Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics

F AT THIS moment someone were to ask, what are you doing?, you might reply, am reading, and thereby acknowledge the fact that reading is an activity, something you do. No one would argue that the act of reading can take place in the absence of someone who reads-how can you tell the dance from the dancer?-but curiously enough when it comes time to make analytical statements about the end product of reading (meaning or understanding), the reader is usually forgotten or ignored. Indeed in recent literary history he has been excluded by legislation. I refer, of course, to the ex cathedra pronouncements of Wimsatt and Beardsley in their enormously influential article The Affective Fallacy: