The abstract reader

N: S_C ∈ Sa_N x⇔ Se_N

A: S_N ∈ Sa_A ⇔ Se_A

The diagram is to be read like this: the signs (S, signes), created by the inter-dependence (⇔) of signifier (Sa, signifiants) and signified (Se, signifiés) on the level of the characters (C), belong (∈) to the mass of signifiers on the level of the narrator (Sa_N), which, for their part, are in a state of inter-dependency (⇔) with the signifiers of this level (Se_N). A corresponding relationship exists between the level of the narrator and the level of the author (A). The signs constituted on the level of the narrator (S_N), partly through the integration of signs on the character level, become part of the mass of signifiers (Sa_A), which are expressed by the authorial meaning (Se_A).

3. The abstract reader

a) The abstract reader as an attribute of the abstract author

On the receiving side of our diagram of communication levels, the abstract reader is drawn in opposite the abstract author. Naturally, there is no con-tact whatsoever between these two abstract figures, which are, after all, not pragmatic communicative entities, but semantic reconstructions. This sug-gests a deceptive symmetry: if the abstract author (AA) is a reconstruction of the concrete author (CA) by the concrete reader (CR), then, one might be tempted to conclude, the abstract reader (AR) is the concrete reader as imagined by the concrete author. This arrangement would be represented in the following diagram, in which the arrows symbolize the acts of recon-struction and the ovals the reconrecon-structions themselves:

CA AA AR CR

The actual state of affairs is, of course, more complicated. It is not the con-crete author, about whose intentions we know very little, but rather the work s/he has created or his or her abstract author that bears the projection of the reader’s image. The visualization of the counterpart is one of the characteristics that the reconstructing concrete reader attributes to the ab-stract author. Consequently, the abab-stract reader depends no less on individ-ual explication, i.e. on the reading and understanding of the text by the concrete reader, than does the abstract author. Therefore, we must correct the diagram in the following way:

CA AA AR CR

b) History of the abstract reader concept

There is a range of older conceptions of the abstract reader. In Booth (1961), the implied reader appears as a counterpart of the implied author. In the Slavic area, which has made significant contributions to the study of communica-tion in literary work, hardly noticed in the West, the text’s addressee was first systematically described by the Polish literary scholar Michał Głowiński (1967), and labeled the “virtual recipient.” This entity was not a pragmatic entity, but a role prepared by the text. The most important question for Głowiński was, therefore, “how the structure of the poetical work configures the role of the addressee.” Głowiński already made a distinction between the addressee of the author and the addressee of the lyrical “I” or the narra-tor, and distinguished two basic types for the former, the differentiation of which he justified with differing presentations of the work’s meaning: the

“passive reader,” who needs to take on only the meaning obvious in the work, and the “active reader,” who needs to reconstruct the meaning en-crypted in specific techniques.²¹

Miroslav Červenka (1969, 174–75) characterizes the “addressee’s per-sonality,” by which he means the abstract reader, with the statement that:

If the subject of the work was the correlate of the totality of the acts of creative choice, then the overall meaning of the work’s addressee is the totality of the in-terpretive abilities required: the ability to use the same codes and develop their material analogously to the creative activity of the speaker, the ability to trans-form the potentiality of the work into an esthetic object.

In Russia, Boris Korman (1977, 127) contrasted the “author as bearer of the work’s concept” with the corresponding entity of the “reader as postulated addressee, ideal principle of reception”: “The method of reception is the process of transforming the real reader into the ideal, conceived reader.”²²

The investigation of reader roles was deepened and concretized in the sphere of literary history in the works of Wolfgang Iser (1972; tr. 1974;

1976; tr. 1978). With his term “impliziter Leser” (“implied reader” in the English editions), which was not entirely unambiguously defined in its ex-tension, and which fluctuated between the addressee of the work and the addressee of the narration, Iser describes a structure in the text:

[The implied reader] embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect—predispositions laid down, not by an empirical out-side reality, but by the text itself. […] The concept of the implied reader is therefore a textual structure anticipating the presence of a recipient without necessarily defining him […] Thus the concept of the implied reader designates a network of response-inviting structures, which impel the reader to grasp the text. (Iser 1976; tr. 1978, 34)

A clear differentiation of the text’s addressees was introduced by Gunter Grimm (1977, 38–39) who placed, alongside Wolff’s (1971) and Link’s (1976) “intended” reader (the author’s “objective”), an “imagined” reader (“the conception that the author has of his actual readership”) and a “con-ceived” reader (“the construction of a reader oriented on the text”).

c) Definition of the abstract reader

Although the terms mentioned refer to the image of the reader contained in the text, their practical application activates different facets and functions of the abstract reader. In many cases, the ontological and structural status of

21 More exhaustive and on other positions in the Polish history of the concept: Schmid 2007b, 172–73.

22 Rymar’ and Skobelev (1994, 119–21) also use the term “conceived reader.”

the entity denoted remains unclear. It is not rare for the term to fluctuate between denoting the addressee of the author (i.e. the work) and the ad-dressee of the narrator. For this reason, it seems sensible to render the con-tent of the term and its domain of use more precisely.

It must first be emphasized that the abstract reader never coincides with the fictive reader, the narratee, i.e. the addressee of the narrator. A coinci-dence of this sort is assumed by Genette (1972, 266) who identifies the “ex-tradiegetic narratee,” i.e. the addressee to whom an “ex“ex-tradiegetic narrator”

addresses himself, with the implied reader. Genette, in Narrative Discourse Revisited (1983; tr. 1988, 138), embraces this coincidence as a small simplify-ing measure “to the delight of our master Ockham.” But this economy is only possible on the basis of Genette’s system, in which the extradiegetic narrator does not appear as a fictive entity and takes the place of the absent abstract author. Genette (1983; tr. 1988, 132–33) states that: “the extradi-egetic narrator merges totally with the author, whom I shall not call ‘im-plied,’ as people too often do, but rather entirely explicit and declared.”

Of course, the more closely the fictive narrator is associated with the ab-stract author, the more difficult it is to separate clearly the ideological posi-tions of the fictive and abstract reader. However, their difference remains absolutely in force. The border between the fictive world, to which every narrator belongs, no matter how neutrally, objectively or “Olympic” s/he is constituted, and reality, to which, for all his virtuality, the abstract reader belongs, cannot be crossed—unless in some narrative paradox.

What is meant here by the abstract reader are the contents of the image of the recipient that the author had while writing, or—more accurately—the contents of the author’s image of the recipient that is fixed in the text by specific indexical signs.

An “intended reader”—in the terminology of Link (1976, 28) or Grimm (1977, 38–39)—who is not fixed in the text, but exists merely in the imagi-nation of the concrete author, and who can be reconstructed only with the latter’s statements or extra-textual information, is not a part of the work.

This sort of reader belongs exclusively to the sphere of the concrete author, in whose intention he or she exists.

d) Presumed addressee and ideal recipient

Two hypostases of the (re-)constructed abstract reader must be distin-guished on the basis of the functions they can be thought to have.²³ First, the abstract reader can be seen as a presumed, postulated addressee to whom the work is directed and whose linguistic codes, ideological norms, and

23 Cf. Schmid (1974a, 407) and thereafter Lintvelt (1981, 18); Ilyin (1996c).

thetic ideas must be taken into account if the work is to be understood. In this function, the abstract reader is the bearer of the codes and norms pres-umed in the readership. For example, the addressee of Dostoevsky’s later novels is conceptualized as a reader who can not only read Russian and knows how to read a novel, but also has a command of all the language’s registers, possesses a developed sense for the stylistic expression of evalu-ative positions, has at his or her disposal a good knowledge of Russian lit-erature, a high inter-textual competence, knows the dominant philosophical positions of the century, has an overview of the history of ideas in Europe and is familiar with the social discourses of the period.

Of course, an author can make mistakes in the norms and abilities as-sumed in the readership. S/he can be mistaken in the philosophical majority position of his or her contemporaries, s/he can overestimate the ability of his or her readers to decode metaphorical statements or assume too high an understanding of esthetic innovation. It is not unusual for an author to fail in addressing the intended public as a result of being mistaken about the language, the values and norms of his or her public, or of being unable to encode his or her message correspondingly.

Second, the abstract reader functions as an image of the ideal recipient who understands the work in a way that optimally matches its structure, and who adopts the interpretive position and esthetic standpoint put forward by the work. The attitude of the ideal reader, his or her relation to the norms and values of the fictive entities, are thus entirely specified by the work, though it must be noted that this is not the result of the concrete author’s intentions, but of the acts of creation objectivized in the work. If contradic-tory evaluative positions are found in a hierarchy in the work, the ideal re-cipient will identify with the entity that is highest in this hierarchy. If the position of the entity at the top of the hierarchy is relativized, the ideal reader will identify with it only insofar as that is allowed by the overall meaning of the work. The position of the ideal recipient is thus entirely pre-determined by the work; the degree of ideological certainty, however, varies from author to author. Whereas those works with a message demand a spe-cific response, the spectrum of readings permitted by the work is wider with experimental or questioning authors. With Leo Tolstoy, the spectrum of positions permitted by the work is undoubtedly narrower than, for example, with Anton Chekhov.

The difference between the two functions, the presumed addressee and the ideal recipient, is all the more relevant the more specific the work’s ide-ology is, the more it calls for a way of thinking that does not correspond to the doxa. In Tolstoy’s later work, the ideal reader is clearly very distant from the presumed addressee. Whereas the latter is conceptualized with very general characteristics—such as command of the Russian language,

knowl-edge of the social norms of the late 19^th century and the ability to read a literary work—the former is distinguished by a series of specific idiosyncra-sies and Tolstoyan evaluative positions.

e) Critique of the ideal recipient concept

The conception of the abstract reader presented here (as put forward in Schmid 1973; 1974a) has encountered objections. However, criticism has not called for the division of the entity into the presumed addressee and the ideal recipient, but the supposed responsibility of the concrete reader—as the executor of the intended reception—for the reading sketched in the ideal reader. So, Jaap Lintvelt (1981, 18) charges my definition with incapaci-tating the concrete reader:

Schmid’s definitions imply that a “text is supposed to program its own reading.”

In this kind of conception, reading would be limited to “a (subjective) recording of an arrangement of meaning that pre-exists the reading itself […]” As such, Schmid fails to indicate that the concrete reader […] can also carry out other readings which do not necessarily correspond to the abstract reader’s, suppos-edly “ideal,” reception.

Jan van der Eng (1984, 126–27) also argues in favor of according the con-crete reader more freedom and creative involvement in the formation of meaning than is envisioned in my concept of the abstract reader. The indi-vidual recipient—according to this critic—not only has the freedom to con-cretize and deepen the interpretative, emotional and cognitive contents of the work in his or her own way, but also, by projecting these contents onto new realities, onto philosophical, religious and psychological developments, brings new aspects of meaning to light, which were neither manifested nor intended in the work.

In his workbooks of the 1960s and 1970s, Mikhail Bakhtin already ex-pressed criticism of the concept of the ideal recipient formed in the literary study of the time:

Naturally, it is not the empirical listener and not the psychological idea, the im-age of the listener in the soul of the author. It is rather an abstract ideal con-struction. It is the counterpart of an equally abstract ideal author. In this concep-tion, the ideal listener is a mirror image equivalent of the author, which dupli-cates him or her. (Bakhtin 2002b, 427)

Lyudmila Gogotishvili (2002, 674), the commentator on Bakhtin’s work-books, suspects that these words contain a critical allusion to my review of B. A. Uspensky’s (1970) Poetics of Composition (Schmid 1971), which Bakhtin excerpted shortly after its publication (2002a). The review argued that the abstract reader as ideal recipient mirrors changes in the author’s position

and does not, as Uspensky had postulated of the reader in general, remain trapped in inertia (Schmid 1971, 132). Bakhtin advanced the argument that the ideal reader conceptualized in this way does not contribute anything of himself, anything new, to the work and that he lacks “otherness” (drugost’), which is a pre-requisite of the author’s “surplus” (izbytok) (Bakhtin 2002b, 427–28).

The conception of the abstract reader as ideal recipient naturally does not postulate an obligatory ideal meaning prescribed in the work, which the concrete reader must merely grasp correctly. It is in no way to be doubted that the contributory creative action of the recipient can have dimensions and take directions not laid out in the work, nor that readings that miss the reception sketched in the work, or even intentionally reject it, can widen the work’s meaning. But it must be emphasized that every work contains, to a greater or lesser degree of ambiguity, signs pointing towards its ideal read-ing. Only in rare cases does this ideal reading consist of a concrete ascrip-tion of meaning. As a rule, the ideal recepascrip-tion constitutes a spectrum of varying breadth, of functional attitudes, individual concretizations and sub-jective ascriptions of meaning. In extreme cases, the ideal reading can exist precisely as a contradiction to a pre-prepared attitude and an obvious mean-ing, if an author demands of his or her reader the rebuttal of evaluative po-sitions suggested by the narrator.

To postulate the ideal recipient as an image more or less clearly implicit in the work does not mean, in any way, the constraint of the concrete reader’s freedom, nor the forming of any kind of pre-suppositions on the legitimacy of the meanings actually assigned to the work.