Wolfgang Iser > Quotes

“This is why, when we have been particularly impressed by a book, we feel the need to talk about it; we do not want to get away from it by talking about it—we simply want to understand more clearly what it is in which we have been entangled. We have undergone an experience, and now we want to know consciously what we have experienced. Perhaps this is the prime usefulness of literary criticism—it helps to make conscious those aspects of the text which would otherwise remain concealed in the subconscious; it satisfies (or helps to satisfy) our desire to talk about what we have read.”
― Wolfgang Iser

“When, for instance, we say that a literary work is good or bad, we are making a value judgment (...) Objective evidence for subjective preferences does not makes the value judgment itself objective, but merely objectifies the preference.”
― Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response