Isers Act of Reading :: essays papers

Isers Act of teachingCritiquing a Critique Wolfgang Isers The Act of ReadingTexts on critical theory present an interesting challenge when ane sits down to critique or review them. The purpose of these texts is to persuade the lecturer that all texts should be read and critiqued in the manner described deep down its pages. The process of evaluating such a book based on criteria that the reader has already reared is made much more difficult by the fact that the focus of the book is to explain, in the majority of the cases, why the criteria be used is inferior to what the book itself recommends. How then, does champion approach the problem that surrounds critiquing an instructional text on how to critique?The simplest way to approach the dilemma is to establish whether or not the points made by the author are valid, unheeding of whether or not the reader agrees enough with the other to adopt his elan of criticism. In this particular case, the author, Wolfgang Iser, is at tempting to convince his readers that an approach he calls aesthetic chemical reaction is the proper way to read and critique texts. Iser claims that his style is universal and end be applied to virtually all forms of writing. For this to be true, then one of the books written by Iser to help describe the process, The Act of Reading, should be fitted to validate his aesthetic response theory once it is read and critiqued by the manner described within the theory itself. Interestingly enough, the style of Isers book and the approach the author takes in explaining his theory to his readers run all told counter to the ideals of his theory.Isers aesthetic response theory contains is based on several points. First, the purpose of the reader is not to attempt to discover the single, secret meaning within a text. The author backs up his position by providing this explanation If the critics revelation of the meaning is a sacking to the authorthen meaning must be a affair which can be subtracted from the work. And if this meaning, as the very heart of the work, can be lifted out of the text, the work is then used up-through interpretation, literature is morose into an item for consumption. This is fatal not only for the text but likewise for literary criticism, for what can be the function of interpretation if its sole skill is to extract the meaning and leave behind an empty shell?