0;then meaning must be a thing which can be subtracted from the work. And if this meaning, as the very heart of the work, can be lifted out of the text, the work is then used up-through interpretation, literature is turned into an item for consumption. This is fatal not only for the text but also for literary criticism, for what can be the function of interpretation if its sole achievement is to extract the meaning and leave behind an empty shell? The parasitic nature of such criticism is all too obvious… (4-5)In other words, texts would not be useful to a person after having been read by a single person a single time. If Hamlet had but one underlying meaning, then after the person to have ever read or seen the play discovered the meaning, then the rest of us would have nothing left to do. The play would have already been stripped of its purpose and we would be left with empty pages. Iser continues by explaining that the meaning of a text is dynamic not concrete. Texts have potential meanings that the reader is supposed to identify. The meaning, however, is not completely abandoned to the subjectivity of the reader. Therefore, the discovery of meaning is a two-way process. Iser presents the reader with this defense of his idea: If the virtual position of the work is between text and reader, its actualization is clearly the result of an interaction between the two, and so exclusive concentration on either the author’s techniques or the reader’s psychology will tell us little about the reading process itself. This is not to deny the vital importance of each of the two poles-it is simply that if one loses sight of the relationship, one loses sight of the virtual work. (21)The reader does not have a set of blueprints set in front of him or herself that provides detailed instructions on how to excavate the meaning from the work. The reader cannot approach the text in an attempt to compare it to something famil...
