Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology

Why do we need literature and what does this need tell us about human nature? Iser shows how these questions come from his work on reader-response criticism and that the answers may lie in the new field of literary anthropology. He relates theoretical issues to analyses of individual works. "An important transitional book, usefully summarizing the past and thoughtfully mapping out the future of a significant critic's theoretical project."--'Modern Philology.' "There is a much greater emphasis on the reader's function as `performer' of the text in 'Prospecting' than in Iser's other books. The two brilliant chapters on Beckett's fiction and drama are crucial here...Literature becomes `play' and `game,' and the reader becomes a performer of himself. This idea of performance becomes central to Iser's new theory. Art does not present life; it performs it."--'Yearbook of English Studies.'