"Iser is an influential figure, and aficionados will welcome the
comprehensive exposition he provides here."--Terence Cave, TLS The
pioneer of "literary anthropology," Wolfgang Iser presents a
wide-ranging and comprehensive exploration of this new field in an
attempt to explain the human need for the "particular form of
make-believe" known as literature. Ranging from the Renaissance pastoral
to Coleridge to Sartre and Beckett, The Fictive and the Imaginary is a
distinguished work of scholarship from one of Europe's most respected
and influential critics. "A new book by Wolfgang Iser is an important
event in the critical world. This one, with its wide-ranging and
ambitious argument, will require the attention of everyone who thinks
seriously and at all philosophically about literary culture and what it
has to tell us about being human."--Ross Chambers, University of
Michigan.