Blackwell Reference Online

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Roman Ingarden (1893 – 1970) was one of the most important twentieth-century philosophers to influence literary theory and criticism, applying the philosophy of phenomenology to literary and other artistic works, in seeking objectively to define the ontological nature of the work of art. Though his philosophical publications were massive in number and formidably broad-ranging in topic, it is with his works on aesthetics, most notably The Literary Work of Art ( 1931 ), and The Cognition of the Literary Work of Art ( 1937 ), that his impact in the English-speaking world has been greatest. Ingarden's influence can be found, on the one hand, in the formalist theory of Rene Wellek and the new critics and, on the other, in reader-response criticism and reception theory. These lines of development reflect the two foundational aspects of Ingarden's thinking: the idea of the autonomous work of art but also the role of the reader in realizing or “concretizing” it. Born in Krakow, Poland, Ingarden studied, in the period 1912 – 18, first mathematics, then psychology and philosophy under Edmund Husserl in Göttingen and Freiburg, Germany. He wrote his doctoral thesis, which became his first book (1921), on Henri Bergson's concepts of “Intuition and intellect.” He then taught philosophy in Lvov where he wrote his habilitation thesis on Essentielle Fragen (Essential questions; 1924), under ... log in or subscribe to read full text