A Critical Summary of

Iser, Wolfgang. "Readers and the Concept of the Implied Reader." The Act of Reading: A Theory of
Aesthetic Response. Johns Hopkins UP, 1978. 27-38. Rpt. in Contexts for Criticism. Ed. Donald
Keesey. 3rd ed. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield, 1998. 158-65.
In "Readers and the Concept of the Implied Reader," Wolfgang Iser begins noting an analogy offered by
Northrop Frye to describing the literary experience: reading, Frye once wrote, is "'like a picnic to which
the author brings the words and the reader the meaning'" (159). Iser accepts this portrayal of "the true
nature of this cooperative enterprise" of literature, but notes that many different types of readers have
been invoked implicitly and explicitly in critical "pronouncements on the effects of literature or
responses to it" (159). In his essay Iser catalogs some of concepts of readers invoked in literary criticism
in order to highlight his own concept of "the implied reader." This implied reader, Iser asserts, transcends
the limitations of the superreader, the informed reader, and the intended reader, as it "embodies all those
predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect" (163).
Iser begins noting two broad categories of readers: real readers and hypothetical readers. Real readers
are simply those that have been documented; their responses have been recorded in some way.
Hypothetical readers can be broken down into two groups: the ideal reader and the contemporary
reader. Both of these types of hypothetical readers, however, are really constructs used to define or
reflect "the potential effect of the literary text." The qualities and responses of the contemporary reader
are reconstructed from the knowledge of social history as this is applied to the text. The ideal reader, on
the other hand, is "extrapolated from the reader's role laid down in the text" and often seems a mirror
image of the author: he can interpret any work or solve any problem because he knows all potential
meanings of a text and all of the codes of the author.
All of these conceptualizations of the reader, Iser notes, focus on "the results produced [by the text]
rather than with the structure of effects, which causes and is responsible for these results" (160).
However, a number of new categories of readers have been defined by recent criticism that focus more
on articulating "that potential in the text which triggers the recreative dialectics in the reader" (160).
These include Michael Riffaterre's "superreader," Stanley Fish's "informed reader," and Erwin Wolff's
"intended reader."
Michael Riffaterre's notion of the superreader is based upon a definition of the focal points of interest or
agreement a large and various group of readers. The superreader is "a collective term for a variety of
readers of different competence" that Riffaterre uses "to discover a density of meaning potential encoded
in the text" (160). The collective consciousness of the superreader is envisioned as a means to a more
complete and competent assessment of meaning.
Behind Stanley Fish's "informed reader" is a similar goal though a different focus. The informed reader
possesses literary competence: he possesses all of the social, historical and semantic knowledge
necessary to process the text. But in addition, during his process of evaluating the text with this
knowledge, the informed reader notes his reactions to the text. This will lead the informed reader to not
only become more aware of the text but also more aware of himself as a reader. In fact, the focus of the
informed reader's critical insight is not so much on the evolution of meaning within the text as it is on
transformation of consciousness within the reader.
Like the informed reader, Erwin Wolff's "intended reader" also shifts the dramatic focus of the literary
experience from the text to the reader. In part the intended reader is a reconstruction of "the idea of the
reader which the author had in mind" (162). This concept represents an attempt to uncover the type of

culture that an author intended to address. But Wolff also uses this concept to explore the rhetorical
relationship between author, text, and audience. It is a means of exploring the author's purpose in
addressing a particular group. The intended reader embodies the evolving consciousness nurtured in the
reading experience. It conceptualizes the audience that the author/text shapes into being.
Although these three types of readers provide workable strategies of looking at a piece of literature, Iser
believes they still impose limits upon the reader's experience or function: one must not predetermine the
reader's "character or his historical situation" (163). In his concept of "the implied reader" he seeks to
avoid this problem. The implied reader "embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary work
to exercise its effect" but are laid down by some external social or authorial reality (163). For Iser, the
implied reader is essentially a component of the structure of a text. The concept "designates a network of
resopnse-inviting structures, which impel the reader to grasp the text" (163).
When a piece of literature is written, it is set up with a specific structure. This textual structure is
presented to elicit some type of response from the reader. The textual structure is, in a sense, the
"world" of perspectives to which the reader must respond (163). These responses are invoked in the
reader through a variety of textual components. For example, point-of-view, narrators, and characters all
give the reader the advantage of viewing the text from different angles. These vantage points essentially
structure the reader's response. They offer "guidelines" or "starting points" that lead the reader to the
"meeting place" where he gains the new perspective of literary meaning (163). The reader's journey to
the meeting place of meaning has been "prestructured" by the text (163).
However, Iser stresses that the reader's role is not one of passive recipient. The prestructuring of his
experience does not predetermine his response. The textual structure only provides guidelines and
starting points for the structured acts of the reader. While it is the role of the text to offer the vantage
points, it is the reader's role as the structured act to evaluate these vantage points. In the meeting place
provided by the text, meaning is realized or actualized in the "ideational activity" of the reader (164).
This "fulfillment" the text can vary between individual readers (164). The meaning of a piece of literature
is going to vary from person to person. A reader brings his own personal experiences, background, and
values into the evaluation of a text. Iser accepts the idea that a piece of literature can yield multiple
meanings. However, any one reader's response still "can be judged against the background of the others
potentially present in the textual structure" (165).
Iser's implied reader, then, is "a transcendental model" by which personal aesthetic experience of
literature is shaped by "the structured effects" of the text. These "starting points" of the reading
experience "transmuted through [the reader's] ideational activities into personal experience" (166). As
the text provides a meeting place of perspectives, the reader's structured acts discover literary meaning.