Wolfgang Iser papers, 1952-2004

Printable guide [HTML]

Summary

Creators:

Abstract:

This collection contains professional and private correspondence, papers presented at conferences, course reading and lecture notes, videorecordings, and unpublished and published writings documenting the work of literary theorist Wolfgang Iser as a teacher and scholar. The papers reflect Iser's main interests as a professor of English literature. The bulk of the material dates from after his appointment in 1967 as a professor at the University of Konstanz, in Germany. Some material documents his teaching at the University of California, Irvine from 1978 to 1998.

Extent:

12.2 Linear Feet (32 boxes) and 0.25 unprocessed linear feet

Language:

English .

Preferred citation:

Wolfgang Iser papers. MS-C006. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California. Date accessed.

For the benefit of current and future researchers, please cite any additional information about sources consulted in this collection, including permanent URLs, item or folder descriptions, and box/folder locations.

Background

Scope and content:

The papers are composed chiefly of handwritten or typed notes, approximately two thirds in German and one third in English. Especially noteworthy in the collection are Iser's notes on special topics such as reader-response criticism, fictionality, the imaginary, staging, and aesthetics. Also represented in the collection are notes on authors such as Thomas Carlyle, Henry Fielding, William Shakespeare, Philip Sidney, and Edmund Spenser, and on English literary periods and genres such as the English novel of the Enlightenment and English pastoral poetry.

Biographical / historical:

Wolfgang Iser was born on July 22, 1926, in Marienberg (Saxony), Germany, the son of Paul and Else (Steinbach) Iser. From 1933 to 1944 he attended elementary and high school. He was drafted into the German army in 1944, and released from a prisoner of war camp in 1945. At the age of 19, he enrolled as a student of English, Philosophy, and German at the University of Leipzig, after the "Vorsemester" required for enrollment of students who graduated from high school in the later war years. At the end of his first year he transferred to the University of Tübingen and later to the University of Heidelberg, where he earned his Ph.D. in Anglistik (English philology and literature) in 1950 and joined the first generation of West German postwar graduates. From that point onward Iser's academic career took a straight and very successful course, which in many ways was typical for a young scholar of his generation. After his graduation and a short teaching appointment in Heidelberg, he became an assistant lecturer in 1952 in Glasgow, Scotland, teaching German for the next three years. Just before his departure he married Lore Reichert, who continued to assist Iser in his academic endeavors.

Upon his return to Germany in 1955, Iser was appointed to a position equivalent to an assistant professorship in the English Department of the University of Heidelberg, where he earned his "Habilitation" in 1957 with a work on the aesthetics of Walter Pater. This postdoctoral degree is the final step in the German academic system in becoming a full professor. After three more years of teaching at the University of Heidelberg, Iser was appointed full professor of English at the University of Würzburg in 1960.

After this appointment and another at the University of Köln during the mid-1960s, Iser finally took a position in the Department of Literature at the newly founded University of Konstanz in 1967. Konstanz belonged to the numerous new "reform" campuses created in West Germany in the late 1960s and early 1970s in order to provide higher education for the burgeoning postwar generation of students and to fill West Germany's need for professionals in all fields. This rapid growth in the West German educational system was accompanied by deep reforms of traditional structures and teaching methods, and Wolfgang Iser was a significant participant in this reform project. He was a member of the founding council of the University of Bielefeld, another reform campus known at the time for its innovative structures. He became chairman of the Planning Committee for the University of Konstanz in 1971, a crucial position in the shaping of this new school, maintaining this post until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1991. Throughout his career Iser has been in great demand as an academic consultant in Germany, most recently as the chairman of the committee for establishing the "Grossbritannien-Zentrum" (i.e., British Studies Center) at the Humboldt-University in Berlin.

In the 1970s Iser established himself as one of the leading figures in literary theory with such works as Der implizite Leser (1972, English ed. The Implied Reader) and Der Akt des Lesens (1976, English ed. The Act of Reading). As a result, he was associated with "reception theory," which was very influential in literary studies during the 1970s; it was especially well-received in the United States, along with "reader-response" criticism. With Hans-Robert Jauss, Iser is considered to be the founding father of the Konstanz School of Reception Aesthetics. It was also during these years that Iser intensified his contacts with the North American academic community, which became over the years his second academic home. In the 1970s Iser held two fellowships and three visiting appointments at U.S. and Canadian institutions, including a visiting appointment in the German Department at the University of California, Irvine in 1976. In 1978 Iser became a faculty member of the Department of English and Comparative Literature at UCI, teaching classes regularly in English literature and literary theory.

Beginning in the mid-1980s Iser's research was oriented more and more toward the issues of literary anthropology. A large research project investigating these issues was established in the Department of Literature at the University of Konstanz, which is still in place. Books such as Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology (1989) and Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre (1991, English ed. The Fictive and the Imaginary) are representative of this phase in Iser's theoretical research.

Wolfgang Iser pursued an international and highly successful career, with numerous appointments and lectureships in Europe, North America, and Asia. He served on boards of prestigious academic and cultural institutions and has instigated a number of research and editiorial projects such as the series Poetik und Hermeneutik. His international reputation was indicated by his numerous memberships and honorary memberships in academic associations such as the Modern Language Association, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Heidelberg Academy of Arts and Sciences, revealed his international reputation.

Iser died in Konstanz, Germany on January 24, 2007.

Biographical Chronology
Date	Event
1926	Born on July 22 in Marienberg (Saxony), Germany.
1946	Student at the University of Leipzig.
1946-1947	Student at the University of Tübingen.
1947-1950	Student at the University of Heidelberg.
1950	Die Weltanschauung Henry Fieldings
1951-1952	Instructor, English Department, University of Heidelberg.
1952	Die Weltanschauung Henry Fieldings
1952-1955	Assistant Lecturer, German Department, University of Glasgow.
1955-1957	Wissenschaftlicher Assistent (equivalent to an assistant professorship), English Department, University of Heidelberg.
1957	Habilitation (postdoctoral degree), University of Heidelberg.
1957-1960	Privatdozent (equivalent to a non-tenured associate professorship), English Department, University of Heidelberg.
1960	Walter Pater: Die Autonomie des Ästhetischen
1960	Britannica: Festschrift für Hermann M. Flasdieck
1960-1963	Professor of English, English Department, University of Würzburg.
1963-1967	Professor of English, English Department, University of Köln.
1963-1982	Founding member and member of the Board of the Research Unit "Poetik und Hermeneutik."
1963-1994	Theorie und Geschichte der Literatur und der Schönen Künste: Texte und Abhandlungen
1966	Immanente Ästhetik - Ästhetische Reflexionen: Lyrik als Paradigma der Moderne
1967-1972	Member of the Council for establishing the University of Bielefeld.
1967-1991	Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Department of Literature, University of Konstanz.
1968	Visiting appointment, English Department, Colgate University, Hamilton, New York.
1970-1971	Fellow at the Center of the Humanities, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut.
1970	Die Appellstruktur der Texte: Unbestimmtheit als Wirkungsbedingung literarischer Prosa
1970	Spensers Arkadien: Fiktion und Geschichte in der englischen Renaissance
1970	Dargestellte Geschichte in der europäischen Literatur des 19. Jahrhunderts
1971-1991	Chairman of the Planning Committee of the University of Konstanz.
1972	Der implizite Leser: Kommunikationsformen des Romans von Bunyan bis Beckett
1972	Henry Fielding und der englische Roman des 18. Jahrhunderts
1973-1974	Fellow at the Center of Advanced Studies in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Wassenaar, Holland.
1974	Visiting appointment, Graduate Program of Comparative Literature, University of Toronto, Ontario.
1975	Fellow of the Heidelberg Academy of Arts and Sciences.
1976	Visiting appointment, German Department, University of California, Irvine.
1976	Poggioli Lecture, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts.
1976	Der Akt des Lesens: Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung
1978	Professor of English, Department of English and Comparative Literature, University of California, Irvine.
1978	Teaching Fellow, School of Criticism and Theory, University of California, Irvine.
1978	Senior Old Dominion Fellow, Council of the Humanities, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey.
1979	Honorary Member of the British Comparative Literature Association, Cambridge, England.
1979	Die Artistik des Mißlingens: Ersticktes Lachen im Theater Becketts
1982	Theorien der Kunst
1983-1984	Visiting appointment, English Department, University of Zürich.
1984-1998	Member of the Selection Committee of the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation, Bonn-Bad Godesberg.
1985	Honorary Member of the Modern Language Association of America, New York.
1985	Hanes-Willis-Lectures, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
1985-1986	Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
1987	Honorary Foreign Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, Boston, Massachusetts.
1987	Laurence Sternes "Tristram Shandy": Inszenierte Subjektivität
1988-1991	Co-Director of the research project "Institutions of Interpretation," sponsored by the German-Israeli Foundation for Scientific Research & Development, Jerusalem.
1988	Shakespeares Historien: Genesis und Geltung
1989	Walker-Ames Lectureship, University of Washington, Seattle.
1989	Keynote speaker at Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea, on the occasion of its 50th anniversary celebration.
1989	Languages of the Unsayable: The Play of Negativity in Literature and Literary Theory
1989	Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology
1989	Theodor A. Meyer: Das Stilgesetz der Poesie
1990-1996	Member of the Board of the Franz-Rosenzweig-Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History, Hebrew University, Jerusalem.
1990	Fingieren als anthropologische Dimension der Literatur
1991	Member of the Academia Europaea, London.
1991	Professor emeritus as of October 1, 1991, at the University of Konstanz.
1991	Scholar at the Rockefeller Study and Conference Center, Bellagio, Italy.
1991	Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre: Perspektiven literarischer Anthropologie
1992	Theorie der Literatur: Eine Zeitperspektive
1993	Spielstrukturen in Shakespeares Komödien: "Sommernachtstraum"-"Was ihr wollt"
1993-1994	Chairman of the committee for establishing the "Großbritannien-Zentrum" at the Humboldt-University, Berlin.
1994	Wellek Library Lecturer at the University of California, Irvine.
1994-1999	Co-Director of the International Conference of Humanistic Discourse research project, sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt-Foundation, Bonn, and University of California, Irvine.
1995	Visiting appointment, University of Basel.
1995	Das Großbritannien-Zentrum in kulturwissenschaftlicher Sicht
1996	The Translatability of Cultures: Figurations of the Space Between
1998	Stepping Forward: Essays, Lectures and Interviews
2000	The Range of Interpretation
2000	Presidential Lecture, Stanford University, California.
2000	Ph.D., Honoris Causa, New Bulgarian University, Sofia, Bulgaria.
2000	Werner Heisenberg Medal, Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung, Bonn.
2000-2001	Senior Distinguished Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, National Humanities Center, North Carolina.
2001	Corresponding Fellow, British Academy, London.
2001	Senior Fellow for Life, School of Advanced Study, University of London, 2001.
2005	Professor emeritus at University of California, Irvine.
2006	How to Do Theory
2007	Died in Konstanz, Germany.

The following chronology of courses taught by Wolfgang Iser at the University of Konstanz and at the University of California, Irvine was assembled with the assistance of Dr. Rolf Eichler and Christa Schellhammer (Konstanz) and Arielle Read (Irvine). Although every effort has been made to list every course taught by Iser at these institutions, this chronology is not definitive. Course titles frequently do not exactly match the titles supplied by Iser for the course materials in Series 2 of this finding aid. At Konstanz, courses are offered during Winter (Oct.-March) and Summer (April-Sept.) semesters. Also at Konstanz, Iser frequently taught Doktorandenkolloquium (doctoral colloquia), for which individual titles were not available for this chronology. At Irvine courses are offered during Fall (Oct.-Dec.), Winter (Jan.-March), and Spring (April-June) quarters.

Courses taught at UCI are explicitly noted; all other courses were taught at Konstanz.

Missing Title
Date	Event
Winter 1968	Joyce und Beckett Moderne ästhetische Theorien. Intention und Leistung Der englische Roman der Aufklärung
Summer 1969	Shakespeares Tragödien Shepheardes Calender Moderne ästhetische Theorien. Intention und Leistung II
Winter 1969	Romantische Odendichtung Kolloquium für Aufbaustudenten über Kunsttheorien des Pragmatismus und der Semiotik Der moderne englische Roman. Einübung in praktische Literaturkritik
Summer 1970	Kolloquium für Aufbaustudenten über Kritik ästhetischer Theorieentwürfe Waste Land und Ezra Pounds Cantos Modernes englisches Drama
Summer 1971	Kritik ästhetischer Theorieentwürfe (Rader, Krieger/Vivas, Margolis) Tristram Shandy Theorie literarischer Kommunikation
Winter 1971	Shakespeares Historien Fiktion in der Tradition des Empirismus und in der Literatur
Summer 1972	Arkadien in der Literatur der Renaissance Der viktorianische Roman
Winter 1972	Englische und amerikanische Lyrik des 20. Jahrhunderts Der Fiktionsbegriff in der Tradition des Empirismus
Summer 1973	Fiktion und Fiktionstheorie von der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart Bürgerliches Trauerspiel und sentimentale Komödie
Summer 1974	Phänomenologie des Lesens Der englische Roman des 18. Jahrhunderts
Winter 1974	Shakespeares Historien Kunsttheorien der Gegenwart
Summer 1975	Moderne englische Lyrik Becketts Dramen
Winter 1975	Shakespeares Tragödien Romantische Odendichtung Fiktion und Fiktionstheorie von der Aufklärung bis zur Gegenwart
Winter 1976	Dickens und Thackeray Modernes englisches Drama Kunsttheorien der Gegenwart
Summer 1977	Shakespeares Historien Schäferdichtung der Renaissance
Winter 1977	Dickens und Thackeray Entblößte Fiktion Vorlesungskurs: Moderne englische Lyrik
Winter 1978	Romantische Odendichtung Kunsttheorien der Moderne Shakespeares Tragödien
Summer 1979	The Ambassadors und Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim Das englische Drama des 20. Jahrhunderts
Winter 1979	Bürgerliches Trauerspiel Shakespeares Historien
Winter 1980	Dickens und Thackeray Der englische Roman der Aufklärung
Winter 1981	Englische Lyrik der Moderne The Ambassadors und Joseph Conrad: Lord Jim Kunsttheorie der Gegenwart
Summer 1982	Bürgerliches Trauerspiel Europäische Bukolik: Zur historischen Genese der literarischen Fiktion Shakespeares Historien
Winter 1982	Idole, Fiktionen und Fiktionsbegriffe in der Tradition des Empirismus Romantische Odendichtung Shakespeares Tragödien
Winter 1983	Modernes englisches Drama: Vom Naturalismus bis zum absurden Theater
Summer 1984	Der englische Roman der Aufklärung
Winter 1984	Shakespeares Historien Idole, Fiktionen und Fiktionsbegriffe in der Tradition des Empirismus
Winter 1985	English 210: Representation in Narrative (UCI)
Summer 1985	Englische Lyrik der Moderne Tristram Shandy und Jacques le fataliste
Winter 1985	Literatur und Spielbegriff Shakespeares Tragödien
Winter 1986	Humanities 270: Theories of Art (UCI)
Winter 1986	Der englische Roman der Aufklärung Phantasie und Phantasietheorien
Winter 1987	English 225: Fictionality in Philosophy and Literature (UCI)
Summer 1987	Shakespeares Historien Dickens und Thackeray
Winter 1988	Spielstrukturen in Shakespeares Komödien Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre: Grundzüge einer Literaturanthropologie. Teil I: Fiktionalität
Winter 1989	Humanities 270: The Play of the Text (UCI)
Summer 1989	Kanonbildung von der Aufklärung zur Moderne: Dr. Johnson, Matthew Arnold, T.S. Eliot Das Fiktive und das Imaginäre: Grundzüge einer Literaturanthropologie. Teil II: das Imaginäre
Winter 1989	Englische Lyrik der Moderne
Winter 1990	Humanities 270: Theories of Art and their Consequences for Interpretations: Phenomenology, Gestalt, Hermeneutics, and Semiotics (UCI)
Winter 1990	Dramatische Literatur der englischen Renaissance: Shakespeares Zeitgenossen Shakespeares Tragödien
Summer 1991	Thomas Carlyle: Die übersetzbarkeit von Kulturen Institutionen der Interpretation
Winter 1992	Humanities 270: The Fictive and the Imaginary (UCI)
Spring 1992	English 210: Institutions of Interpretation (UCI)
Winter 1993	Criticism 240: Translatability of Discourses (UCI)
Winter 1994	Humanities 270: Anatomy of Interpretation (UCI)
Spring 1994	Criticism 240: Modern Theories of Art (UCI)
Winter 1995	Humanities 270: Conceptions of Culture (UCI)
Winter 1996	Humanities 270: Interpretive Procedures: Readings of Sealed and Open Canons; Hermeneutics, Cybernetics, and the Differential (UCI)
Winter 1997	Humanities 270: Modern Theories of Art (UCI)
Winter 1998	Humanities 270: Unfolding Interpretation: Iterations of Translatability (UCI)
Winter 1999	Humanities 270: Conceptions of Culture in Ethnographical and Anthropological Perspective (UCI)
Spring 1999	Humanities 270: Beckett and Theory (UCI)
Winter 2002	Humanities 270: Culture as an Emergent Phenomenon (UCI)

Acquisition information:

Gift of Wolfgang Iser, 1992, 1998-1999.

Processing information:

Processed by Marcus Keller, 1999 and 2001. Finding aid updated in 2007 by Michelle Light.

Arrangement:

This collection is arranged in three series.

Series 1. Professional activities and biographical material, 1952-1994. 1.6 linear feet
Series 2. Teaching material, 1957-1998. 7.6 linear feet
Series 3. Writings, 1964-2000. 3.0 linear feet

The collection also contains one unprocessed addition:

Accession accn2004-021 001. Unprocessed addition, 2004. 0.25 linear feet

Accruals:

Additional accruals are expected.

Rules or conventions:

Describing Archives: A Content Standard

Indexed terms

Subjects:: Criticism -- History -- Sources
Literature -- Aesthetics
Fictions, Theory of
Literature -- History and criticism
Critical theory -- Archives.
Pastoral poetry, English -- History and criticism
Imagination in literature
Theorists.
Literary critics.
Video recordings
Names:: University of California, Irvine -- Faculty -- Archives
Spenser, Edmund
Shakespeare, William
Carlyle, Thomas -- Criticism and interpretation
Sidney, Philip
Fielding, Henry -- Criticism and interpretation
Iser, Wolfgang -- Archives

Access and use

Restrictions:: The collection is open for research.
Terms of access:: Property rights reside with the University of California. Copyrights are retained by the creators of the records and their heirs. For permission to reproduce or to publish, please contact the Head of Special Collections and Archives.