A Dialogue between Davida Charney and Wolfgang Iser

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A Dialogue between Davida Charney and Wolfgang Iser

Davida Charney	my interlude	Wolfgang Iser
Patterns or Structures identify texts, readers develops schemas for texts and fit text into pre-existing schema	Educational research strongly supports Charney's claim. However, at this point we must begin asking the question if a correlation can be drawn between literary and educational texts.	"The reader uses the various perspectives offered him by the text in order to relate the patterns and the 'schematised views' to one another" (1219). this process "results ultimately in the awakening of responses" within the reader, thus "reading causes the literary work to unfold its inherently dynamic character" (1219-20).
Well-defined texts (i.e. clear structures) promote higher comprehension of a text because a reader can more easily fit the text into a schema	Again, educational research supports Charney's claim. However, more experienced readers can develop new schemas for text (Rouet). Furthermore, research on problem solving reveals that ill-defined problems are more "true-to-life" and therefore promote better problem solving skills, whereas well-defined problems teach students that a simple algorithm can be applied to any problem. This research on problem solving reflects alternative views of reading, that the most well-defined texts do not necessarily promote material comprehension but instead lead to rote memorization (Ormrod).	Ill-defined texts (i.e. texts without a clear structure) leave room for the reader's imagination to act upon the text. The (good) author structures the boundaries of the text but leaves a field of play for the reader's imagination. In other words, the reader consciously constructs a literary text, and this conscious construction of the text is what makes the literary text valuable.
Readers have difficulty comprehending a hypertext because hypertext compounds readers' choices and proportionally compounds reader's difficulty in creating a coherent mental representation (schema) of a hypertext Flaws in hypertext praises: faultily assumes that the reader is able to select pertinent information and/or the most effective path of information can't predict what readers will want to select When texts fail to meet expectations, readers have problems making sense of the text	Can we apply this debate over "expectations" to literary and educational texts alike? If we loosely apply the findings regarding ill-defined problems, perhaps we can treat literary, educational and hyper texts alike. College students in my freshman composition classes openly admitted in class discussion that they disengaged from textbooks because they found its didactic nature "boring." In contrast, they readily engaged with texts that challenged their previously held notions and that constantly surprised them instead of fulfilling their expectations. To bring Rouet's findings back in, more experienced readers benefit from and perhaps seek more challenging reading/learning experiences. Therefore, younger readers may benefit from well-defined hypertext structures, but more experienced readers want to free themselves from didactic texts.	It is the reader's imagination that gives shape to a text. The imagination animates the outlines, fills in gaps, works out implications and ultimately endows a text with greater significance than it carries on its own (1220). Process of anticipation and retrospection leads the reader to form a "virtual dimension" in which the text is an experience, and this experience comes about through a process of continual modification of understanding (1223) Expectations are scarcely ever fulfilled in literary texts because the reader is in a constant state of cognitive dissonance about the text by trying to fit conflicting information into a schema (1221), and . . . "For the more a text individualizes or confirms an expectation it has initially aroused, the more aware we become of its didactic purpose, so that at best we can only accept or reject the thesis forced upon us. More often than not, the very clarity of such texts will make use want to free ourselves from their clutches" (1221).


"Hypertext may dramatically increase the burdens on both writers and readers" (241).	When we apply Iser's theory of literature, we find that hypertext acts like a literary text: its dynamic qualities continually challenge the reader to make meaning of the text. This sort of challenge develops higher-order thinking ("thick cognition") and helps the reader construct deeper knowledge. In this sense, does not the use and teaching of hypertext hold equal value to the teaching of literary texts? Familiar structures may not always facilitate the best learning or reading.	"Indeed, it is only by leaving behind the familiar world of his own experience that the reader can truly participate in the adventure the literary text offers him" (1224).
Flaws in relationship drawn between networked information model of long-term memory and presentation of information in a hypertext network: knowledge seems to be organized hierarchically and sequentially, not as a network of associations information must pass through constraining "gateway" of working memory	Although Iser does not directly address the concept of memory in his theory, an important part (the final part) has been used to explore memory in literature. When Iser's theory is applied to literature, we see that deciphering is often directly connected to a character's memory of past events and to a reader's time-sensitive interpretation of a text. An excellent example is Gabriel Garcia Marquez' One Hundred Years of Solitude in which five generations of Buendia men work to interpret a mysterious text left behind by Melquiades. The act of deciphering Melquiades' text becomes a process for maintaining the family memory as well as their town's history. Textual interpretations becomes personal interpretation, and thus affects our consciousness recollection of ourselves and our experiences. If hypertext challenges us to continually interpret the text, this interpretation process may indeed facilitate memory and help us maintain the information better.	The need to decipher meaning in a literary text develops our own deciphering capacity and brings a part of our being to our consciousness, a part of which we were not formerly aware (1231). Thus the act of deciphering a text is more than just discovering information; it is also the process of discovering ourselves and "entails the possibility that we may formulate ourselves and so discover what had previously seemed to elude our consciousness (1232).