Phenomenology of Reading
Abstract
Poulet’s classic article on the aesthetic experience of literature is here translated in Italian for the first time. Phenomenology of Reading occupies an interesting place both within the landscape of Poulet’s own critical production and within the broader context of literary theories that, between 1960 and 1980, explored the aesthetic experience of literature in relation to the act of reading. Inspired by Proust, Poulet conceives of reading as the act of subjectivizing within ourselves a consciousness that is not our own. This other consciousness is the work itself, whose textual objectivity—that is, the words that compose it and convey its meanings—serves as a vehicle for the subjectivity that animates it and which constitutes the true core of that consciousness. This theoretical framework carries profound philosophical implications: in a world where our consciousness is condemned never to fully grasp another person’s interiority, knowing and understand it as if it were our own, the experience of literature offers the possibility of doing precisely that.
Downloads
References
Colton, Valentine, “Vers une génétique de la critique : le cas de Georges Poulet”, Genesis, 46 (2018): 173–81. https://doi.org/10.4000/genesis.2814.
Cryle, Peter, “Playful Theory: Georges Poulet’s Phenomenological Thematics”, Culture, Theory and Critique, 49.1 (2008): 21–34. https://doi.org/10.1080/14735780802024224.
Iser, Wolfgang, “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach”, New Literary History, 3.2 (1972): 279-299. https://doi.org/10.2307/468316.
Iser, Wolfgang, Der implizite Leser. Kommunikationsformen des Romans von Bunyan bis Beckett, Monaco, Wilhelm Fink, 1972.
Iser, Wolfgang, Der Akt des Lesens. Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung (1976), tr. it. L'atto della lettura. Una teoria della risposta estetica, trad. di Rodolfo Granafei e Chiara Dini, Bologna Il Mulino, 1987.
Lowall, Sarah, Critics of Consciousness, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1968.
Macksey, Richard – Donato, Eugenio (a c. di), The Structuralist Controversy. The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man, Baltimora, John Hopkins University Press, 1972 (1970).
Poulet, Georges, Études sur le temps humain, Parigi, Plon, 1956 (1949).
Poulet, Georges, “La pensée critique de Marcel Raymond”, Saggi e ri-cerche di letteratura francese, 3 (1963): 203-229.
Poulet, Georges, “Le pensée critique de Jean Starobinski”, Critique, 19 (1963): 387-410.
Poulet, Georges, “Criticism and the Experience of Interiority”, The Structuralist Controversy. The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man, Ed. Richard Macksey, Eugenio Donato, Baltimora, John Hopkins University Press, 1972 (1970): 56-88.
Poulet, Georges, La conscience critique (1971), tr. it. La coscienza critica, a c. di Giovanni Bogliolo, Bologna, Marietti, 1991.
Rosenblatt, Louise M. «Literature: The Reader’s Role». The English Journal, 49.5 (1960): 304-310. https://doi.org/10.2307/810700.
Yu, Pauline, “Georges Poulet and the Symbolist Tradition”, Criticism, 16.1 (1974): 39–57.
Copyright (c) 2025 Mattia Petricola; Georges Poulet
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Copyright Notice
You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work, and to adapt the work. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work).
