LITERARY CRITICISM AND THE IDEAL READER

Abstract

There is a tendency in contemporary criticism to emphasize the role of the reader and possibly to exclude, and even to an avowed extinction, the author and literary objects. I think this is wrong. The writer, the critic and the reader should be viewed from the same vantage point, and they should be seen pari-passu to be performing if not the same, then almost the same function. We must accept, on a first premise, that the phenomenology, the poetics, the aesthetics, the erotic and the prudery of reading are among the current theoretical concerns of criticism. In criticism, the role of the reader is more prominent than the creation of the writer or the independent harmony of the text. Thus, it is very difficult to pin-point the function and role of the reader, the critic or the interpreter Most critics find it appropriate to speak about themselves in order to elucidate the role of the reader. Recently interest in the reader has nourished but its history is as old as criticism itself.2 Reader writer and work are very essential in literary thinking and the evolution of their configuration is an important aspect of the history of criticism. In literary critical texts, reader, writer and work are structural elements because their qualities tell us something directly about the literary nature of the works in which they appear. Bodies of criticism comprise fictions about literature and one of the heroes or characters in these fictions is the ideal reader. His identity as a hero is representative of the formal qualities of the criticism within which he exists.