1.  Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable, New York: Grove Pr., 1978, p.10. (back)

2.  This essay has grown out of a shorter presentation given at the Colloquium UERJI on Wolfgang Iser's work at the State University of Rio de Janeiro.  A portuguese translation of the shorter earlier version is forthcoming in a volume edited by Joao de Castro Rocha.  The present essay is deeply indebted to the conference at Rio, and particularly to the rich discussions which followed the presentations. (back)

3.  Wolfgang Iser, Prospecting: From Reader Response to Literary Anthropology, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1989, p.275. (back)

4.  Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading. A Theory of Aesthetic Response, Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins UP, 1978, p.230. (back)

5.  Prospecting, p.267. (back)

6.  Prospecting, p.267. (back)

7.  The Act of Reading, p.142. (back)

8.  See also "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction," in J. Hillis Miller, ed., Aspects of Narrative, New York: Columbia UP, 1971, pp.1-45. (back)

9. My translation from the German original, Das Fiktive und das Imaginaere. Perspektiven Literarischer Anthropologie, Frankfurt: Suhrkamp Verlag, 1991, p. 508. (back)

10.  The Act of Reading, p.231. (back)

11.  Sanford Budick and Wolfgang Iser, eds., The Translatability of Cultures: Figuration of the Space Between, Stanford: Stanford UP, 1996. (back)

12.  This is also true for Iser's Wellek-Lectures at the University of California-Irvine which are forthcoming from Columbia University Press under the title Unfolding Interpretation: Iterations of Translatability.  (back)

13.  The Act of Reading, p. 107. (back)

14.  Prospecting, p.283. (back)

15.  Prospecting, p.263f. (back)

16. The Act of Reading, p.137. (back)

17.  The Fictive and the Imaginary, p.298. (back)

18.  The Fictive and the Imaginary, p.298. (back)

19. The Fictive and the Imaginary, p. 298. (back)

20.  The Fictive and the Imaginary, p.299. (back)

21.  Prospecting, p.212. (back)

22.  Prospecting, p.211. (back)

23.  Prospecting, p.282. (back)

24.  Gabriele Schwab, "Reading, Otherness and Cultural Contact," in: The Mirror and the Killer-Queen.  Otherness in Literary Language, Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1996, pp.1-46. (back)

25.  Jacques Derrida, "Guter Wille zur Macht I.  Drei Fragen an Hans-Georg Gadamer," in Philippe Forget, ed., Text und Interpretation,  Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1984, pp.56-61. (back)

26.  Prospecting, p.281. (back)

27.  Prospecting, p.206. (back)

28.  The Unnamable, p.31. (back)

29.  The Unnamable, p.4. (back)

30.  Dieter Henrich, "Kunst und Kunstphilosophie der Gegenwart – Überlegungen mit Rücksicht auf Hegel," in Wolfgang Iser, Immanente Ästhetik - Ästhetische Reflexion, Poetik und Hermeneutik 2, Munich: Fink Verlag 1966, p.30. (back)

31.  The Unnamable, p.36. (back)

32. The Fictive and the Imaginary, p.303. (back)

33.  My translation from the German original, p.515. (back)

34.  Quoted in Wolfgang Iser, "Die Praesenz des Endes.  King Lear - Macbeth," in Karlheinz Stierle and Rainer Warning, eds., Das Ende. Figuren einer Denkform, Muenchen: Fink Verlag, 1996, p.383. (back)

35.  The Unnamable, p.179. (back)