^1. Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1961), p. 71.

^2. Link, Rezeptionsjorschung: Fine Einführung in Methoden und Problème (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1976); on p. 2, Link speaks both of the “Auswahl, die der abstrakte Autor [her alternate term for “impliziter Autor”] getroffen hat” and of the “Auswahl, die der Autor … getroffen hat”; see also p. 28. Link's ties to Booth are Rolf Fieguth (see n. 26) and Wolf Schmid, Der Textaufbau in den Erzahlungen Dostoevskijs (Munich: Fink, 1973).

^3. Wolff, “Der intendierte Léser: Überlegungen und Beispiele zur Einführung eines literaturwissenschaftlichen Begriffs,” Poetica, 4 (1971), 141–66; translations in the text are mine.

^4. Wolff, p. 160. Wolff's criteria are adopted uncritically by Gunter Grimm, “Einfiihrung in die Rezeptionsforschung,” in Literatur und Leser: Theorien und Modelle zur Rezeption literarischer Werke, ed. Grimm (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1975), pp. 11–84, esp. p. 75, and by Horst Flaschka, “Rezeptionsasthetik im Literaturunterricht: Eine Einfiihrung in Schwerpunkte der Théorie (1. Teil),” Mitteilungen des Deutschen Germanisten-V erbandes, 24 (1977), 35–44, esp. p. 43.

^5. Harries, “Fiction and Artifice: Studies in Fielding, Wieland, Sterne, Diderot,” Diss. Yale 1973 (DAI, 34 [1973], 7191A), esp. pp. 136–46. Except for the terminology (see p. 856 of my essay), this study contains one of the clearest and most insightful analyses of fictive readers.

^6. Nelson, “The Fictive Reader and Literary Self-Reflectiveness,” in The Disciplines of Criticism, ed. Peter Demetz et al. (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1968), pp. 173–91, esp. p. 175. At times it even seems that Nelson's fictive reader is the real reader: “The problem of the fictive reader [of Wordsworth's ‘The Thorn’], then, is to gauge his responsibility in reading or, better, performing such poetry as ‘The Thorn’ ” (p. 178). See Harries' criticism, p. 136.

^7. Iser, Der Akt des Lesens: Théorie àslhetischer Wirkung (Munich: Fink, 1976); The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978). Der implizite Leser: Kommunikationsformen des Romans von Bunyan bis Beckett (Munich: Fink, 1972); The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1974).

^8. Akt, p. 59: “… im intendierten Leser als der dem Text eingezeichneten Leserfiktion …”; this is oddly translated as “a sort of fictional inhabitant of the text” (Act, p. 33), showing the need for an English term like “characterized reader.”

^9. Akt, p. 62; my translation, since Iser omitted the passage in the English edition—perhaps because he saw the inconsistency.

^10. Iser, “Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction,” in Aspects of Narrative, ed. J. Hillis Miller (New York: Columbia Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 1–45, esp. p. 43; originally Die Appellstruktur der Texte: Vnbestimmtheit als Wirkungsbedingung literarischer Prosa (Constance: Universitätsverlag, 1970), p. 33.

^11. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 218–19; see also p. 38.

^12. The Implied Reader, p. 48 (italics mine); Der implizite Leser, p. 82 (“die dem Leser des Tom Jones zugedachte Rolle”). Link has argued at some length that Iser's analyses of particular texts in this study ultimately aim at the author's intention (“ ‘Die Appellstruktur der Texte’ und ein ‘Paradigmawechsel in der Literaturwissenschaft‘?” Jahrbuch der Deutschen Schil-ler-Gesellschaft, 17 [1973], 532–83, esp. pp. 548, 564); Gerhard Kaiser had made the same point (“Nachruf auf die Interpretation? Zu Wolfgang Iser, Die Appellstruktur der Texte,” Poetica, 4 [1971], 267–80; rpt. in Kaiser. Antithesen [Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1973], pp. 51–70, esp. pp. 54–55), and Ferdinand van Ingen lists four more examples (“Die Revolte des Lesers oder Rezeption versus Interpretation,” Amsterdamer Beiträge zur neueren Germanistik, 3 [1974], 83–147, esp. p. 137). Iser responds to Kaiser's and Link's criticism in “Im Lichte der Kritik,” in Rezeptionsasthetik, ed. Rainer Warning (Munich: Fink, 1975), pp. 325–42. He argues that Kaiser is still bound by “Darstellungsästhetik” and that Link distorts and overemphasizes his concept of indeterminacy. Nowhere, however, does he address the charge that he himself relies on authorial intention.

^13. W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy,” in Wimsatt, The Verbal Icon (Lexington: Univ. of Kentucky Press, 1954), pp. 3–18, esp. p. 4. See also van Ingen, p. 89, and Grimm, Rezeptionsgeschichte (Munich: Fink, 1977), pp. 5054, 280–81, but neither of these critics refers to Wimsatt and Beardsley's original formulation of this distinction.

^14. “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics,” New Literary History, 2 (1970), 123–62; rpt. in Fish, Self-Consuming Artifacts (Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1972), pp. 383–427; the quotation appears on p. 409.

^15. Act, pp. 34, 37; Akt, pp. 60, 65.

^16. Ong, PMLA, 90 (1975), 9–21, shows a regrettable ignorance of the whole German critical tradition in this area, including Wolff, Iser, and Naumann (see p. 854 of my essay).

^17. “ ‘Die Fächer vors Gesicht!‘ Leser und Erotik in Wielands Comischen Erzählungen,” Lessing Yearbook, 11 (1979), 199–226.

^18. 16–28 March 1837; quoted by J. Kamerbeek, Ir., “Drei Hypostasen des Lesers: Eine Montage,” in Dichter und Leser, ed. Ferdinand van Ingen (Groningen: Walters-Noordhoff, 1972), p. 196.

^19. “Formen des Lesens,” Poetica, 9 (1977), 472–98, esp. p. 478. It appears from the context that Maurer intends this statement as a criticism of Iser; I do not believe, however, that Iser intends his work as a history of real readers' responses (but see n. 23 below).

^20. See Gunter Grimm, “Einführung,” p. 77. Grimm's classification of readers (p. 75) is confused and vague and is barely improved (indeed, it is contradicted in part) in his Rezeptionsgeschichte (1977), pp. 40–41, where he distinguishes between readers on three levels within the text: (a) characters in the narrated events (presumably only when they are also readers or listeners; these would correspond to my secondary characterized readers); (b) on the level of narration: “the implied reader” of Iser; this includes an “intentional” reader (intentionaler Leser—an odd formulation in either language), which is more or less the same as the implied reader, but the “intentional” reader is for Grimm a larger concept and also encompasses the characterized reader (Leserfigur) (p. 275, n. 109). Thus Grimm seems to commit the common error of assuming that the characterized reader represents a model for the real reader's response (“Identifikationsan-gebot an den realen Leser” [p. 41]). The third level (c) is the “addressee of the work,” who is not on the level of narration but on the level of “the work.” This concept would seem to be identical to Iser's implied reader, and even to Grimm's own “intentional” reader: Grimm writes that the intention of the author, embodied in the “intentional” reader, expresses “alle im Text enthaltenen Lesersignale”; the addressee, likewise, is “erschließbar aus der Summe der intentionalen Leser-Signale” (pp. 40–41). Grimm's new terms relating to the author's conception of his reader when not embodied in a text (“imaginierter,” “intendierter,” “konzeptioneller Leser,” pp. 38–39) will prove useless for interpretation (his alteration of Wolff's concept “intendierter Leser” is especially misleading; Wolff meant his concept in relation to a text).

^21. Booth, p. 138; quoted by Iser, Act, pp. 36–37, Akt, pp. 64–65. In The Implied Reader (p. 30; Der implizite Leser, p. 58), Iser quoted most of the same passage from Booth but failed to take exception to it, thus giving the impression that he believed that the reader does perfectly fill this role.

^22. The Implied Reader, p. 38; Der implizite Leser, p. 68. In The Act of Reading, Iser submits the same passage to a more extended analysis (pp. 142–46), but at the basis of this variation lies the same confusion of characterized and implied readers.

^23. Iser further confuses matters by drawing a conclusion directly from the sociologically differentiated characterizations of readers in this passage to Fielding's concern “with catering for a varied public” (Implied Reader, p. 38); in other words, he identifies the Active characterizations with real readers—the “varied public”—and these, in turn, with the reader implied in or intended for the work—the audience Fielding is “catering to.” This added confusion is not surprising, since Iser explicitly argues that the “imaginary” (fingiert) “author-reader dialogue” gives the reader “guidelines as to how he is to view the proceedings,” and is thus “explicit guidance of the reader” (Implied Reader, pp. 46–47; Der implizite Leser, p. 81).

^24. Maurer, p. 480; he refers to previous articles by Karlheinz Stierle and Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht.

^25. Gibson, “Authors, Speakers, Readers, and Mock Readers,” College English, 11 (1949–50), 265–69, esp. p. 268. See also Harries, pp. 137–38.

^26. “Die personalen Relationen in der literarischen Kommunikation” (1969); rpt. in Literarische Kommunikation, ed. Rolf Fieguth (Kronberg: Scriptor, 1975), pp. 127–47, esp. p. 142. Rolf Fieguth would probably agree; in his analysis of a passage that does not mention a reader at all, he posits an implied “dialogue” between a characterized reader and a narrator, a dialogue that is remarkably similar to that constructed by Ong on the basis of the Hemingway text (p. 13), but from which the implied reader must distance himself or herself (“Zur Rezeptionslenkung bei narrativen und dramatischen Werken,” Sprache im technischen Zeitalter, 47 [1973], 186–201, esp. pp. 188–89).

^27. Prince, “Notes toward a Categorization of Fictional ‘Narratees,‘” Genre, 4 (1971), 100–06, esp. p. 100. On “narratees” (characterized readers) see p. 856 of my essay.

^28. Prince, “Introduction à l'étude du narrataire,” Poétique, 14 (1973), 178–96, esp. p. 191.

^29. In his review of Der Akt des Lesens, H. U. Gumbrecht criticizes, unreasonably to my mind, Iser's synonymous use of the terms “impliziter Leser” ‘implied reader’ and “Leserrolle” ‘reader's role’ (Poetica, 9 [1977], 522–34, esp. p. 524).

^30. Sherbo, “ ‘Inside’ and ‘Outside’ Readers in Fielding's Novels,” in his Studies in the Eighteenth Century Novel (n.p.: Michigan State Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 35–57, esp. p. 39.

^31. Hans Robert Jauss has more recently further complicated “die gegenwärtig ausufernde Typologie von Leserrollen” by calling the real reader “der explizite Leser” (“Der Leser als Instanz einer neuen Geschichte der Literatur,” Poetica, 1 [1975], 325–44, esp. p. 339). It goes almost without saying that this sort of “explicit” reader (outside the text) is not explicit in the same way the “implicit” reader (inside the text) is implicit. The actualization of the reader's role does not make the “implicit” reader “explicit.”

^32. Michelsen, Laurence Sterne und der deutsche Roman des achtzehnten Jahrhunderts (Gottingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1962), pp. 15–16 and n. 9. When Michelsen says that the “vorgestellter Leser” can be determined “direkt aus den Apostrophen des Erzahlers,” he clearly refers to a characterized reader.

^33. Kamerbeek points out the various connotations of the term: “dans le mot ‘idéal’ le sème de ‘perfection concrète’ ou bien celui d' ‘idéalité abstraite’ est actualisé” (“Le Concept du ‘Lecteur Idéal,‘ ” Neophilologus, 61 [1977], 2–7, esp. p. 5; Kamerbeek traces the use of this term back to A. W. Schlegel). Aleksandra Okopien-STawińska uses the term “ideal” to refer to a real recipient (pp. 143, 145).

^34. “Autor—Adressat—Leser,” Weimarer Beitráge, 17, No. 11 (1971), 163–69. The term is also used by structuralists like Okopień-Stawińska.

^35. E.g., Gérard Genette, Figures, iii (Paris: Seuil, 1972), 265–66.

^36. Crosman, “Some Doubts about 'The Reader of Paradise Lost; ” College English, 37 (1975), 372–82.

^37. Jauss, “Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft,” in Jauss, Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1970), translated in part as “Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory,” New Literary History, 2 (1970), 7–37.

^38. Cf. H. P. H. Teesing: “Das Absolute wird zwar nicht erkannt, aber anerkannt”; “Die adäquate Interpretation gibt es … idealiter, nicht realiter” (“Der Standort des Interpreter” Orb is Litterarum, 19 [1964], 31–46, esp. pp. 42, 45; quoted by van Ingen, p. 93).

^39. Crosman seems at times to reject the idea of intention altogether and at other times to embrace it. But he is mistaken to identify the concept of the “ideal reader” with “an attempt, … in the wake of its demolition at the hands of Wimsatt and Beardsley, to smuggle ‘authorial intention’ back into critical discussion” (p. 373), at least where the ideal reader is based on textual evidence. Wimsatt and Beardsley did not argue that intention cannot be determined by reference to the text; they argued only that authorial intentions expressed outside the text do not necessarily describe the structures of the work. They accepted internal but not external manifestations of intention.

^40. See Sherbo; Iser (The Implied Reader, Ch. ii); and John Preston, The Created Self: The Reader's Role in Eighteenth-Century Fiction (London: Heinemann, 1970).

^41. “De la diction des verses,” Œuvres, ed. Jean Hytier, ii (Paris: Gallimard, 1960), 1255–56; quoted by Kamerbeek, “Drei Hypostasen,” p. 204.

^42. Jauss, “Paradigmawechsel in der Literaturwissenschaft,” Linguistische Berichte, No. 3 (1969), pp. 44–56; rpt. in Methoden der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft, ed. Viktor Źmegač (Frankfurt: Athenaum, 1972), pp. 274–90.

^43. Jauss, “Der Leser als Instanz einer neuen Geschichte der Literatur,” Poetica, 7 (1975), 325–44, esp. pp. 339–40. Jauss takes the same position in his preface to Ästhetische Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik, I (Munich: Fink, 1977), 13.

^44. For example, on page 48 of Rezeptionsgeschichte Grimm gives special status to such intentions (“Die Objektivation der fiktionalen Leserrolle läßt sich … nur mit Kenntnis der entstehungsgeschichtlichen Sachverhalte, einschlieBlich der extratextuellen Autorintention … approximativ erreichen” ‘The objectivization of the fictional role of the reader can be approximately attained … only with knowledge of the facts surrounding the genesis of the work, including extratextual authorial intention’—italics mine), and on page 51 he (correctly) withdraws this status (“Diese textextern explizit gemachten Intentionen sollten … mit eben der Vorsicht behandelt werden, die der Interpretation jedes Nichtautors entgegengebracht wird” ‘These intentions made explicit outside the text should be … treated with the same caution as an interpretation by any other person’).

^43. Michal Glowiński writes, “ein gewisser Teil der poetischen Werke entsteht entweder gegen die Forderungen der Empfänger oder aber berücksichtigt sie gar nicht und läBt sich deshalb nur mittelbar als Ausdruck jener Forderungen analysieren” ‘a certain number of poetic works originates either in opposition to the demands of the recipients or pays no heed to them and can therefore be analyzed only indirectly as an expression of those demands’ (“Der virtuelle Empfänger in der Struktur des poetischen Werks” [originally 1967], in Literarische Kommunikation, pp. 97–126, esp. p. 98; rpt. in Weimarer Beitrage, 21, No. 6 [1975], 118–43). This may be true for concrete “Forderungen” ‘demands’ of the public but not for less obvious aspects of the writer's relation to society. But van Ingen is wrong to assume, at the opposite extreme, that there is always a direct, positive relation between contemporary audience and the writer: “Der Autor orientiert sich an den Regelkonventionen, die er beim Leser als bekannt voraussetzt” ‘The author is guided by the regulative conventions he presumes to be known to the reader’ (p. 131). The implied reader may represent the author's rejection of the contemporary public (which means, of course, that they do influence the author).

^48. Link, “ ‘Appellstruktur’ und ‘Paradigmawechsel‘?” p. 539 and elsewhere (“Interferenz”). She is followed by Elrud Kunne-Ibsch, “Rezeptionsforschung: Kon-stanten und Varianten eines literaturwissenschaftlichen Konzepts in Theorie und Praxis,” Amsterdamer Beitrage zur neueren Germanistik, 3 (1974), 1–36.

^47. See Bleich, Subjective Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1978), and “The Subjective Paradigm in Science, Psychology and Criticism,” New Literary History, 7 (1976), 313–34.

^48. Jauss: “die implizite Leserrolle [ist] an objektiven Strukturen des Textes ablesbar” ‘the implicit role of the reader can be determined from objective structures of the text’ (“Der Leser als Instanz,” p. 339). It seems as if Jauss is here inadvertently reintroducing “objective meaning” of texts after having rejected it (e.g., in “An Interview with Hans Robert Jauss,” New Literary History, 11 [1979], 83–95, esp. p. 84).

^49. In spite of his expressed skepticism regarding objectivity (Rezeptionsgeschichte, p. 54), Grimm's entire system is based on a deep-seated faith in the determinability of a correct understanding of the text (“die Überprüfbarkeit eines adaquaten Verstehens” [p. 57]). To turn to “history” as a philosopher's stone that would render criticism objective ignores the ambiguity of historical evidence (one critic's Entstehungsgeschichte is not necessarily another's!) and the subjectivity of the historian's point of view (to which Grimm gives token recognition—e.g., p. 59). Van Ingen, too, calls historical data “objektivierbar” (p. 134). I mean to degrade not historical criticism—my approach is eminently historical—but rather a naive model of historiographie objectivity.

^50. In the year after I submitted this article, largely new essays appeared in a book whose title indicates how close the authors' concerns are to mine: The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation, ed. Susan Suleiman and Inge Crosman (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1980). In her discerning “Introduction: Varieties of Audience-Oriented Criticism” (pp. 3–45), Suleiman touches on several issues I treat. She speaks of an “inscribed reader” (p. 14), which would correspond to the characterized reader, and perceptively criticizes Iser (pp. 23–25), although she ignores much German criticism that preceded her own.

Essays that I have cited by Gibson, Prince, Iser, and Fish are now collected (in English), with others, in Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, ed. Jane P. Tompkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1980). Both Crosman and Tompkins have assembled annotated bibliographies that are especially comprehensive for Anglo-American and French criticism.