Excessive Suspension of Disbelief: Raymond Jeans La Lectrice Essay

Excessive Suspension of Disbelief Raymond Jeans La LectriceWhen I cast down a class in fiction or poetry, I constantly talk for a few minutes about the heterogeneouspurposes of literature escape, didactic, and interpretive. I tell my students that escape literatureis a wonderful modality to forget our problems for a while (less dangerous than drugs, alcohol,careless sex, or driving), merely that escape literature can be harmful if one expects ones ainlife to be as exciting, successful, or romantic as that in escape fiction. As Meg Ryans friendsays to her in Sleepless in Seattle, You dont want to be in retire. You want to be in love in amovie. Thus my title, Excessive Suspension....In The Literary arrive at of Art (1931, trans. 1965), Roman Ingarden analyses the layers ofmeaning he beleves exist within a work of fiction. His theories were popularized by Ren Wellekin Theory of Literature (Wellek and Warren). Ingarden identifies four strata.The first of all is the sound stratu m, which he defines as the stratum of word sounds and phoneticformations of various orders the second is the stratum of units of meaning of various orders andphonetic formations of various orders the third inclu stilboestrol objects represented in the world ofthe novelist, which he defines as the stratum of complex schematized aspects and aspectcontinua and series (Literary Work of Art, 30) and the fourth includes the stratum ofrepresented objectivities and their vicissitudes or the world as it is seen from a particularviewpoint. As Ingarden complains in his enter to his second edition, Wellek had erroneouslyadded a fifth layer, that of metaphysical qualities, which include the tragic, the terrible, andthe holy. Ingarden argues th... ...s rent and view and how those fictions shape us. LaLectrice is a testimony to the power a written text may have-that even a single indicantexperience may permanently change a testifyers life. But, most of all, La Lectrice is great fun.But, as t he policeman cautions the lectrice, Reading is fine, but look where it leads. When youread a book, anything can happen.Works CitedIngarden, Roman. The Literary Work of Art. Trans. George G. Grabowicz. EvanstonNorthwestern UP, 1973. From dassie literarisch Kunstwerk. Tbingen Max NeimeyerVertag, 1965.-----. The Cognition of Literary Work of Art. Trans. George G. Grabowicz. EvanstonNorthwestern UP, 198. From Von Erkennen des literarisch Kunstwerk. Tbingen MaxNeimeyer Vertag, 1973.Deville, Michel, dir. La Lectrice (film). Elefilm, 1988.Jean Kermer, Raymond, La Lectrice (novel). Editions Jai lu, 1986.