Ingarden, Roman (1893—1970) Polish literary theorist who worked on phenomenology and had a significant influence on the establishment of both Reception Theory and Reception Aesthetics. Born in Kraków, then a part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Ingarden studied mathematics in Lviv (in the Ukraine), and philosophy in Göttingen under Husserl, Edmund. He moved to Freiburg with Husserl and completed his doctorate on Bergson, Henri under his supervision in 1918. He then returned to Poland, teaching first at Lviv University, until it was closed because of war in 1941, then at the Nicolaus Copernicus University after the war. Ingarden’s career suffered under communist rule---he was frequently banned from teaching, accused of being either an idealist or an enemy of materialism. In the early part of his career, up until the outbreak of World War II, Ingarden wrote in German as was common, but he switched to Polish out of solidarity with his invaded homeland. Consequently, it is really only his early works that are known outside of Poland. Of these early works, the best known is undoubtedly Das literarische Kunstwerk. Eine Untersuchung aus dem Grenzgebiet der Ontologie, Logik und Literaturwissenschaft (1931), translated as The Literary Work of Art (1973). This work, which attempts to theorize the ontology of literature as it is being read, had a significant influence on Wellek, René and Iser, Wolfgang, particularly the latter, as well as on the development of reader-response criticism. Ingarden argues that neither of the key metaphysical categories of the real and the ideal is adequate to describe the ontology of the literary work, and proposes instead that it be understood as a stratified intentional object. Further Reading: A. Chrudzimski (ed.) Existence, Culture, Persons: The Ontology of Roman Ingarden (2005).