements is a distinctly classical concept. One's suspicions are hardly assuaged by the psychoanalytical terms in which Holland cloaks his description of literature: "Literature has something in it of the saturnalia: the superego permits the ego to transgress all kinds of taboos for a limited time, then re-establishes control; and the re-establishment of control itself comes as a kind of relief and mastery:'⁴⁸ In the eighteenth century, this concept was called beau desordre - which indicated the aesthetic pleasure derived from a temporary disturbance of order accompanied by the expectation that in some unforeseeable way order would be restored. Eighteenth-century aesthetics merely used different terms from those of psychoanalysis, but it is evident that this phenomenon can be explained in terms drawn from a variety of fields.

Eighteenth-century classical aesthetics remained the frame of reference for the emotive theory, and Holland's psychoanalytical interpretation is so similar to this that one cannot help feeling he has merely reproduced Richards's insights in different terms. The emotive theory, however, postulated a reader that was maneuvered into a contemplative distance from the `spectacle' unfolded by the text, because the work itself relieved the tension for him. Holland, however, believes that literary texts actually engage the reader, but as he, too, believes that it is the work that relieves the tensions, one wonders to what extent the reader can be engaged. If the literary text does all the work, what is there for the reader to get en-

gaged in? The same question may be asked of the emotive theory, although it must be said to the credit of this theory that it was the first to give full attention to the study of literary responses.

The importance of the emotive theory is equally evident in Simon O. Lesser's Fiction and the Unconscious, though this is also conceived along the lines of psychoanalytical theory. For Lesser, too, literature provides relief,⁴⁹ but this relief can only be adequate if the work offers different means of satisfaction all at the same time. Here Lesser has to construct a model of communication that will allow him to describe the relief that takes place in the reader, and for this purpose he uses the tools of psychoanalysis. In order to open the reader up to the world of fiction, the work must appeal to the superego and the ego and the id. All these components of the psyche must be set in motion, i.e., each one must be so engaged that the hierarchy assumed by psychoanalysis begins to waver and indeed to break apart. For Lesser, a work of art becomes meaningful in proportion to the intensity with which it engages all the component parts of the psyche. But this engagement depends upon one necessary condition: the different appeals made by the work must be in some kind of cipher, for the more open and direct they are, the less effect they will have upon the recipient.⁵⁰ Their effect is enhanced if they continually overlap, disguise themselves and one another, exchange origins and directions, and, in short, assume the degree of complexity necessary to open up the old conflict, already decided in real life, between superego, ego and id. The literary work attains this effect, but not-as in Holland's thesis-through merely reflecting the various dispositions of its readers; it demands of them activities that will make it possible for the solidified hierarchy of the constituent parts of the psyche to be opened up; this `opening' will set off a movement that seems hke a sort of liberation because, during the period of our reading, we can free ourselves from the censorship operative within the established hierarchy of the psyche.⁵¹

If we ignore the psychological elements of Lesser's model, we are left with the idea that communication comes about through disguised, overlapping, or even contradictory appeals from the text; but in this case the appeals cannot mean what they say, for the closer the statement comes to the real intention, the weaker will be the effect. From this we can deduce a thesis that will play an important part in the chapters that follow: effect and response arise from a dialectical relationship between showing and concealing-in other words from the difference between what is said and what is meant.

Although it would seem that Lesser could have developed his own argu-

ment along precisely these lines, he in fact appears to eliminate the problem prematurely by means of his theory of resolved conflicts, which he derives from the psychological processes set in motion by literary texts. Here the arguments of the emotive theory return once more:

Have we made any headway toward a definition of fiction by observing that it is centrally concerned with conflict? While we secure satisfaction from overcoming obstacles, conflict itself-real conflict-is not a source of pleasure to us, but rather of pain. Why should the fictional presentation of our conflicts give us pleasure or satisfaction? The answer immediately suggests itself: there are decisive differences between the way conflicts are dealt with in fiction and the way they make themselves felt in life. . . . Using terms in which Edward Glover describes art in general, we may say that fiction gives us compromise formations whereby repressed and repressing forces obtain expression in one and the same product. Or we may say that fiction heeds the demands of both the reality principle and the pleasure principle, or that it provides a forum in which the positions of the id, the ego and the superego all receive a hearing. . . . We appreciate fiction, secondly, because it seeks to reconcile the various claims it brings forward. Moreover, in keeping with its willingness to hear all sides, it strives for resolutions based upon maximum fulfilment, rather than the illusory kind achieved by denying or slighting certain claims; it seeks resolutions which, to use a happy word of Robert Penn Warren's, are "earned" rather than forced. Obviously such resolutions are more richly satisfying and more stable than the provisional solutions of our problems with which we must so often be content in life.⁵²

If we wish to understand the satisfaction these texts can give their readers, we must correct this definition of fiction in one important point. This correction will also apply to Richards's description of the work of art, the value of which - as for Lesser - lies in the resolution of the conflict it brings about in the reader. There is no doubt that conflict is a central element of literature, but there is a huge doubt as to whether the solution is really manifested in the act of presentation.

Generally, the nature of these conflicts is such that although possible solutions are adumbrated in the text, they are not explicitly formulated there. The formulation will take place through the guided activity stimulated in the reader, for only in this way can it become part of the reader's own experience. But if the solution is in fact formulated in the text, the activity of the reader will naturally be of a different sort: instead of actualizing a solution, he will now adopt an attitude toward the one offered him. The more explicit the text, the less involved he will be, and, in passing, one might remark that this accounts in great measure for the feeling of anticlimax that accompanies so much of what is called `light reading'.

If the assumption of Lesser and Richards is correct, that the rhythm of a work of art consists of conflict and solution, this is not in the form of a spectacle unfolding before the reader's eyes; on the contrary, the truly literary text will set off reactions in the reader, and the rhythm will be both constituted and performed within him. A typically classical element of the psychological theory of art is the fact that it attributes to the work itself the distancing process through which the conflict is resolved for the reader, although again this process is an act-albeit a guided one -through which the reader himself unravels his entangled involvement in the conflict. Adorno has rightly criticized this quietistic aspect of the psychological theory of art:

The psychologism of aesthetic interpretation goes pretty well hand in hand with the philistine view of art as something that harmoniously smoothes out contradictions, the vision of a better life-regardless of the bad from which it has been wrung. The conformist acceptance by psychoanalysis of the popular view of art as beneficent to culture corresponds to aesthetic hedonism, which banishes all negativity from art, confining it to the conflicts that gave rise to the work and suppressing it from the end-product. If an acquired sublimation and integration are made into the be-all and end-all of the work of art, it loses that power through which it transcends the life which, by its very existence, it has renounced.⁵³

This argument is borne out by the structure of the text itself. The conflicts brought about within the text have a variety of facets, for by definition a conflict can only arise if there are different aspects of a situation in opposition to one another. This fact is recognized by Lesser, with his theory of masked appeals, which lead to conflict in so far as they set the superego, the ego, and the id against one another. But leaving aside this psychoanalytical approach to conflict, we are faced with the question of how they are actually brought about by the act of presentation.

It will suffice for the moment if we refer only to narrative texts-and indeed this is the genre Lesser himself refers to. It is characteristic of such texts that the perspectives-whether they be those of the narrator, the hero, the minor characters, or all the characters together-do not coincide. This situation is often further complicated by the fact that the part played by the different characters in the story frequently runs contrary to their own view of themselves. Thus the text offers various lines of orientation which are in opposition to one another-or at least fail to coincide-and this is already the basis of conflict. The conflict itself arises when the reader tries to project one perspective onto another and finds himself confronted with inconsistencies; the solution to the conflict lies in some idea of reconciliation which is not formulated by the text. It is not

formulated because the reader must work it out for himself if he is to make the experience his own-or if a solution is formulated, this may be purely in order to hinder the reader from building up a concept. Now there are texts in which the reader's active building of concepts is, so to speak, tapered off, e.g., in the roman a these, where solutions are often stated loud and clear. But in such cases it is obvious that there is no genuine conflict to be resolved; whatever elements of conflict there are serve a purely rhetorical purpose, merely helping a predetermined solution toward its predetermined happy end. Only if the reader is involved in working out this solution, can there be a truly cathartic effect, for only participation-as opposed to mere contemplation-can bring the reader the hoped-for satisfaction, although Lesser and Richards would have us think otherwise.

If one seeks to grasp the effects of the literary work in terms of the emotive theory, the relation between text and reader will seem relatively one-sided: the text appears not only to set off `turbulences' in the reader but also to calm them down again. However, there are certain interactions between text and reader that fail to fit in with this conveniently simple pattern. Problems already arise with two basic concepts that Lesser uses to try and describe the relationship between text and reader: the literary text is typified by "overdetermination,"⁵⁴ and the reader's attitude by "analogizing:'⁵⁵ He explains "overdetermination" as follows: ". . . a story may mean different things to different readers, but it also means that any given reader may sense that a story has many different meanings, layer upon layer of significance. To use a term adopted from dream psychology, fiction may be overdetermined; the fiction we regard as great invariably is."⁵⁶

It is certainly true that the overdetermination of a literary text does not, as one might suppose, produce semantic clarity but, on the contrary, splits the text up into a whole semantic spectrum. This phenomenon is frequently to be observed in modern literature, where an over-precise frame of presentation-as in Joyce's Ulysses-leads to a graduated variety of semantic levels. In this respect, literary texts differ from everyday speech: they are not only more structured, but-through their overdetermination-they also reduce the predictability of the individual parts of speech. In everyday speech, there is an increasing degree of redundance as the parts of speech become more and more predictable, but in literary speech the opposite is true. The reduction of predictability in overdetermined texts brings about a structure of different semantic levels which may be related to one another in a variety of ways. In this sense, the term "overdetermination"-originally taken from dream-psychology

may fairly be applied to the literary text, but there is one vital fact that must be borne in mind - a fact which Lesser appears to have overlooked.

If an `overdetermined' text may mean different things to different readers, these different meanings do not arise simply from the overdetermination, but from the increasing degrees of indeterminacy. Overdetermination produces different levels of meaning, but this creates in the reader the need to relate those levels, and indeed they are often only comprehensible because of the variability of their relationships. It follows that an `overdetermined text' causes the reader to engage in an active process of composition, because it is he who has to structure the meaning potential arising out of the multifarious connections between the semantic levels of the text.

Lesser does not seem to have considered this process, as his commitment to the emotive theory makes no allowances for such an activity; in fact, he seems to regard the reader solely as a passive recipient. The only activity he does grant to the reader seems to be quite separated from the reading process itself: "In addition to participating vicariously in the stories in which we become absorbed, we frequently create and imaginatively act out stories structured upon them. We analogize. The stories we spin are, of course, highly elliptical. There is neither time nor need to develop them systematically. Analogizing may involve nothing more than the recognition of a similarity between a fictional event and something which has happened to us, and a rapid reliving of the experience. . . . Analogizing . . . is so closely akin to daydreaming."⁵⁷ The implication is that this superimposed story is therefore a private one, separating the reader from the text, which is merely the impulse giving rise to an act of personal indulgence. In other words, the text functions as a kind of release mechanism for the private preoccupations of the reader.

Now it is certainly true that any response to any text is bound to be subjective, but this does not mean that the text disappears into the private world of its individual readers. On the contrary, the subjective processing of a text is generally still accessible to third parties, i.e., available for intersubjective analysis. This, however, is only possible if we pinpoint that which actually happens between text and reader. As we have seen, the overdetermination of a text produces indeterminacy, and this sets in motion a whole process of comprehension whereby the reader tries to assemble the world of the text-a world that has been removed from the everyday world by this very overdetermination. The process of assembling the meaning of the text is not a private one, for although it does mobilize the subjective disposition of the reader, it does not lead to

day-dreaming but to the fulfillment of conditions that have already been structured in the text. Herein lies the significance of the overdetermination of the text: it is not merely a given textual quality, but a structure that enables the reader to break out of his accustomed framework of conventions, so allowing him to formulate that which has been unleashed by the text.⁵⁸ If it is true, as Lesser claims, that the literary text releases the reader from the pressure of his normal experience,⁵⁹ thus allowing the resurfacing of that which has hitherto been repressed, such a process cries out for analysis. And we shall find that it is only when the reader is forced to produce the meaning of the text under unfamiliar conditions, rather than under his own conditions (analogizing), that he can bring to light a layer of his personality that he had previously been unable to formulate in his conscious mind.

Notes
1 Walter J. Slatoff, With Respect to Readers. Dimensions of Literary Response (Ithaca, 1970), p. 3.
2 See Roman Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art, transl. by George G. Grabowicz (Evanston, 1973), pp. 278ff.
3 Josef König, "Die Natur der asthetischen Wirkung," in Wesen und Wirklichkeit des Menschen. Festschrift fiir Helmuth Plessner, Klaus Ziegler, ed. (Gottingen, 1957), p. 321.
4 Philip Hobsbaum, A Theory of Communication (London, 1970), p. xiii.
5 Morris Weitz, "The Role of Theory in Aesthetics," in Philosophy Looks at the Arts, Joseph Margolis, ed. (New York, 1962), p. 52.
6 C. S. Lewis, A Preface to Paradise Lost (Oxford Paperbacks 10; London, 1960), p. 134.
7 W. K. Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon. Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (Lexington, 1967), p. 21.
8 Northrop Frye, Fearful Symmetry. A Study of William Blake (Boston, 31967), pp. 427f.
9 See Part I, Chap. 2, pp. 38-50.
10 Michael Riffaterre, Strukturale Stilistik, transl. by Wilhelm Bolle (Munich, 1973), pp. 46ff.
11 Stanley Fish, "Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics," New Literary History 2 (1970) : 123ff.
12 Erwin Wolff, "Der intendierte Leser," Poetica 4(1971) : 141ff.
13 Riffaterre, Strukturale Stilistik, p. 44.
14 Ibid., p. 48.
15 Ibid., p. 29, passim.
16 See also the critique by Rainer Warning, "Rezeptionsasthetik als literaturwissenschaftliche Pragmatik," in Rezeptionsasthetik. Theorie und Praxis (UTB 303), Rainer Warning, ed. (Munich, 1975), pp. 26ff.
17 Fish, "Literature in the Reader," p. 145.
18 Ibid., pp. 144-48.
19 Ibid., p. 143.
20 Ibid., p. 160f.
21 Wolff, "Der intendierte Leser," p. 166.
22 Ibid., p. 145.
23 Ibid., pp. 143, 151-54, 156, 158, 162.
24 Ibid., p. 160.
25 Ibid., pp. 159f.
26 For a more detailed discussion, see Part II, Chap. 4, pp. 96-99.
27 See Manfred Naumann et al., Gesellschaft-Literatur-Lesen. Literaturrezeption in theoretischer Sicht (Berlin and Weimar, 1973), p. 35, passim; see also my critique of this book, "Im Lichte der Kritik," in Warning's Rezeptionsasthetik, pp. 335-41, as well as that of H. R. Jauss, ibid., pp. 343ff.
28 Wayne C. Booth, The Rhetoric o f Fiction (Chieago, 41963), pp. 137f.
29 M. H. Abrams, "Belief and Suspension of Disbelief," in Literature and Belief (English Institute Essays, 1957), M. H. Abrams, ed. (New York, 1958), p. 17.
30 Carl Friedrieh Graumann, Grundlagen einer Phanomenologie und Psychologie der Perspektioität (Berlin, 1960), p. 14.
31 This correlation has been elucidated by Eckhard Lobsien, Theorie literarischer Illusionsbildung (Stuttgart, 1975), pp. 42-74.
32 J.-B. Pontalis, Nach Freud, transl. by Peter Assion et al. (Frankfort, 1968), pp. 113f., 143, 150, 151f.
33 Ibid., pp. 108ff., 146f., passim.
34 Ibid., pp. 100, 112, 138ff., 147ff.
35 See Alfred Lorenzer, Sprachzerstorung und Rekonstruktion (Frankfort, 1971), pp. 104ff.
36 Norman Holland, The Dynamics of Literary Response (New York, 1968), pp. xiii-xv.
37 A. R. Ammons, "A Poem Is a Walk," Epoch 18 (1968) :115.
38 Holland, Literary Response, pp. 26f.
39 Ibid., p. 28.
40 Ibid., p. 26. These are typical examples of the reified use of psychoanalytical terminology as criticized by Pontalis. This reification is largely responsible for the fact that psychoanalysis was for so long frowned on as a means of access to literature.
41 For the specific meaning of `symbol' in psychoanalysis, see Lorenzer, Sprachzerstdrung, pp. 72fF.
42 Holland, Literary Response, p. 67.
43 Ibid., p.174.
44 Ibid., p. 75.
45 Ibid., p. 202.
46 See I. A. Richards, Principles of Literary Criticism (London, 21926), pp. 243f., 247ff., 251ff.; see also J. Schlaeger's Introduction to his German translation of Richards's book (Prinzipien der Literaturkritik, Frankfort, 1972) , pp. 26-28, as well as C. K. Ogden, I. A. Richards and James Wood, The Foundation of Aesthetics (London, 1922), PP~ 72ff.
47 See Holland, Literary Response, pp. 104-33.
48 Ibid., p. 334.
49 See Simon O. Lesser Fiction and the Unconscious (New York, 1962), pp. 39, 81f., 125.
50 See ibid., pp. 94-120.
51 Ibid., pp. 79, 81f., 93, 125, 130, 192ff.
52 Ibid., pp. 78f.
53 Theodor W. Adomo, Asthetische Theorie, Gesammelte Schriften 7 (Frankfort, 1970) , p. 25.
54 Lesser, Fiction, p. 113.
55 Ibid., p. 203.
56 Ibid., p. 113.
57 Ibid., p. 203; see also Holland, Literary Response, pp. 87ff., passim.
58 For a detailed analysis, see Part III, Chap. 6, pp. 152-59.
59 Lesser, Fiction, p. 39, passim.
 

3. The Repertoire