implied reader

[ozguy0101]

Hi All!
I am trying to discuss the question "What is an ‘implied reader’ and how does the concept relate to constructing and interpreting narratives?"

I have been trying to research this for a while

thanks!

[MorpheusSandman]

Funny you should ask this as in another thread I just linked to Wolfgang Iser's book in which the term was coined: http://www.amazon.com/Implied-Reader.../dp/0801821509

It simply refers to the ideal reader/audience that an author has in mind when they're writing. EG, Donne wrote most of his early love poetry for a coterie of males that looked at poetry as a kind of game of manly one-upsmanship, which can influence the perspective that we read much of his poems from.

[Calidore]

Funny you should ask this as in another thread I just linked to Wolfgang Iser's book in which the term was coined: http://www.amazon.com/Implied-Reader.../dp/0801821509

It simply refers to the ideal reader/audience that an author has in mind when they're writing. EG, Donne wrote most of his early love poetry for a coterie of males that looked at poetry as a kind of game of manly one-upsmanship, which can influence the perspective that we read much of his poems from.

So it sounds like "implied reader" is basically a synonym for "target audience" or "demographic."

[Charles Darnay]

IF you want a very explicit example of an implied reader, look at Calvino's if on a winter's night a traveler

[cafolini]

I think there must always be an implied reader if the writer has mastered enough to evolve beyond the raw subject and become successful in his/her addressing. This even applies to the most ancient classics. Nothing new in the world of writing.

[MorpheusSandman]

So it sounds like "implied reader" is basically a synonym for "target audience" or "demographic."

Yeah, but instead of being used in marketing like, say, how film/TV producers use it, literary theorists use it to analyze how this "target audience" shapes the creation and interpretation of the work in question. EG, one can ask whether Donne was a misogynist, but the concept of the implied reader would argue that he was writing in a way that would appeal to/provoke his readers' views of women, perhaps more so than representing his personal views (which is why he offers contradictory views depending on whom he was writing for).

[JBI]

In other words it is the compositional objective of the text in regard to audience. Meaning, your text is influenced based on the reception you would wish to get, therefore you write as if anticipating a reception amongst a specific group.

As for Donne, I think he was writing for himself just as much. The guy had a masturbatory sort of mentality where he got off on his own cleverness. What he writes about his “wife” in his poems before going to the continent highlights this sort of play with himself. Are we to suppose that his girlfriend/wife would not have read those poems?

Likewise, it is clear that he never wanted Queen Elizabeth to read the Elegies he penned, which put his more famous works' misogyny to shame. The only time I see his poetics getting away from those jokes are after his wife died and he wrote more or less to console himself. Perhaps guilt? Who knows, he certainly believed in guilt, given the religious perspective he takes in his sermons and later poems.

[MorpheusSandman]

Anne most likely read Donne's poems, and there is a theory (I forget where I read it) that Donne was likely attracted to her because he saw her as an intellectual equal, so he could write to impress her the same way he used to write to impress his male coterie. As far as writing to impress himself, I'm sure that was a part of it, but that mentality is quite common amongst writers/artists, in general, but especially at that time period where "cleverness" is pretty much synonymous with all the metaphysical poets. Herbert, despite his humbler subjects and less provocative statements, is just as clever when it comes to his formal and metaphorical inventions. I just think Donne comes off as more masturbatory because of his equally provocative subject matter and statements.