It's All In My Mind!

Although his theory about the reader taking the consciousness of the writer is a bit extreme, Georges Poulet’s theory about the act of reading itself is intriguing. Literature is an interesting art in that its form is not a physical object like that of painting or sculpture. Authors are artists who express themselves with language instead of physical objects. Using the theory of Poulet, the actual art within literature occurs only when a person engages with the text; otherwise the book is only a square, physical object. According to Poulet, when a person reads a book, he or she will create an unreality in the mind based on the signification within the text. Poulet writes: “I know only that, while reading, I perceive in my mind a number of significations which have made themselves at home there. Doubtless they are still objects: images, ideas, words, objects of my thought” (1321). In this sense, a text does not become an artistic object until a reader creates the form in his or her mind.

Studying both English literature and film in my undergraduate days, I’ve often pondered about the similarities between the two art forms (especially with the “film is a language” analogy, which does not quite hold up). In early film theory, prior to the age of sound, Hugo Munsterberg had an approach similar to Poulet’s in the psychological study of the act of film spectatorship. According to Munsterberg, film is the optical illusion of a series of photographs projected in a rapid succession that requires the mind of the spectator to create movement. Munsterberg writes: “We [the spectator] do not see objective reality, but a product of our own mind which binds the pictures together” (Munsterberg 402). Furthermore, Munsterberg claims that film spectatorship recreates the mental processes of memory (“bringing up pictures of the past”) and imagination (the overcoming of reality with “fancies and dreams”). Therefore, Munsterberg, like Poulet, sees the art of film occurring in the mind of the person engaging the text. These are wonderful concepts to think about when reading a book or watching a film. They sure as hell give me a great feeling of importance.

Munsterberg, Hugo. “The Means of the Photoplay.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Eds. Braudy and Cohen. New York: Oxford UP, 1999. 401-407.