Prospecting – From Reader Response to Literary Anthology: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology

An important transitional book usefully summarizing the past and thoughtfully mapping out the future of a significant critics theoretical project.--Modern Philology. There is a much greater emphasis on the readers function as `performer of the text in Prospecting than in Isers other books. The two brilliant chapters on Becketts 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 Isers new theory. Art does not present life; it performs it.--Yearbook of English Studies.