Iser, Wolfgang

Wolfgang Iser is a literary theorist and scholar who has been internationally recognized for his work on reception theory and reader-response criticism.

He was born in Marienberg, Germany on July 22, 1926. Following his high school education, he was drafted into the German army in 1944 and released from a prisoner of war camp in 1945. Iser studied at the University of Leipzig and received his Ph.D. in English philology and literature from the University of Heidelberg in 1950. After teaching at universities in Glasgow, Heidelberg, Würzburg, and Köln, he accepted a position at the newly founded University of Konstanz in 1967, which he maintained until his retirement as professor emeritus in 1991. Iser's writings on reception aesthetics and literary anthropology in the 1970s and 1980s gained him an international reputation in literary theory. He has taught at several institutions in the United States and Canada, accepting a professorship in 1978 at the University of California, Irvine, which he continues to hold as of 2002.

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