reading movements between reception and creation (Univ. Paris Cité)
The novel Ingarden: the act of reading between reception and creation.
The relevance of Roman Ingarden’s aesthetic and literary thought
International colloquium – June 8 and 9, 2023
ParisCité University and the Polish Library.
Organizer: CERILAC; Caen Normandy University, Identity and subjectivity (UR-2129); and UPEC, LIS (EA-4395)
Roman Ingarden’s aesthetics constitute one of the last great phenomenological aesthetics of the 20th century. He is distinguished by his desire to think about the possibility of a unified theory of art. His approach in the literary field was opened with the publication A literary work of art This mainly ontological project found its phenomenological extension in 1937. Knowledge of literary works of art for the first time, it gives the reader and the viewer a central place, in other words, it opens what is now called the aesthetics of reception.
The imminent publication of the French translation of this basic text is an opportunity to organize a broad colloquium around the relevance of Roman Ingarden’s literary-aesthetic thought. On the one hand, we will talk about the regulation of reading acts from a philosophical and literary point of view, and on the other hand, the priority of the meeting between different dimensions of creativity and aesthetic perception.
The symposium proposes to explore the main dimensions of Ingarden’s conceptions and analyzes in terms of reading (especially the creative dimensions of the act of reading), and then to put them into perspective with later literary theories to measure extensions. evolution or especially criticisms from the school of Constance.
The talk will also consider the relevance and relevance of Ingarden’s aesthetics to works of art adaptation as well as to issues of reception of works. on screen, stage or any other medium.
The aim will more broadly question the concept of the work of art developed by Ingarden, which allows us to think about contemporary creativity even today: theater scenes, cinematographic adaptation, musical interpretation, as well as architectural restoration, since the latter is also in its own way the original work. interpretation.
The aim of this symposium is to bring Ingarden readers into dialogue with specialists in theories of literature and literary reception, and again with artists who work on or with texts and wish to test these potential tools of phenomenology in their own practice and reflection.
As possible avenues, we would like to see the following topics explored:
1. What legacy of Ingarden categories can be measured in reading theories?
What trace or recovery do we find not only in Jauss or Iser, but also in Eco, Todorov, Gerard Genette, Stanley Fish or even Michel Charles?
We can also question how text reception is understood in pragmatic approaches and cognitive sciences. Anticipation horizon, reader experience, intertextual competence, historical context, and cultural norms that frame reading: where do we place these categories today?
How is this diversity accounted for in phenomenological and cognitivist approaches to the nature or status of different texts (narrative, fiction, historical text, documentary text, or scholarly text)? How is the act of reading changed and what are the effects on reception, evaluation and belief?
2. How is the author of the reader’s work?
What meaning and value does this idea hold today? Is it a simple formula or a reference principle?
Participation, connection or inclusion, various variants of Ingarden’s thesis are possible, what aesthetic regime does this lead to? Does the current aestheticization of art favor an extension or generalization of this idea, and if so, at what cost?
3. The power of the text and places of ambiguity
The reader’s concretization of the text is at the heart of Ingarden’s theory: filling in the spaces of ambiguity, updating schematic aspects, which are as much an appeal to the reader’s interpretation and imagination as they are a resource. conflict of interpretation.
Should we think about the reader’s responsibility in this context? Can it be an ideal reader and by what standard? Consequently, what place is left for the author in this process of (re)constitution?
4. How to evaluate the adaptation of a literary text?
We would also like to solve the problem of variation as a result of the potential of the text, or even conflicts between staging, adaptation, interpretation or performances of the same work, based on concrete examples taken from theater, cinema or music.
In what sense and by what standards might some versions be fairer than others? This raises the question of the origin and constitution of these standards (anticipatory horizon, standard version, adequate version, official version). This raises the ontological question about the identity of the work. Is the adapted work produced, modified, distorted or misrepresented? Or is this identity a myth? What new issues do conflicts of perception and conflict of interpretations raise?
5. Is literature an art like others?
Ingarde’s desire to create a unitary theory of art is largely based on the artistic text model, could this be a model for other arts?
We will be able to reconsider the Ingarden concept of aesthetic perception in a comparative approach by encountering the variations arising from different artistic genres between plastic arts, music, performing arts. Is there a match between these practices or irreducible specificities?
Compared to the literary model, what place does music actually occupy in Ingarden’s aesthetics?
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Brief indicative bibliography
Roman Ingarden
– A literary work of art (1929), Lausanne, The Age of Man, 1983, trans. Fr. Ph. Secretan (Das literarische Kunstwerk: Eine Untersuchung aus dem Grenzgebiet der Ontologie, Logik und Literaturwissenschaft (1931), Halle, Max Niemeyer Verlag (2nd ed. 1960).
– Vom Erkennen des literarischen Kunstwerks (1936), Tübingen, Niemeyer Verlag, 1968, 2nd. ed. Gesammelte Werke, Bd. 13, Tübingen, Niemeyer Verlag, 1997 (trans. English The cognition of the literature of Art (trans. RA Crowley & Kenneth R. Olson) Northwest University Press, 1973);
– Selected Articles from Aesthetics (Peter J. McCormick, Ed.) München, Philosophia Verlag, Washington, The Catholic University of America Press, 1985;
– Ontology of the work of art (English translation by R. Meyer and J.-T. Goldthwait), Athens, Ohio University Press, 1989.
– Aesthetics and ontology of the work of art. Selected texts 1937-1969Selection and translation by P. Limido, Paris, Vrin, 2011.
Jeff Mischerling, Ontology and aesthetics of Roman IngardenUniversity of Ottawa Press, 1997.
Patricia Limido (director), Roman Ingarden, Phenomenology at the Crossroads of ArtPURE, 2013.
Anne Coignard, “Imagination and Reading According to Ingarden: The Subtlety of Imagination,” Bulletin of Liege Phenomenological AnalysisXIII 2, 2017 (Acts 10) http://popups.ulg.ac.be/1782-2041
Roman Ingarden in his timeKrakow, 2020.
Michel Charles, The Rhetoric of Reading, Seoul, Poetics, 1977
An Introduction to the Study of Texts, Seuil, “Poetics”, 1995
Umberto Eco, The Lecturer in Fable (1979), Paperback, 1989
Stanley Fish, When to Read is to Do. The Authority of Interpretative Communities (French translation Is there a text in this class? (1980), Les Prairies Ordinaires, 2007
H.-G. Gadamer, Truth and Method (1960), Paris, Seuil, 1990
Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading (1976), Mardaga, 1985
The Call of the Text (1969), Allia, 2012
Hans Robert Jauss, For the Aesthetics of Reception (1978) Tel Gallimard, 1978
A Little Apology of Aesthetic Experience (1972), Allia, 2007
Vincent Jouve, Character Influence in the Novel, Puff, 1992
(director), The Reading Experience, Paris, L’Improviste, 2005
Michel Picard, Reading as a Game, Midnight Publications, 1986
(ed.), Literary reading. Proceedings of the 1984 Reims Colloquium.
J.-P. Sartre, What is Literature? (1947), Folio
Tzvetan Todorov, Literary Theory, Texts of the Russian Formalists (1965), Points 2001
The Poetics of Prose, Le Seuil, 1971, chap. 16 “How to study? »
Alain Trouvé (dir.), Literary reading in all forms, L’improviste, 2019
Reader, texts compiled by Nathalie Piegay-Gros, GF-Flammarion, 2014.
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SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE
Pierre Fasula, Paris-1 Panthéon Sorbonne University
Bernard Gendrel, University of Paris-East Creteil
Patricia Limido, Paris Cité University
Olivier Malherbe, Free University of Brussels
Sylvie Patron, Paris Cité University
Christophe Potocki, CNRS, Craal
Maud Pouradier, University of Caen-Normandy
Contribution proposals should be sent by March 30, 2023 to the following address:
patricia.limido [at] parisdescartes.fr and bernard.gendrel [at] u-pec.fr
They should include:
– Surname and first name
– Email address
– Bio-bibliographic notice of maximum 1000 characters
– Title
– A summary of the proposal with a maximum of 3000 characters
The answer will be given by the scientific committee in mid-April 2023.
The program will be established in early May 2023.
