The Implied Reader as Component of Fantasy Fiction

Document Type : Original Article

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English Department College of Arts, Damnhour University

Abstract

The "implied reader" is a concept which has not received a considerable attention from practical literary criticism given that it is basically related to Reception Theory and is concerned with entities that are outside the text. This paper tends to examine the concept of "The Implied Reader" as designed by Wolfgang Iser in his two major works The Implied Reader (1974) and The Act of Reading (1978), which are considered a corner stone of Reception Theory. It investigates the possibilities of opening wider realms of reading when applying Iser's theory to fantasy fiction as a genre. The term offers realms of new patterns of cognition and communication between the text and the reader, even beyond the claimed intentions of the text. Texts intended for young readers like fantasy fiction are proposed to be having one category of implied reader, the youth. However, as this study will discuss, the term of the implied reader as coined by Iser can dig out other categories of readers implied in such texts and explain why fantasy, unlike realistic texts, invites categories of readers of greater variety and differences

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