A year later, Iser was appointed as an instructor at Heidelberg and in 1952 as an assistant lecturer at the University of Glasgow.
There, Iser began to explore contemporary philosophy and literature, which deepened his interest in inter-cultural exchange.
Together with Hans Robert Jauss, he is considered to be the founder of the Constance School of reception theory.
In the same way, two people gazing at the night sky may both be looking at the same collection of stars, but one will see the image of a plough, and the other will make out a dipper.
[4] Both of these poles contribute to the two central points of Iser's theory: the concept of "implied reader" and narrative "gaps".
This standpoint is multifaceted, because the narrator, the characters, the plot, and the fictitious reader all offer sides of it.
[7] Further, the reader’s role as a textual structure is defined by the "vantage point by which he joins [these perspectives], and the meeting place they converge".
[9] In other words, the textual structures are connected and come to life when a reader takes part in the reading process.
[11] However, these expectations are rarely fulfilled, as a text is "full of unexpected twists and turns, and frustrations of expectations…Thus whenever the flow is interrupted and we are led off in unexpected directions, the opportunity is given to us to bring into play our own faculty for establishing connections—for filling in the gaps left by the text itself".