Wolfgang Iser Bücher

By defining what happens during the act of reading, that is, how aesthetic experience is initiated, develops, and functions, Iser's book provides the first systematic framework for assessing the communicatory function of a literary text within the context from which it arises. It is an important work that will appeal to those interested in the reading process, aesthetic theory, literary criticism, and basic theoretical aspects of the novel.

The pioneer of "literary anthropology," Wolfgang Iser presents a wide-ranging and comprehensive exploration of this new field in an attempt to explain the human need for the "particular form of make-believe" known as literature. Ranging from the Renaissance pastoral to Coleridge to Sartre and Beckett, The Fictive and the Imaginary is a distinguished work of scholarship from one of Europe's most respected and influential critics.