Eco Iser Holland Indeterminacy

OK...don't know where this is going but...

I've been reading Umberto Eco's latest volume of essays called "On Literature" and also Wolfgang Iser's "Prospecting" - and a whole host of other things too like Linda Hutcheon's "Poetics of Postmodernism" - and Yaz gave me a seminar to scan through which links in with this whole subject and the brain is churning it around.   

I keep coming across this reservation in the non-biblical theorists about applying literary criteria to non-literary texts.  Iser is very strong on this - he has to be since part of his theory is that a text is literary if it seeks to engage the reader in the process of meaning discovery - such engagement ensures that the text can transcend its own chronological and geographical context and so take on some of the ethos of great literature.  On the other hand, banal, contemporary, ephemeral texts do not engage the reader in such a process and therefore do not stand up as literature.  You don't read "The Sun" as you would "Hamlet"  - "The Sun" doesn't make as many demands or provide as many opportunities for gap filling resolution as "Hamlet" does.  Moreover, indeterminacy is really a modern phenomenon ( - not sure Iser is right here - Hamlet? Odyssey? Apuleius?).  Since it has grown up over the last couple of centuries with Joyce and co., it is not appropriate to transport it back and impose it on older texts which did not make use of this technique.  I think Iser is just being myopic here...but you can see what he means about the postmodernising of literature and the more conscious playing with genre-types and so on.  You get what I mean...and hopefully what Iser means...

Part of me agrees with this...I can see where he is coming from - Eco makes the same point in a few of his essays - like the ones on Borges, Intertextualty and wilde's Aphorisms.  It is also a commonplace argument in Biblical Studies' anti-literary theory rhetoric - especially from the evangelical wing.  If Iser says that you should only apply (his) literary theory to modern literary texts, then ancient non-literary texts (are the gospels and Paul's letters really literature - a debate in itself - perhaps John is getting there with his conscious indeterminacy...but surely it is there in all the works even if it is not supposed to be!) should dealt with differently.  So Norman Holland criticises Iser's whole concept by going back to a experiential model of reader-response.  I need to look into that more.

Eco seems to be, like me, in confusion.  At times he wants to uphold the intention of the text (note that, not the author's intention) and at times the reader's intention.  But throughout Iser and Eco there is a sense that the text has to provide the raw materials for the reader or else the reader would have nothing to gather together into some form of meaning.  Like Ready, Steady, Cook - the ingredients provided shape the final meal.  So the engagement between reader and text forms the meaning of the text.  Some texts (merging Iser with Eco) promote this engagement while others simply direct the reader how to read.  Of course, because each reader is different and brings different ingredients of their own to the table...the outcome is going to be different too.  And this applies to every form of communication - not just literature.  Eco's theories tend to focus on a general semiotics rather than a specialised literary semiotics.  But he still makes a plea for various levels of engagement and a kind of Iserian concept of plain meaning for non-literary texts - I saw this in Riffaterre's "La Production du Text" as well...mmm...

One of the fascinating things about all this is that at the end of his essay on it Iser adds a footnote suggesting that he may have misled the reader and given too much control to the reader of a text...well, why let the essay stand then?  Why let the reader read if only then to undermine?  Doesn't that reinforce the error because it focuses the reader back on the error? 

I need to read more...but if any brave soul wants to offer some insights, I'd be very happy to add your ingredients to my musings...

And yes I do know of Todorov's picnic saying or whoever else said it before or after Todorov...

Pete

Comments

[graham]

Just found your blog from...I don't know where.

That's a helpful summary of your reading. Cheers. I think it's Stanley Fish who even concedes that though the reader supplies the meaning, the text sets the direction (something like that!).

It seems quite common for reader-response theorits to "chicken-out" of the full implications of their position by (rightfully, to my mind) giving some more control back to the text). And it seems just as common for their critics to miss this.

The "Ready, steady, cook" analogy is great! :-)