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12 What Is Reader Response?

Reader response criticism is a literary theory that focuses on the individual reader’s experience and interpretation of a text. It asserts that the meaning of a text is not fixed and objective but rather subjective and dependent on the reader’s interpretation and response to it.

According to this theory, readers bring their own experiences, values, and beliefs to the text, which shape their understanding and response to it. This means that each reader’s interpretation of a text is unique and can vary depending on factors such as their cultural background, personal experiences, and emotional state. We call this subjective reader response.

Reader response theory originated in the 1960s and 1970s as a reaction to the dominant New Criticism approach, which focused on the text itself rather than the reader’s response to it. Proponents of reader response theory argue that by emphasizing the role of the reader in shaping meaning, this approach offers a more democratic and inclusive view of literature.

Reader response theory can be applied to any genre of literature, from poetry to novels to plays. It is often used in conjunction with other approaches to literary analysis, such as feminist or psychological criticism, to explore the ways in which a text can be interpreted and experienced by different readers. When we consider how the implied reader might read a text, we are thinking about reader responses that might be different from our own. Steven Lynn notes in Texts and Contexts: “For people who rejoice in the diversity of experiences and responses and opinions, reader-response criticism will be especially interesting, not only because of our different orientations and abilities, but also because of the different ways that we partition and perceive our experiences” (p. 86).

Prominent practitioners of reader response criticism include Louise Rosenblatt, David Bleich, Stanley Fish, and Wolfgang Iser .

Learning Objectives

Become familiar with a variety of approaches to texts, in the form of literary theories (CLO 1.1)
Use a variety of approaches to texts to support interpretations (CLO 1.2)
Understand how formal elements in literary texts create meaning within the context of culture and literary discourse. (CLO 2.1)
Understand how context impacts the reading of a text, and how different contexts can bring about different readings (CLO 4.3)
Demonstrate through discussion and/or writing how textual interpretation can change given the context from which one reads (CLO 6.2)
Discuss the significance and impact of multiple perspectives on a given text (CLO 7.3)

An Excerpt from Reader Response Scholarship

Read the following excerpt from Louise Rosenblatt’s 1978 book, The Reader, the Text, and the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. before proceeding with this chapter. (The entire book can be read at the Internet Archive )

Critics and literary theorists, who have traditionally lavished attention on authors and texts, have only recently begun to consider the reader. A few have reacted to the point of insisting on the predominance of the reader’s personality. Others focus on the readers response—but to the literary work of art still assumed to exist “out there” in the text. What, in fact does the reader respond to? What does he interpret? Such questions lead me in the following pages to discriminate between the reader’s activities in “efferent” and in “aesthetic reading.” This cardinal distinction generates new light on the multidimensional process of evoking a poem and on the dynamic “mode of existence” of the literary work of art. Analysis of both the openness, and the constraint offered by the text clarifies its complex role in the transaction with the reader. The theoretical foundation is thus laid for dealing with such persistent and controversial problems as validity in interpretation, criteria of evaluation, and the relation between literary criticism and other disciplines…. As early as 1938, I wrote: “There is no such thing as a generic reader or a generic literary work…. The reading of any work of literature is, of necessity, an individual and unique occurrence involving the mind and emotions of a particular reader….” The transactional approach is listed the challenges and has incorporated the sustenance brought by the intervening years. During World War II, for example, when I found myself associate chief of the Western European Section of the Bureau of Overseas Intelligence (OWI), the problem of eliciting meaning from texts took the form of propaganda analysis and the derivation of economic, social, and political information from the Nazi-dominated media. As a result, I became keenly aware of the differences between “intuitive reading” and such techniques as content analysis; this contrast had repercussions in my later thinking about critical method and critical theory….Ironically, since I was not caught in the pendulum swing disillusionment with the New Critics, the transactional theory expounded here repudiates recent efforts to make the reader all important…. (Rosenblatt ix-xiii) The long history of the theory of literature, from Plato to the present, records certain well-known shifts of emphasis. In surveying these changes, I find it helpful to visualize a little scene: on a darkened stage I see the figures of the author and the reader, with the book—the text of the poem or play or novel—between them. The spotlight focusses on one of them so brightly that the others fade into practical invisibility. Throughout the centuries, it has become apparent, usually either the book or the author has received major illumination. The reader has tended to remain in shadow, taken for granted, to all intents and purposes invisible. Like Ralph Ellison’s hero, the reader might say, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” Here or there a theoretician may start to take him seriously, and the spotlight may seem from time to time to hover over him, but actually he has never for long held the center of attention…. As we survey the field of literary theory, then, the reader is often mentioned, but is not given the center of the stage. The reason is simple; the reader is usually cast as a passive recipient, whether for good or ill, of the impact of the work. He is still, in a sense, invisible, even when he is treated as a member of something referred to under such collective rubrics as “the audience” or “the reading public.” Thus readers are viewed mainly en masse, as in studies of Shakespeare’s audience or accounts of the emergence of the middle-class reading public in the eighteenth century, or analysis of categories of fiction, and their respective types of readers in the twentieth century. The individual reader has seldom been acknowledged as carrying on his own special and peculiar activities. There is a great difference between the concept of the reader as a passive “audience” and the kind of visibility that I claim for the reader. Within the past few years, the spotlight has started to move in the direction of the reader. Sometimes the reaction has been more against the socio-political implications of the New Criticism than against its aesthetic theory. Sometimes the rehabilitation of the reader takes the form of a rather extreme subjectivism or Freudianism. Thus, some preoccupied with the author’s text, have seen the reader as a tabula rasa, receiving the imprint of “the poem.” Others, in reaction, see the text is empty, awaiting the content brought by the reader. Rejecting both of these extremes, the discussion that follows begins with readers encountering a text and proceeds to meet the basic questions that flow from this event. The purpose will be to admit into the limelight the whole scene— author, text, and reader. We shall be especially concerned with the member of the cast his hitherto been neglected—the reader. (Rosenblatt 1-5).

Subjective Reader Response: A Tool to Use with Many Types of Analysis

Subjective reader response puts you—the reader—in the spotlight. This critical approach emphasizes the role of the reader in creating meaning, arguing that meaning is not inherent in the text but is rather constructed by the reader through their own experiences, beliefs, and emotions. In subjective reader response, the reader’s personal interpretation and reaction to a text is just as important as the author’s intention or the formal qualities of the text itself. Subjective reader response is a process of engaging with a literary text in a personal and individual way, allowing your own experiences, emotions, and beliefs to shape your interpretation of the text.

To engage in subjective reader response, you can follow these steps:

Read the text: Begin by reading the text closely, paying attention to the language, structure, and themes. This should feel familiar from your experiences with New Criticism.
Reflect on your own experiences: Think about how your own experiences and emotions relate to the themes and characters in the text. Consider how the text makes you feel and what thoughts or memories it evokes.
Respond to the text: Write down your thoughts and reactions to the text, either in a journal or as annotations in the margins of the text itself. Consider how your interpretation differs from or aligns with traditional interpretations of the text.
Consider how your response might differ from others’ responses. Share your responses with others and engage in discussion and debate about the different interpretations and perspectives that the text can generate.
Reflect on the process : Reflect on how your personal experiences and emotions influenced your interpretation of the text and consider how this approach differs from other approaches to literary analysis.

Overall, subjective reader response is a highly personal and subjective approach to literary analysis that emphasizes the importance of individual experience and perspective in the process of interpreting and analyzing literature. We will continue to use this tool as we interact with texts throughout the semester. From now on, as you read a text, consider your own response to that text. What role do you as a reader play in the creation of the text’s meaning?

Receptive Reader Response: The Implied Reader

The implied reader is a term used in reader response criticism to refer to the hypothetical reader that a literary text addresses and assumes. This implied reader is not an actual person, but rather a constructed persona created by the text itself. The implied reader is the reader that the text expects and anticipates, and this reader is shaped by the text’s style, tone, language, and themes. The implied reader is not necessarily the same as the actual reader who reads the text, but instead represents the ideal reader who will respond to the text in the way that the author intended. The concept of the implied reader emphasizes the importance of the reader in the process of literary interpretation and analysis, and it highlights the ways in which texts shape and influence the expectations and responses of their readers.

When practicing receptive reader response, the reader tries to put aside their preconceptions and expectations and to enter into a state of empathetic engagement with the text. The receptive reader is attuned to the language, tone, and style of the text and tries to understand the text on its own terms, rather than imposing their own perspective or interpretation onto it. Receptive reader response emphasizes the importance of the reader’s emotional and affective response to the text, as well as their cognitive and intellectual engagement. This approach to reading acknowledges the complexity and diversity of responses that a single text can generate and emphasizes the importance of individual subjectivity and interpretation in the process of literary analysis.

Some forms of receptive response to texts consider the responses of individual demographic groups. For example, see Catherine Broadwell’s poem “Dear Phantom Children” in “Practicing Reader Response. ” How might Millennials read this poem differently than Boomers or Generation Z? Would women read this poem differently from men? What about a religious person compared with a nonreligious person? Each of these are examples of specific receptive readers. A scholar might consider how a particular group would respond to the text and also examine whether that group’s response would be different from the text’s implied reader response.

Applying Subjective and Receptive Reader Response Techniques to Literature

As Louise Rosenblatt noted above, putting the spotlight on the reader does not necessarily mean that anything goes in terms of our approach to texts. As with New Criticism, we still need evidence from the text to support our argument, but with subjective reader response, we will also use evidence from how the text affects us to consider its meaning. With receptive reader response, we’ll keep our own reactions in mind, but we will also consider ways that our personal reading of the text might differ from the text’s expected reader. This requires you to come up with some sort of implied reader. For whom was this text written? What would that person expect or anticipate from the text? Start with a close reading of the text, just like we practiced in our previous section. But this time, in addition to looking at the poem’s formal elements, pay attention to your reaction to the text.

What an Indian Thought When He Saw a Comet

By Tso-le-oh-woh

Flaming wonderer! that dost leave vaunting, proud Ambition boasting its lightning fringed Immensity—cleaving wings, gaudy dipp’d In sunset’s blossoming splendors bright and Tinsel fire, with puny flight fluttering Far behind! Thou that art cloth’d in mistery More startling and more glorious than thine own Encircling fires—profound as the oceans Of shoreless space through which now thou flyest! Art thou some erring world now deep engulph’d In hellish, Judgement fires, with phrenzied ire And fury hot, like some dread sky rocket Of Eternity, flaming, vast, plunging Thro’ immensity, scatt’ring in thy track The wrathful fires of thine own damnation Or wingest thou with direful speed, the ear Of some flaming god of far off systems Within these skies unheard of and unknown? Ye Gods! How proud the thought to mount this orb Of fire—boom thro’ the breathless oceans vast Of big immensity—quickly leaving Far behind all that for long ages gone Dull, gray headed dames have prated of— Travel far off mystic eternities— Then proudly, on this little twisting ball Returning once more set foot, glowing with The splendors of a vast intelligence— Frizzling little, puny humanity Into icy horrors—bursting the big Wide-spread eyeball of dismay—to recount Direful regions travers’d and wonders seen! Why I’d be as great a man as Fremont Who cross’d the Rocky Mountains, didn’t freeze And’s got a gold mine!

Cherokee poet Tso-Le-Oh-Woh, also spelled Tsoo-le-oh-wah published this poem in The Cherokee Advocate shortly after the Klinkerfues comet passed through the skies in 1853. We know little of his life beyond this poem.

Here are some questions to consider as you analyze the poem using subjective reader response:

How does the poem’s vivid and imaginative language impact your emotional response to the comet described in the poem? Do the descriptions evoke feelings of awe, wonder, or fear? How does your emotional response influence your interpretation of the poem’s themes?
The poem seems to explore the idea of perspective and the contrast between the vastness of the universe and the insignificance of humanity. How does the speaker’s perspective on the comet change throughout the poem? How does your own perspective as a reader affect your understanding of the poem’s message about the relationship between humanity and the cosmos?
The poem mentions the concept of “vast intelligence” and the idea of experiencing “wonders seen.” How do these notions of intelligence and wonder connect with your personal beliefs or experiences? Do they resonate with your own sense of curiosity and exploration, or do they challenge your perspective in any way?
The poem references historical figures like Fremont and alludes to exploration and discovery. How do these references to real-world events and individuals influence your interpretation of the poem’s themes? Do they make the poem more relatable or provide a historical context for the speaker’s thoughts?
The poem combines elements of both admiration and potential dread regarding the comet’s significance. How does this duality in the speaker’s attitude toward the comet resonate with your own complex emotions when encountering the unknown or the extraordinary? How does your personal background and cultural context shape your response to the poem’s portrayal of this celestial event?

Note: Make sure to support your analysis with specific textual evidence from the poem to support your response. Use line numbers to refer to specific parts of the text.

After completing your subjective reader response, you’ll want to come up with a thesis statement that you can support with the evidence you’ve found.

Example of subjective reader response thesis statement: Reading “What an Indian Thought When He Saw a Comet” by Tso-le-oh-woh, I feel connected to our nation’s past through a common experience of celestial wonder as I recall how the 2017 total solar eclipse influenced me. This common experience of wonder can serve to unite us in our humanity.

With receptive reader response, we will want to think about the audience for this poem when it was published in 1853. Would they have expected a poem like this from a Native American poet? How would the audience have thought about the comet of 1853? Consider how two different audiences–Cherokee Nation members and American settlers of European descent–might read this poem in different ways. Do both audiences have the same expected response to the poem?

Here are some receptive reader response questions to consider:

How might the poem have been received by Indigenous communities or individuals who were familiar with the cultural and spiritual significance of celestial events in their own traditions? How would their prior beliefs and experiences have influenced their reading of the poem?
Considering the historical context of the poem’s publication (late 19th or early 20th century), how might readers from various backgrounds have perceived the poem’s references to exploration and figures like Fremont? Would readers with an interest in or firsthand experience of westward expansion and frontier exploration have a different perspective on these references?
Given the poem’s references to intelligence and wonders seen, how might readers from diverse intellectual and educational backgrounds of that era have responded to the poem? Would scholars, scientists, and those with a more formal education have engaged with it differently than individuals with limited access to formal education?
How might religious communities and clergy members from the time period have interpreted the poem’s references to religious imagery and the potential connection between the comet and divine forces? Would different religious denominations have varying interpretations or responses to the poem?
Considering the historical and sociopolitical context of the poem’s era, how might readers who were influenced by ideas of American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny have perceived the poem’s exploration themes? Would they have viewed it as a celebration of American exploration and expansion or as a critique of these ideas?

Example of receptive reader response thesis statement: In the poem “What an Indian Thought When He Saw a Comet” by Tso-le-oh-woh, the celestial event serves as a prism through which Indigenous communities of the late 19th and early 20th centuries would have interpreted themes of cosmic interconnectedness, the clash of cultural worldviews, and the implications of encountering the unknown, offering insights into their unique perspectives rooted in spiritual beliefs and historical experiences.

Limitations of Reader Response Criticism

The most obvious criticism leveled at reader response criticism is its complete opposition to the goals of New Criticism. If we center the reader, does this mean that any interpretation of a text is a correct one? Literary scholars such as Rosenblatt and Iser strive to overcome this criticism by emphasizing that rigor is still required in analyzing texts. We don’t completely abandon the tools of New Criticism when we do reader response. Instead, we augment these interpretations by understanding that a text’s meaning is shared, a joint creation of both the author and the reader.

In some cases, the reader’s interpretation may overshadow other aspects of a literary work, such as its formal qualities, language, structure, and historical significance. This may result in a narrow analysis that neglects important aspects of the text. When you do your own reader response, start with a close reading, and continue to notice the formal elements that support your reading. It’s also important to identify and consider the role of personal bias when approaching a text.

In general, while reader response theory offers valuable insights into the role of the reader in interpreting literature, its subjectivity and emphasis on individual responses can limit its applicability and objectivity in certain analytical contexts. Researchers and critics often combine reader response insights with other critical approaches to provide a more comprehensive understanding of literary texts. We tend to see more receptive than subjective reader response publications from scholars.

Reader Response Scholars

These are some influential practitioners of reader response theory.

Bleich, David. Readings and Feelings: An Introduction to Subjective Criticism . (1975).
Fish, Stanley. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretative Communities. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP (1980).
Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. (1978).
Rosenblatt, Louise. The Reader, the Text, and the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1978.

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Collaboration, information literacy, writing process, reader-response criticism.

Reader-Response Criticism is

a research method , a type of textual research , that literary critics use to interpret texts
a genre of discourse employed by literary critics used to share the results of their interpretive efforts.

Key Terms: Dialectic ; Hermeneutics ; Semiotics ; Text & Intertextuality ; Tone

The origins of reader-oriented criticism can be located in the United States with Louise Rosenblatt’s development of theories in the 1930s, though she further developed her theories in the late seventies ( The Reader, the Text, the Poem 1978). American critic Stanley Fish has also significantly influenced Reader-Response theory. He conceived of “interpretive communities” that employ interpretive strategies to produce properties and meanings of literary texts (14-15). The thoughts, ideas, and experiences a reader brings to the text, combined with the text and experience of reading it, work together to create meaning. Reader + Text = Meaning.

Reader-response criticism, or reader-oriented criticism, focuses on the reading process. As Charles Bressler notes in Literary Criticism , the basic assumption of reader-oriented criticism is “Reader + Text = Meaning” (80). The thoughts, ideas, and experiences a reader brings to the text, combined with the text and experience of reading it, work together to create meaning. From this perspective, the text becomes a reflection of the reader. The association of the reader with a text differs from the premise of Formalist criticism, which argues for the autonomy of a text. Reader-response criticism does not suggest that anything goes, however, or that any interpretation is a sound one.

The origins of reader-oriented criticism can be located in the United States with Louise Rosenblatt’s development of theories in the 1930s ( Literature as Exploration ). Rosenblatt further developed her theories in the late seventies ( The Reader, the Text, the Poem ). American critic Stanley Fish has also significantly influenced reader-response theory. Fish conceived of “interpretive communities” that employ interpretive strategies to produce properties and meanings of literary texts (14-15).Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World , a novel that critiques the dangers of a fictional utopian society, incorporates an intriguing exploration of reader-response criticism into its plot. John and Mustapha Mond both read texts written by Shakespeare, but they report very different responses to Shakespeare’s plays. For John, a noble savage born on a reservation in New Mexico, plays by Shakespeare represent a useful way to learn about the finest aspects of humanity and human values. In contrast, Mustapha Mond views literary works written by Shakespeare as useless high art. Mustapha Mond’s position as the Resident Controller for Western Europe influences his perspective as a reader as much as John’s encounter with Shakespeare on a Reservation in New Mexico does. Recognizing how John’s and Mustapha Mond’s experiences differ in the novel helps readers understand why these characters respond to Shakespeare in dissimilar ways.

Foundational Questions of Reader-Response Criticism

Who is the reader? Who is the implied reader?
What experiences, thoughts, or knowledge does the text evoke?
What aspects or characters of the text do you identify or disidentify with, and how does this process of identification affect your response to the text?
What is the difference between your general reaction to (e.g., like or dislike) and reader-oriented interpretation of the text?

Online Example: Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”: A Reader’s Response

Discussion Questions and Activities: Reader-Response Criticism

List and define two to three of the key terms you would consider to approach a text from a reader-response approach.
Explain why a text that has not been interpreted by a reader is an “incomplete text.”
Using the Folger Digital Texts from the Folger Shakespeare Library , interpret the soliloquy in act three, scene one, lines 64-98 of Hamlet from a reader-response approach. Consider the following questions as you construct your response: what previous experiences do you have with the drama or poetry of William Shakespeare, and how have those experiences shaped the way you currently approach his work? If you read this soliloquy in the past, has your view of it changed? Why?
Differentiate between your general opinion of Hamlet’s soliloquy (your like or dislike of it) and your interpretation of it.
In your view, what does Hamlet mean when he says, “To be or not to be—that is the question” (3.1.64)? Defend your interpretation.

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6.3: Focus on Reader-Response Strategies

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Reader-response strategies can be categorized, according to Richard Beach in A Teacher’s Introduction to Reader-Response Theories (1993), into five types: textual , experiential , psychological , social , and cultural .Richard Beach, A Teacher’s Introduction to Reader-Response Theories (Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993). Let’s review those categories.

Textual Reader-Response Strategies

Performing a close reading of a text teaches you to look “closely” at the way a text operates and to glean some meaning from the workings of the text. In other words, your interpretation is primarily directed by the text. Textual reader-response approaches admit to the fact that the text does influence the way readers read and construct meaning. Thus the reader and text interact in the process of formulating a meaning of the text. Imagine a text as a painting in an art gallery: your interpretation of the painting will be based on whether you like it or not, but this reaction will be directed by the painting itself. Or consider a literary text as a musical composition; as a listener, you are moved by the music, but you must relate the music to some experience to make it work emotionally on you. Another metaphor: a text is like an unfinished sculpture; the reader must bring the finished form to the work. Thus to textual reader-response critics, the text directs interpretation as the reader directs the text to interpretation.

Literature as Transaction: Gap Filling and Ghost Chapters

A pioneer in reader-response criticism is Louise Rosenblatt, whose Literature as Exploration (5th ed., 1995) provided an alternative theory to the persistent New Critical approaches that gained such popularity. Rosenblatt contends that literature must become personal for it to have its full impact on the reader;Louise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration , 5th ed. (New York: Modern Language Association, 1995). in fact, New Criticism’s affective fallacy prevents the reader from engaging the text on any personal level. Rosenblatt’s approach, like the New Critical reading methods, provides a classroom strategy; however, whereas the New Critics centered on the literary text, Rosenblatt centers on the reader.

Rosenblatt believes readers transact with the text by bringing in their past life experiences to help interpret the text.Louise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration , 5th ed. (New York: Modern Language Association, 1995). Reading literature becomes an event—the reader activates the work through reading. Rosenblatt argues that any literary text allows for an efferent reading , which is what the reader believes should be retained after the reading; the aesthetic reading , on the other hand, is what the reader experiences while reading.Louise Rosenblatt, Literature as Exploration , 5th ed. (New York: Modern Language Association, 1995). The aesthetic reading accounts for the changes in a reader’s attitude toward a literary work. Rosenblatt’s theory provides for a process of reading that leads to discussion and interpretation: a reader transacts with a literary text during the reading process, focusing on the aesthetic response while reading. After reading, then, the reader reflects on the aesthetic response and compares it to the textual evidence and other interpretations. In a way, literary interpretation is more focused on the transaction—the process of reading—than on an interpretation of a particular work.

Another important reader-response theorist is Wolfgang Iser, who complements Rosenblatt. Iser believes that a literary work has meaning once a reader engages in the text.Wolfgang Iser, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Text , (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1979).According to Iser, every literary work is balanced by two poles, the artistic and the esthetic poles , roughly corresponding to Rosenblatt’s efferent and aesthetic readings. For Iser, the artistic pole is that created by the author; the esthetic pole is that realized or completed by the reader.Wolfgang Iser, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Text , (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1979). Since a literary work is caught between these two poles, its meaning resides in the gap between these poles; the primary quality of a text is its indeterminacy. A textual critic, Iser recognizes that the text—the artistic pole—guides the reader who resides in the esthetic pole. He distinguishes between the implied reader , one the text creates for itself, and the actual reader , the reader who brings “things” to the text.Wolfgang Iser, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Text , (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1979). Consequently, there exists a gap between the implied and actual reader, and between the artistic and esthetic poles. The reader, then, must perform gap filling to concretize the text. Umberto Eco, another reader-response critic, takes gap filling even further, arguing that readers write ghost chapters for texts as a way to understand the transaction that happens between the text and reader.Umberto Eco, “The Reading Process: A Phenomenological Approach.” in Reader-Response Criticism from Formalism to Post-Structuralism . ed by Jane P. Tompkins. (Baltimore, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980) pgs. 50–69.

As you can see, Iser’s textual reader-response criticism is based on his contention that the reader concretizes the text—gives it meaning—while the text necessarily guides this concretization. Consequently, a literary text operates by indeterminacy; it has gaps that the reader attempts to fill.

Transaction: The Rhetoric of Fiction

Another pioneer in reader-response criticism is Wayne Booth, who in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961; revised edition 1983) analyzes the way literature engages us through its language, or rhetoric.Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction , 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Booth shows readers how authors manipulate them into seeing things they have never seen before. Booth’s most important contributions to reader-response criticism (and literary criticism in general) are his concepts of the implied author (or narrator) and the unreliable narrator, and how these force us to confront reading as an ethical act.

The implied author —the narrative voice the author creates in a work—is the most important artistic effect: in a sense, the implied author directs the reader’s reaction to the literary work, guiding—or sometimes forcing—the reader to react on an emotional level since the implied author brings his or her ethical principles to the text. By directing the reader’s interpretation, the implied author limits the reader’s response while forcing the reader to react to the implied author.

For example, Booth contends that the implied author in Emma recognizes that the reader must be able to empathize and like Emma; if not, the novel will fail.Wayne Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction , 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1983). Thus Austen creates an implied author—the narrator—who controls our perception of Emma by creating a character the reader can empathize with, laugh at when appropriate, and condemn when needed. Since the implied author becomes like a friend and guide, we as readers can rely on the narrative voice to guide us.

Booth recognizes that while a text’s implied author may be reliable, the work may still have an unreliable narrator . The narrator in Jonathan Swift’s “Modest Proposal” seems perfectly reliable and in control until we realize that his proposal to alleviate the poverty of the Ireland is to raise babies as edible delicacies!Jonathan Swift, “Modest Proposal” (London: 1729; University of Virginia Library Electronic Text Center, 2004), etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/mo...c/SwiMode.html . Or think of the first-person narrators of Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885) or J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951).J. D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye (London: Little, Brown, 1951). An unreliable narrator requires the author and reader to engage in a special bond whereby they acknowledge that the narrator cannot be trusted; in a way, then, the reader and author engage in a transaction by recognizing the limited view of the unreliable implied author. The unreliable narrator, ultimately, forces the reader to respond on some moral plane.

By appealing to the moral qualities of the reader, Booth provides a framework for an ethics of reading that he defines in The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (1988). Using Rosenblatt’s distinction between the efferent and aesthetic reading, Booth argues that the reader must carry over the efferent reading into the aesthetic, for the efferent reading requires us to compare our personal experience and moral beliefs with the narrative.Wayne Booth, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). Since a literary work takes us over for the duration of the reading experience, an ethics of reading will require the reader to eventually judge the ethical dimension to a work. Nonce beliefs are the beliefs the narrator and reader embrace only during the reading. Fixed norms are the beliefs on which the entire literary work depends for effect but also are applicable to the real world. As an example, Booth uses Aesop’s fables, for a talking animal relates to our nonce beliefs—the talking animal is acknowledged as essential to the narrative—when the fixed norms will entail the moral that concludes the fable. Thus the nonce and fixed beliefs require a transaction between reader and work. Booth suggests that an ethics of reading becomes a two-stage process: (1) the reader must surrender fully to the reading experience and then (2) the reader must contemplate the reading experience from an ethical perspective (which depends on the reader’s own moral stance).Wayne Booth, The Company We Keep: An Ethics of Fiction (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988). In other words, we should keep company with the literary work and maintain an open mind until we conclude that the work might be harmful to us—or be in conflict with our moral beliefs. As you can see, Booth’s ethics of reading is determined by the reader’s moral makeup, which is dependent on a specific time and reading experience. It is open to change.

Kate Chopin’s “The Storm” (1898) is a good example of this.“Kate Chopin ‘The Storm,’” The Kate Chopin International Society, http://www.katechopin.org/the-storm.shtml . In the story, a married woman has a passionate affair one afternoon with an acquaintance who by chance comes to her house to escape a storm. Their relationship is set up in an earlier story, “At the Cadian Ball” (1892), Chopin presents the affair as a natural impulse; the ending of the story tells us that both parties are happy and content.Kate Chopin, “At the ’Cadian Ball,” in The Awakening, and Selected Stories , ed. Sandra M. Gilbert (New York: Penguin, 1984). While in the company of “The Storm,” you will respond to the story itself as it occupies you, yet after your reading you will complete the reading by bringing your ethics into play: do you reject the story because it does not condemn adultery? Do you embrace the story because of its honest depiction of sexual passion?

Booth’s brand of textual reader-response criticism is a valuable tool for readers since he provides a textual model of reading—the implied author who is reliable and unreliable—that embraces the ethical dimension of the reader, who must transact with the literary work.

Textual reader-response criticism, as exemplified by Rosenblatt, Booth, and Iser, is a powerful literary critical tool to use when analyzing texts. Using some conventions of New Criticism, these critics are able to show how text and reader can simultaneously be active during the reading process.

Your Process

Read the following fable by Aesop:

THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE

The Hare was once boasting of his speed before the other animals. “I have never yet been beaten,” said he, “when I put forth my full speed. I challenge any one here to race with me.”

The Tortoise said quietly, “I accept your challenge.”

“That is a good joke,” said the Hare; “I could dance round you all the way.”

“Keep your boasting till you’ve beaten,” answered the Tortoise. “Shall we race?”

So a course was fixed and a start was made. The Hare darted almost out of sight at once, but soon stopped and, to show his contempt for the Tortoise, lay down to have a nap. The Tortoise plodded on and plodded on, and when the Hare awoke from his nap, he saw the Tortoise just near the winning-post and could not run up in time to save the race. Then said the Tortoise: “Plodding wins the race.”Aesop, “The Hare and the Tortoise,” Aesop’s Fables , http://www.aesops-fables.org.uk/aesop-fable-the-hare-and-the-tortoise.htm .

Use Booth’s notions of fixed and nonce beliefs to examine how you will respond to the moral of the fable. Does plodding win the race in your value system?
Are there gaps in the narrative that you filled in to make sense of the narrative? What were they? Can you apply Rosenblatt’s and Iser’s notions of how readers complete the text?

Experiential Reader Response

Experiential reader-response critics like Stanley Fish are unlike the textual reader-response critics in one very important aspect—they emphasize the reader’s reading process over the literary work. Fish calls this kind of reader response affective stylistics , reminding us of the “affect” that literature has on us and of the New Critical affective fallacy that rejected any emotional response a reader might have to a literary work.Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost , 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). To Fish, then, affective stylistics is the experience the reader has while reading, which he defines as a three-fold process:

Readers surrender themselves to the text, letting the text wash over them; in fact, at this stage, readers should not be concerned with trying to understand what the work is about.
Readers next concentrate on their reading responses while reading, seeing how each word, each sentence, each paragraph elicits a response.
Finally, readers should describe the reading experience by structuring their reading responses, which may be in conflict with the common interpretation of a work.Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost , 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

Fish’s thesis is seductive, for when we read, we are constantly reacting to our reading, connecting it to our personal lives, to other literary works we have read, and to our reading experience at that particular reading moment. Sometimes we will love to read; other times we dread it. In Surprised by Sin , Fish examines how the reader is affected by a reading of John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667), that epic poem that describes the fall of Adam and Eve.John Milton, Paradise Lost (1667; University of Virginia Electronic Text Center, 1993), http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/MilPL67.html .Fish argues that the reading experience of Paradise Lost mirrors the actual Fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden.Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost , 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998).

As intriguing as Fish’s affective stylistics may be, the reality is that readers often agree on meaning; that is, they tend to see similar things in the same text. A textual reader-response critic would argue that the text—through its transaction with the reader—leads to such common interpretation, but Fish is interested in another possibility—that we are trained to find similar meanings. He calls this idea interpretive communities . To Fish, then, a reader of an interpretive community brings a meaning to the text because he or she is trained to.Stanley Fish, Surprised by Sin: The Reader in Paradise Lost , 2nd ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998). A student in a modernist poetry class, for example, would interpret Wallace Stevens’s “Anecdote of the Jar” in terms of modernism and the poetic movements in modernism and be at ease making claims about the poem’s meaning. Literary theory, which you are learning as you work your way through this text, also demonstrates the interpretive community. If you are intrigued by Freudian psychoanalytic criticism, you will find Freudian meanings in the works that you are reading; likewise, a feminist critic will find gender issues when reading. Another way to understand interpretive communities is to note that the American legal system has embraced the idea of interpretive communities in jury selection: for example, if a defense attorney who is representing a college student in an underage drinking case can get members on the jury who agree that the drinking age should be lowered to nineteen, then the jury may have already interpreted the evidence in light of their beliefs and will find the student not guilty.

Experiential reader response acknowledges that reading is a subjective process and attempts to understand how to analyze such subjective responses.

In the old age black was not counted fair,

Or if it were, it bore not beauty’s name;

But now is black beauty’s successive heir,

And beauty slandered with a bastard shame:

For since each hand hath put on Nature’s power,

Fairing the foul with Art’s false borrowed face,

Sweet beauty hath no name, no holy bower,

But is profaned, if not lives in disgrace.

Therefore my mistress’ eyes are raven black,

Her eyes so suited, and they mourners seem

At such who, not born fair, no beauty lack,

Sland’ring creation with a false esteem:

Yet so they mourn becoming of their woe,

That every tongue says beauty should look so.

Read the Sonnet 127 from Shakespeare.William Shakespeare, “Sonnet 127,” in Sonnets (1609; University of Virginia Electronic Text Center, 1992), etext.lib.virginia.edu/toc/mo...c/ShaSonQ.html . As you read, jot down what is going on in your mind. Do you try to make sense of the poem while reading? Do you become frustrated while reading? Do certain words evoke feelings?
Have you read other sonnets by Shakespeare? If so, what do you remember about them? Did you bring your knowledge of the sonnets to the reading of this one? Did you read the poem coming from a particular interpretive community?
How did your interpretive community shape your interpretation of the poem? What ideas from your community did you bring in interpreting the poem?

Psychological Reader Response

When we read, we are continually connecting the text to our lives, almost as if the literary work is speaking to us personally. Psychological reader response helps us better understand this phenomenon.

Subjective Analysis

Often called subjective criticism , this form of reader-response criticism is championed by David Bleich, who believes that a reader’s response becomes the text itself, ripe for analysis (or psychoanalysis). To Bleich, a literary text comprises a real entity—the text, the words on the page, which is a concrete object—and our interpretation of the concrete text, which can be seen as a symbolic object. We “resymbolize” the text through our perceptions and beliefs. Meaning, then, is negotiated: our reading response (highly personal) is often brought to a larger body (communal) to discuss the meaning of a piece of literature. The classroom is a perfect example: you are assigned to read something, you read it and develop a personal interpretation, and then you share that interpretation with the class; ultimately, the class creates a more communal interpretation. In subjective criticism, knowledge is seen as socially constructed from the interaction of all readers; thus, interpretation is seen as personal, yet communal, the common element being that reading is subjective. The transaction that happens in subjective criticism is between the personal reader-oriented response statement and the more public-oriented response statement, which reflects the themes in the text.

Subjective criticism focuses on the negotiation for meaning—your view is not wrong if it is based on some objective reading of the text.

Identity Analysis

Norman Holland’s approach to reader response follows in the footsteps of subjective criticism. According to Holland, people deal with texts the same way they deal with life. Holland would say that we gravitate toward particular literary works because they speak to our inner—our psychological—needs. In other words, each reader has an identity that we can analyze, which will open up the literary text to personal interpretation based on a reader’s identity. Thus we use the term “ identity analysis ” to describe the form of psychological reader-response criticism that suggests that we are drawn to literary works that speak to our psychological needs—conversely, we are repelled or troubled by works that do not meet our needs.

These identity needs are often repressed in the unconscious and are in need of an outlet, which is provided by reading. When reading, then, we can engage our repressed desires or needs. Why do we read fantasy literature? Romance literature? Thrillers? Self-help books? Science fiction? Reading becomes a personal way to cope with life.

This coping process is interpretation, for literature exposes more about the reader than about the text itself. Holland believes that each reader has an “ identity theme ,” a pattern of defense that he or she brings to a text. In turn, we gravitate to texts that tend to reinforce our identity themes and our needs. The contrary is also true: we will avoid texts that challenge our identity or threaten our psychological needs. When we read a text, we see ourselves reflected back at us. Holland calls this transactional process DEFT : we read in d efense (a coping strategy that aligns with our e xpectations) that leads to f antasy (our ability to find gratification) and finally to t ransformation (that leads to a total unifying effect for the reader).

List the literary works that you have read multiple times.
Why do you return to these works?
Do they reflect issues that connect to your life? Can you venture to define your identity theme?
Are there literary works you dislike? Why? Do these dislikes have anything to do with your identity theme?

Social Reader Response

Often referred to as “reception theory,” social reader response is interested in how a literary work is received over time. In fact, the status of a literary work is dependent on the reader’s reception of the work. Hans Robert Jauss, a key figure in “reception theory,” argues that the history of the reader is as important as the history of the literary work; in fact, the reader’s evolving interpretation is at the heart of the changing literary status.Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic Reception . Tans. Timothy Baht. (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982). To Jauss, every literary work continually evolves as the reader’s reception modifies according to the reader’s needs.

A classic example from nineteenth-century American literature is Moby-Dick (1851), now considered one of the greatest—if not the greatest—American novel ever written.Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or, The Whale (1952; University of Virginia Electronic Text Center, 1993), http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/Mel2Mob.html . Andrew Delbanco titles the first chapter of his book Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now (1997) “Melville’s Sacramental Style,” which brings an almost religious fervor to the importance of Melville generally and Moby-Dick specifically.Andrew Delbanco, Required Reading: Why Our American Classics Matter Now (New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1997). But this has not always been the case. Contemporary reviews of Moby-Dick were mixed, but many were quite unfavorable; these tainted Melville’s reputation and made it difficult for him to continue as a successful author. Melville.org has compiled a collection of contemporary reviews, one of which we reprint here:

Thrice unlucky Herman Melville!…

This is an odd book, professing to be a novel; wantonly eccentric; outrageously bombastic; in places charmingly and vividly descriptive. The author has read up laboriously to make a show of cetalogical [ sic ] learning…Herman Melville is wise in this sort of wisdom. He uses it as stuffing to fill out his skeleton story. Bad stuffing it makes, serving only to try the patience of his readers, and to tempt them to wish both him and his whales at the bottom of an unfathomable sea…

The story of this novel scarcely deserves the name…Mr. Melville cannot do without savages so he makes half of his dramatis personae wild Indians, Malays, and other untamed humanities… What the author’s original intention in spinning his preposterous yarn was, it is impossible to guess; evidently, when we compare the first and third volumes, it was never carried out…

Having said so much that may be interpreted as a censure, it is right that we should add a word of praise where deserved. There are sketches of scenes at sea, of whaling adventures, storms, and ship-life, equal to any we have ever met with…

Mr. Herman Melville has earned a deservedly high reputation for his performances in descriptive fiction. He has gathered his own materials, and travelled along fresh and untrodden literary paths, exhibiting powers of no common order, and great originality. The more careful, therefore, should he be to maintain the fame he so rapidly acquired, and not waste his strength on such purposeless and unequal doings as these rambling volumes about spermaceti whales. [ellipses in original]“Contemporary Criticism and Reviews,” The Life and Works of Herman Melville, http://www.melville.org/hmmoby.htm#Contemporary .

— London Literary Gazette , December 6, 1851

Many critics felt that Moby-Dick was a falling off of Melville’s talent, and that view remained for the rest of Melville’s life.

Why the change in reputation? Critics started reassessing Moby-Dick , scholars tell us, in 1919, and by 1930 the novel was frequently taught in college classrooms, thus cementing its critical reputation. In 1941 F. O. Mathiessen, in American Renaissance , placed Melville as a central writer in the nineteenth century.F. O. Mathieson, American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1941). In addition, the rise of literary theory that focused on race, class, and gender led to new revisionist readings of Melville; more recently, queer theory has argued that Moby-Dick is a central text in gay and lesbian literature.

Another example is Zora Neale Hurston’s Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God (New York: HarperCollins, 1998). Hurston was a popular author in America, but contemporary writers like Richard Wright and Langston Hughes were critical of Their Eyes Were Watching God because it seemed far away from the “protest fiction” other African American writers (mainly men) were publishing. Here is an excerpt from Richard Wright:

Miss Hurston seems to have no desire whatever to move in the direction of serious fiction… [ellipses in original]

Their Eyes Were Watching God is the story of Zora Neale Hurston’s Janie who, at sixteen, married a grubbing farmer at the anxious instigation of her slave-born grandmother. The romantic Janie, in the highly-charged language of Miss Hurston, longed to be a pear tree in blossom and have a “dust-bearing bee sink into the sanctum of a bloom; the thousand sister-calyxes arch to meet the love embrace.” Restless, she fled from her farmer husband and married Jody, an up-and-coming Negro business man who, in the end, proved to be no better than her first husband. After twenty years of clerking for her self-made Jody, Janie found herself a frustrated widow of forty with a small fortune on her hands. Tea Cake, “from in and through Georgia,” drifted along and, despite his youth, Janie took him. For more than two years they lived happily; but Tea Cake was bitten by a mad dog and was infected with rabies. One night in a canine rage Tea Cake tried to murder Janie, thereby forcing her to shoot the only man she had ever loved.

Miss Hurston can write, but her prose is cloaked in that facile sensuality that has dogged Negro expression since the days of Phillis Wheatley. Her dialogue manages to catch the psychological movements of the Negro folk-mind in their pure simplicity, but that’s as far as it goes.

Miss Hurston voluntarily continues in her novel the tradition which was forced upon the Negro in the theatre, that is, the minstrel technique that makes the “white folks” laugh. Her characters eat and laugh and cry and work and kill; they swing like a pendulum eternally in that safe and narrow orbit in which America likes to see the Negro live: between laughter and tears.“Their Eyes Are Watching Their Eyes Were Watching God,” University of Virginia, http://people.virginia.edu/~sfr/enam854/summer/hurston.html .

Thanks to these unfavorable reviews, Their Eyes Were Watching God became a forgotten text, and it remained so until Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple and many other works, wrote an essay in Ms. Magazine , “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” that recounts her search for Hurston’s grave in Eatonville, Florida. Walker eventually bought a grave marker for Hurston’s grave, which reflects the beginning of Hurston’s reputation as a great American novelist.Alice Walker, “Finding Zora,” Ms. Magazine , March 1975, 74–75. Now Their Eyes Were Watching God and Hurston are featured in Delbanco’s study on the American classics.

CLASS PROJECT: RECEPTION REVIEW

Choose a popular literary text. The New York Times Best Seller List is a great place to start.
Find three reviews of that work. You can find reviews by using a search engine—Google, for example—and if your library has Book Review Digest or Book Review Index , these are important databases.
Write a short paper that briefly summarizes each review and then comment on the reviews. Do the reviewers agree on the book in their reviews? If not, explore the differences.

Cultural Reader Response

Cultural reader response acknowledges that readers will bring their personal background to the reading of a text. What is that background? A variety of markers, including gender, race, sexual orientation, even political affiliation compose someone’s background. In other words, as readers we may interpret a literary work in light of where we are situated in society.

For example, gender is key to the way that readers respond to a literary work. See Amy Ferdinandt’s response to James Thurber’s “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” later in the chapter. Do men and women read differently? Some may say, “Yes.” An important text to highlight women’s reading experiences is Janice Radway’s Reading the Romance (1984).Jane Radway, Reading the Romance , 2nd ed. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991). Radway examines why women readers gravitate to the romance novel. Radway’s ideas, for example, could be applied to Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight series, a romance series about a young woman, Bella Swan, who falls in love with a vampire, Edward Cullen, but who is also attracted to a werewolf, Jacob Black.Stephenie Meyer, The Twilight Saga Collection (London: Little, Brown, 2009). The target audience for Twilight is adolescent girls, and it is unusual for boys to read Twilight . Why? Harry Potter , on the other hand, appeals to both male and female readers, as does Suzanne Collins’s Hunger Games trilogy.Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games Trilogy (New York: Scholastic, 2010). Another useful text to look at is Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts and Contexts (1986), edited by Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweickart.Elizabeth A. Flynn and Patrocinio P. Schweickart, eds., Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986).

Another example to highlight culture and reading can be seen in Alan Gribben’s NewSouth edition of Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (2011). This controversial edition replaces the “n-word” in Huckleberry Finn with the word slave ; in Tom Sawyer , Gribben eliminates any derogatory language that refers to Native Americans and replaces Twain’s use of “half-breed” to, as Gribben writes, “‘half-blood,’ which is less disrespectful and has even taken on a degree of panache since J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2005).”Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: The NewSouth Edition , ed. Alan Gribben (Montgomery, AL: NewSouth, 2011); J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (New York: Scholastic, 2005). Gribben acknowledges that Twain’s language can be seen as derogatory toward ethnic groups, which might preclude them from reading the texts.Mark Twain, Mark Twain’s Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn: The NewSouth Edition , ed. Alan Gribben (Montgomery, AL: NewSouth, 2011). Critics argue that changing one word for another, as in Huckleberry Finn , doesn’t address the complexity of race issues in Twain. For a fascinating discussion of race regarding Twain, see the Bedford’s Case Study in Critical Controversy edition of Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (second ed., 2004), edited by Gerald Graff and James Phelan. In the unit on race, the editors provide a variety of interpretations of Twain’s use of the “n-word,” which highlights the complexity of race in reading.Mark Twain, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: A Case Study in Critical Controversy , 2nd ed., ed. Gerald Graff and James Phelan (Boston: Bedford, 2003).

As you can see, cultural reader response takes seriously how a literary work might evoke a particular response from a reader based on his or her gender, race, class status, sexual orientation, and so forth, and how a reader might bring a reading strategy based on his or her identity.

Write a journal or blog entry that explores your cultural position as a reader.
Does your gender, race, religion, politics, sexual orientation, and/or another cultural marker partly determine what you read and how you read literary works? Give at least two concrete examples.

Teaching Text Rhetorically

Integrating Reading and Writing Instruction by John R. Edlund

A Reader-Response Approach to Poetry

I introduced two mini-modules at the 2018 ERWC Leadership Conferences as part of my presentation, “Big Ideas from My Literacy Seminar.” This one, “A Reader-Response Approach to Poetry” was inspired by Louise Rosenblatt’s book, The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work . Rosenblatt begins the book with the image of two figures on a stage, the author and the reader, with the book between them. In various ages the spotlight focuses brightly on either the author or the text, but rarely the reader (1).

Rosenblatt then argues that the reader, not the author, creates the poem. The text of the poem is like an orchestra score in that the music doesn’t exist until it is performed. Because each reader brings different life experiences and background knowledge to the text, each reader will create a different poem. Being comfortable with this process is part of learning to enjoy poetry.

New Criticism taught us the techniques of close reading, which are still in common use today. New Critics also taught us that to try to recover the author’s intention was the “Intentional Fallacy,” and that to focus on the effects on the reader was to engage in the “Pathetic Fallacy.” The spotlight of the New Critics focuses exclusively on the text, and on using the techniques of close reading to produce the very best reading of that text.

A typical literature course today will apply close reading, but unlike New Criticism will include reference to the author’s biography and historical context. The dominant question is usually, “What does it mean?” and a received interpretation is often given. The result, especially with poetry, is that students believe that there is a “correct” interpretation that they are struggling to find. This has a number of negative effects, such as going immediately to the internet to discover the “correct” reading and a fear of interpreting poetry on their own. Thus it is common for students to say, even English majors in college, that they don’t like poetry.

This mini-module is designed to counteract that fear and help students read and enjoy poetry on their own, sharing their experiences with others. In working through the module, students

Read the poem quickly and write down their impressions,
Re-read to confirm and and develop their impressions,
Share their impressions with others in a small group,
Consider important details,
Negotiate a consensus interpretation,
Write a paragraph describing their evolving interpretation of the poem.

In this approach, reading a poem is both a personal and a social experience. The emphasis is on engaging with the text and connecting it to experience, not on discovering authorial intention or a “correct” reading. Any poem could be plugged into this process. I often choose a poem that has some important detail that students may miss on first readings, but discover on closer readings, so that they can experience the shift in interpretation that happens when making a sudden connection. (Sometimes I give them the information. I call this “throwing in a fact bomb.”) In the workshop, I used “Declaration” by Tracy K. Smith. Students may not initially realize that the poem echoes language from the Declaration of Independence. I have also used “Sundown” by Jorie Graham, in which students may not know that the phrase “on Omaha” refers to a D-Day invasion beach. These poems can easily be found on the internet.

The mini-module can be downloaded from this link .

Update: English teacher extraordinaire Carol Jago has published an essay, “ Agents of Imagination ,” on the Poetry Foundation site. It’s about teaching science fiction poetry and also includes a poem by Tracy K. Smith, who seems to have a talent for writing beautiful, evocative, yet approachable poems. This essay is a mini-module in essay form! Highly recommended!

What Is Reader Response Criticism?

Whereas many discuss literary works objectively, absolutely and with respect to how the author developed the ideas on the page, reader response criticism focuses on the reader and how she or he receives the literary work. In a sense, this moves the text from existing on its own — on, for example, the physical pages of a book — and instead assumes that the text exists only when it is read. This theory makes literary works more like performance art where the reader's act of reading and interpreting the text is the performance. Critical theorists continue to develop this approach, considering the nature of the reader and what he or she brings to the text, along with the different "lenses" through which the text can be viewed.

Foundational Beliefs

In reader response criticism, the act of reading is like a dialogue between the reader and the text that has meaning only when the two are joined in conversation. It redefines the role of the text from an independent object into something that can only exist when it is read and interacts with the mind of the reader. In this way, the reader is not a passive recipient of what the text says, but rather takes an active role. The text then serves as a catalyst to spur memories and thoughts within the reader allowing him or her to link the text to personal experiences and thereby fill in the spaces left by the text. This allows theorists to explain why people can have different responses to and interpretations of the same text.

This form of criticism even goes so far as to examine the role that individual words and phrases in the text play when interacting with the reader. The sounds and shapes that words make or even how they are pronounced or spoken by the reader can essentially alter the meaning of the text, it is suggested. Some reader response critics go so far as to analyze a text phrase by phrase in order to determine how much of the experience of reading it is predetermined and then analyze how each reader's experience changes that initial meaning.

Approaches Within Reader Response Criticism

Reader response criticism starts with what formalist literary criticism called the "affective fallacy " — that the response of the reader is relevant to understanding a text — and uses it as the focus of approaching a work of literature. There are different approaches within this school of critical theory, however; some look at the work from the individual reader's point of view, while others focus on how groups or communities view the text. For these schools of criticism, it's what the text does to the reader that's important, and not necessarily the work itself, the author's intent, or the social, political, or cultural context in which it was written.

The label "reader-oriented criticism" has become popular since the reader's experiences and expectations often change as time passes. In addition, a reader may approach the text with different points of view, or lenses. That is, the reader may be able to see the value in his or her own personal response while also analyzing the text based on another critical approach.

Individual Readers

Louise Rosenblatt is generally credited with formally introducing the idea that the reader's experience and interaction with the text creates the true meaning. This idea developed into what came to be known as Transactional Reader Response Criticism. Rosenblatt argued that, while the reader is guided by the ideas and words that the author laid out, it is ultimately each individual reader's experience in reading the work that actually gives it meaning. Since each person brings unique knowledge and beliefs to the reading transaction, the text will mean different things to different people. It is that meaning — the reader's meaning — that should be assessed, as opposed to solely looking at the author's text in a vacuum.

Other critics focus on how the reader's mind relates to the text, in what is known as Psychological Reader Response Criticism. The reader is seen as a psychological subject who can be studied based on his or her unconscious drives brought to the surface by his or her reaction to a text. Reading the text can become almost a therapeutic experience for the reader, as the connections that he or she makes reveal truths about his or her personality.

Psychological Reader Response Criticism in many ways fueled another similar theory — Subjective Reader Response Criticism — which takes the personal, psychological component even further. In this theory, the reader’s interpretation of a text is thought to be deeply influenced by personal and psychological needs first, rather than being guided by the text. Each reading is thought to bring psychological symptoms to the surface, from which the reader can find his or her own unconscious motives.

The Uniform Reader

Other schools of reader response criticism look not at the reader as an individual, but as a theoretical reader. The "implied reader," for example, an idea introduced by Wolfgang Iser, is the reader who is required for the text — the reader who the author imagines when writing, and who he or she is writing for. This reader is guided by the text, which contains gaps meant for the reader to fill, explaining and making connections within the text. The reader ultimately creates meaning based not only on what is in the text, but what the text has provoked inside him or her. Theorist Stanley Fish introduced what he called the "informed reader," who brings prior, shared knowledge to the experience of reading.

Social Reader Response

Social Reader Response Criticism focuses on "interpretive communities" — groups that have shared beliefs and values — and how these groups use particular strategies that affect both the text and their reading behaviors. It is the group that then determines what an acceptable interpretation of the text is, with the meaning being whatever the group says that it is. A book club or a group of college students for example, based on their own cultural and group beliefs, will generally agree on the ultimate meaning on a text.

As an extension of the social theory, these like-minded groups can also approach and view the text from different lenses. If the group finds certain elements to be more significant than others, it might examine the text from this particular viewpoint, or lens. For example, feminist literary critics may find focus on the female elements of a writing, whereas new historicists might focus on the culture and era in which the text is read.

Arguments Against Reader Response Criticism Generally

It is often argued that reader response criticism allows for any interpretation of a text to be considered valid, and can devalue the content of the text as a result. Others argue that the text is being ignored completely or that it is impossible to properly interpret a text without taking into consideration the culture or era in which it is written. In addition, a larger complaint is that these theories do not allow for the reader’s knowledge and experience to be expanded by the text at all.

Tricia has a Literature degree from Sonoma State University and has been a frequent LanguageHumanities contributor for many years. She is especially passionate about reading and writing, although her other interests include medicine, art, film, history, politics, ethics, and religion. Tricia lives in Northern California and is currently working on her first novel.

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By: cmlndm In reader response criticism, the individual reader, including his or her background and beliefs, is taken into account.

Poetry Readings and Responses

Reader-response to “my papa’s waltz”.

Click on the link below to read an essay responding to the poem “My Papa’s Waltz,” using reader-response criticism.

“Reaction to Poem: ‘My Papa’s Waltz,’ Theodore Roethke” from Hubpages
Introduction to Reader-response to My Poppa's Waltz. Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : http://lumenlearning.com/ . License : CC BY: Attribution

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Reader-Response Criticism

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 17, 2020 • ( 0 )

Reader-response criticism can be traced as far back as Aristotle and Plato , both of whom based their critical arguments at least partly on literature’s effect on the reader. It has more immediate sources in the writings of the French structuralists (who stress the role of the perceiver as a maker of reality), the semioticians, and such American critics as Kenneth Burke (esp. his “Psychology and Form,” which defined “form” in terms of the audience’s appetite), Louise Rosenblatt, Walker Gibson (who developed the notion of a “mock reader”), and Wayne Booth . But reader criticism became recognized as a distinct critical movement only in the 1970s, when it found a particularly congenial political climate in the growing anti-authoritarianism within the academy.

Calling it a movement, however, is misleading, for reader-response criticism is less a unified critical school than a vague collection of disparate critics with a common point of departure. That is, reader-response critics share neither a body of critical principles (as Marxist critics, for instance, do), nor a subject matter (as Renaissance critics do). Indeed, they barely share a name. “Reader theory” and “audience theory” are perhaps the most neutral general terms, since the more popular term “reader-response theory” most accurately refers to more subjective kinds of reader criticism, and “ Reception Theory ” most accurately refers to the German school of Receptionkritik represented by Hans Robert Jauss . But these and other terms are often used indiscriminately, and the boundaries separating them are cloudy at best.

What affinity there is among reader-critics comes from their rejection of the New Critical principle (most clearly enunciated in W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley ‘s pivotal essay, “ The Affective Fallacy “) that severs the work itself from its effect and strongly privileges the former, treated in formal terms. Refusing to accept this banning of the reader, reader-critics take the existence of the reader as a decisive component of any meaningful literary analysis, assuming, as Michael Riffaterre puts it, that “readers make the literary event” (116). But once past that first step, there is little unanimity. Indeed, even the meaning of that first step has generated considerable debate, for different critics mean different things when they talk about “the reader.”

Stanley Fish (Christine Buckley/UConn Photo)

For some critics, readers are abstract or hypothetical entities, and even these are of various sorts. The category of hypothetical readers is often thought, for instance, to take in what Gerald Prince calls the “narratee,” the person to whom the narrator is addressing his or her narration (e.g., the “you” to whom Huckleberry Finn directs his opening sentence). For as Prince himself insists, the narratee, like the narrator, is really a character (even if sometimes only implicitly present in the text) and should therefore not be conflated with readers who are outside the text. Also included among hypothetical readers are readers who are implied by the text, that is, readers whose moves are charted out by (and hence more or less controlled by) the work in question. This is the kind of reader referred to, for instance, when one says, “The reader is surprised by the end of an Agatha Christie novel.” Wolfgang Iser describes the implied reader’s progress in phenomenological terms: although he pays particular attention to the indeterminacies in the texts—the gaps that the reader has to fill in on his or her own—his reader remains very much controlled by the author, since those gaps are part of the strategy of the text. On a more general level, some reader-critics examine the hypothetical reader who is implied, not by any specific text, but rather by the broader culture. In Structuralist Poetics , for instance, Jonathan Culler, influenced by French Structuralism and especially by Semiotics , develops the notion of “literary competence,” highlighting the ways in which the reader’s knowledge of conventions allows him or her to make sense of literary texts.

Narratees and implied readers need to be distinguished, however, from at least two other types of hypothetical reader. Since they are in principle the product of textual features, narratees and implied readers both differ from the intended reader (what Rabinowitz calls the “authorial audience”). The intended reader is presumed by rather than marked in the text and therefore can be discovered only by looking at the text in terms of the context in which it arose. In addition, there are postulated readers. Such readers’ characteristics do not emerge from a study of the text or its context; rather, the text’s meaning emerges from perceiving it through the eyes of a reader whose characteristics are assumed by the critic to begin with. Thus, in his early and influential “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics,” Stanley Fish follows the experiences of a “reader” word by word, insisting, in a self-conscious reversal of the Wimsatt-Beardsley position, that what “ happens to, and with the participation of, the reader” is in fact “the meaning” of a text ( Is There 25). But that is not the implied reader; it is, rather, an abstraction Fish calls the “informed reader.” He argues that real readers can become informed readers by developing linguistic, semantic, and literary competence, by making their minds “the repository of the (potential) responses a given text might call out” and by “suppressing, in so far as that is possible,… what is personal and idiosyncratic” (49). As is often the case with postulated readers, Fish’s informed reader is presented as an ideal, the best reader of the text. The distinctions among narratees, implied readers, intended readers, and postulated readers are significant, but they are subtle and not always recognized. As a consequence, they are sometimes blurred as critics (including Fish and Iser) fuse them or move from one to another without notice.

In contrast to those who write about hypothetical readers are those critics who focus on the activities of real readers. In Readings and Feelings , for instance, David Bleich, starting from the assumption that “the role of personality in response is the most fundamental fact of criticism” (4), talks about the specific students in his classes and uses the actual interpretations they have presented in papers they have written, in order to learn where they originate and how the classroom, as a community, can negotiate among them. Janice Radway moves further from the academic center by studying the ways nonacademic women interpret popular romances.

Reader-critics not only differ with respect to what entity they mean by “reader”; they also differ with regard to the perspective from which they treat it. To put it in different terms, most reader-critics admit, to some extent, the necessity of “contextualizing” the act of reading. Stanley Fish, in essays written after “Affective Stylistics,” has made some of the strongest arguments along these lines, claiming that meaning is entirely context-dependent and that there is consequently no such thing as literal meaning. Even audience critics who do not take this extreme position recognize the close relationship between meaning and interpretation on the one hand and context on the other. But readers are not simply in a single context; they are always in several. And there is no more agreement about what constitutes the most appropriate context to study than there is about what the term “reader” means.

For example, one can look at what might loosely be called the cultural context of the reader. Culler, in his discussions of literary conventions, examines the process of reading in the context of the shared cultural practices of the academic community. Fish takes a related but more radical position, rejecting the notion of a generalized literary competence and arguing instead for the study of literature in terms of disparate “interpretive communities” united by shared “article(s) of faith” (e.g., commitment to authorial intention) and “repertoirefs] of [interpretive] strategies.” According to Fish, these strategies do not decode some preexisting meaning, for the meaning of a literary work is not in the text at all. Rather, the very “properties” of the text are in fact “constituted” by whatever strategies the reader happens to bring to bear on the text: “These strategies exist prior to the act of reading and therefore determine the shape of what is read rather than, as is usually assumed, the other way around” ( Is There 171). More recently, Steven Mailloux has expanded on this notion by developing a “rhetorical hermeneutics” that examines, with particular attention to institutional politics, the ways in which interpretations become accepted by given groups.

Reader Response Criticism: An Essay

Alternatively, one can look at the psychological context of the reader. In Dynamics of Literary Response Norman Holland deals primarily with hypothetical readers; in Five Readers Reading he turns his attention to actual students. In both cases, he tries to make sense of interpretive activity by passing it through the lens of Freudian psychoanalysis. Still other critics look at the historical context of the reader. This is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Receptionkritik , most familiar through the writings of Hans Robert Jauss, who argues that the reader makes sense of literature in part through a “horizon of expectations.” Since that horizon varies with history, the literary work offers different “views” at different times (Jauss 21-22). Jane Tompkins, following Fish, pushes the idea further, claiming in her study of American literature ( Sensational Designs ) that the reader’s historical situation does not simply affect our view of the work but actually produces whatever it is that we call the text in the first place: “The circumstances in which a text is read … are what make the text available .. . [and] define the work ‘as it really is’—under those circumstances” (7).

Betty Tompkins is a feminist as well as a historian, and her work reminds us that yet another perspective is offered when the act of reading is studied in the context of gender. Like other forms of reader criticism, feminist reader criticism has moved in several different directions. In The Resisting Reader , for example, Judith Fetterley talks about the effects that reading particular texts can have on women. Radway, more willing to credit the reader’s power to “make” the meaning of the text, asks instead how women (especially women of a particular socioeconomic class) read differently from men (especially male academic critics).

Betty Tompkins, Apologia /Artsy.net

There is disagreement among reader-critics not only about the subject of inquiry but also about the whole purpose of critical activity. It is here that debates can become especially acrimonious. In particular, there is disagreement about the proper relation between the critic and interpretation, and consequently about the descriptive/prescriptive nature of the critical enterprise. Granted, most audience critics agree that to some extent, readers produce literary meaning; but since there are such widespread disagreements about who that “reader” is and what that production consists of, this apparent agreement yields no unity whatever on the issue of the reader’s ultimate freedom to interpret as he or she wishes.

At one extreme, there are critics who start with the text and use the concept of the reader as an analytic tool to perfect traditional interpretive practices. As Mary Louise Pratt has argued, the study of many types of hypothetical readers is consistent with formalism. In traditional formalist interpretive practice, certain textual details are foregrounded, and an interpretation explaining those details is posited as “the” interpretation of the text. To the extent that the implied reader is simply a mirror of those textual features, an implied-reader analysis is often a formalist analysis in different language. Thus, for instance, Wolfgang Iser ‘s interpretations, despite their heavy reliance on descriptions of “the reader’s” activities, could in many cases be translated into formalist terms.

Problems become more acute when we come to analyses based on postulated readers whose activities serve as models for correct behavior. In practice, such readers often turn out to be the critic himself or herself, and the readerly terminology serves primarily as a rhetorical device to persuade us of the general validity of individual interpretations. Riffaterre’s semiotic analyses in Semiotics of Poetry rely heavily on notions of what activities the text requires the reader to perform; readers are forced or compelled by the text, and individuals who, for one reason or another, wander in the wrong direction simply cannot find “the true reading” (142). For all the brilliance of his analyses, Riffaterre (as Culler has argued in Pursuit of Signs ) tells us less about what readers do or have done than about the way he himself reads; in fact, he often explicitly notes that no previous readers have followed what he sees as the dictates of the text. In the end, his use of reader terminology gives his prescriptions of how we ought to read the appearance of objective descriptions of what readers actually do.

Other critics, in contrast, use the concept of the reader not to engage in the act of interpretation but rather to explain how interpretations come about. Culler, for instance, like Riffaterre, describes much of his work as semiotic. But his actual practice is quite different. Arguing that “the interpretation of individual works is only tangentially related to the understanding of literature,” Culler strives to construct a criticism “which seeks to identify the conventions and operations by which any signifying practice (such as literature) produces its observable effects of meaning” ( Pursuits , 48). In contrast to Riffaterre, he builds his arguments not on the text but on interpretations already produced; and he aims not to persuade his own readers of the rightness or wrongness of those interpretations but rather to describe the practices that allowed them to come into being.

Culler’s work in this line is not, strictly speaking, concerned with evaluating interpretations. Indeed, he explicitly claims that the semiotic “project is disrupted whenever one slips back into the position of judge” ( Pursuit 67). Nonetheless, there is a sense in which his work tends to justify those interpretations he discusses. This is especially true because, as Pratt suggests, his arguments are frequently based on his notion of literary competence, and that notion is not really interrogated in terms of who determines competence or under what cultural and political circumstances. Since he tends to start with interpretations produced by professionally trained critics (rather than, as Bleich does, with students’ readings), academic practices are implicitly valorized.

Other reader-critics, therefore, use the notion of reader in yet a different way, neither to persuade nor to explain but to question interpretations. In The Resisting Reader, for instance, Fetterley, without giving up the notion that there are more or less correct intended interpretations of the classical American texts she reads, argues that those interpretations are harmful because they “immasculate” women (i.e., train them to identify with male needs and desires). She therefore calls upon readers to recognize them and resist them. Radway questions interpretations in an even more fundamental way. She criticizes those who use traditional academic interpretive practices to determine the cultural meaning of mass-market romances. Starting with a position fairly close to Fish’s, she insists that the cultural importance of those romances depends on the meaning they have for the actual women who consume them. She goes on to demonstrate, through ethnographic study, that since those women use different interpretive strategies than academic critics do, the texts for them have substantially different meanings.

Given the wide variety of interests and concerns exhibited by various reader-critics, it should not be surprising that audience criticism, as a whole, has not taken any definitive stands, except a negative attitude toward New Criticism , an attitude shared by virtually all other critical schools that have developed since the 1960s. Nonetheless, the very raising of certain questions (even unanswered questions) has had profound consequences for the commonplaces of the literary-critical profession and has, in conjunction with such movements as Deconstruction and Feminism , encouraged general shifts in the direction of literary studies. In the first place, talk of the reader opens up talk of psychology, sociology, and history, and reader criticism has helped break down the boundaries separating literary study from other disciplines. In addition, by highlighting the reader’s interpretive practice, even such prescriptive critics as Riffaterre have clarified the degree to which meaning is dependent upon the reader’s performance. Even if one does not agree with such critics as Robert Crosman (who claims that “‘validity’ is a matter of individual conscience” [381]) or Bleich (who argues that “reading is a wholly subjective process” [ Readings 3]), reader criticism has made it increasingly difficult to support the notion of definitive meaning in its most straightforward form. One can hardly claim that no critics, not even audience critics, continue to support the notion of “right” and “wrong” readings, but it is safe to say that the position is being increasingly discarded, and even critics who do argue for it have become ever more wary of how precarious interpretation is as a procedure and how little we can depend on the texts themselves to provide proper interpretive guidance.

What is most important, perhaps, as definitive meaning is undermined, so is the notion of definitive evaluation, since value is even more contextually determined than meaning. Statements of value are increasingly being put under pressure by the question, Value for whom? and value is increasingly being viewed not as a quality inherent in texts but rather as a function of particular social, historical, and cultural circumstances. By helping to throw into question the belief that texts have determinable, unvarying literary quality, reader-critics have helped fuel the attacks on the canon that have been launched from a number of other quarters, most notably, in the 1970s and 1980s, from feminist critics.

Further Reading David Bleich, Readings and Feelings: An Introduction to Subjective Criticism (1975), Subjective Criticism (1978); Robert Crosman, “Some Doubts about ‘The Reader of Paradise Lost/ ” College English 37 (1975); Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (1981), Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (1975); Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (1979); Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (1978); Stanley Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (1989), Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (1980); Elizabeth Freund, The Return of the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism (1987); Norman N. Holland, Five Readers Reading (1975); Wolfgang Iser, Der Akt des Lesens: Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung (1976, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response, trans. Iser, 1978), Der implizite Leser: Kommunikationsformen des Romans von Bunyan bis Beckett (1972, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett, trans. Iser, 1974); Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (trans. Timothy Bahti, 1982); Steven Mailloux, Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction (1982), Rhetorical Power (1989); James Phelan, Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression, and the Interpretation of Narrative (1989); Mary Louise Pratt, “Interpretive Strategies I Strategic Interpretations: On Anglo-American Reader Response Criticism,” Boundary 2 11 (1981-82); Gerald Prince, “Introduction to the Study of the Narratee” (Tompkins, Reader-Response Criticism); Peter J. Rabinowitz, Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation (1987); Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (1984); Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry (1978); Louise Rosenblatt, The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work (1978); Michael Steig, Stories of Reading: Subjectivity and Literary Understanding (1989); Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, eds., The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (1980); Jane P. Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860 (1985); Jane P. Tompkins, ed., Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (1980). Source: Groden, Michael, and Martin Kreiswirth. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

“The Reader, the Text, the Poem” by Louise M. Rosenblatt

Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work

Carbondale, Ill., 1978 Hardcover, 196 pages ISBN 0-8093-0883-5

Highly Recommended

Rosenblatt is one of the proponents of the reader-response theory of literary criticism, a concept that emerged in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s as a reaction to New Criticism , which treated a literary work as an object that should be considered without reference to the reader’s experience of it. Reader-response criticism emphasizes the reader’s reaction while reading a literary work in what Rosenblatt in the preface of this book calls “the reader’s contribution in the two-way, ‘transactional’ relationship with the text” (p. ix). In reaction to the New Critics, Rosenblatt tells us, “I rejected the notion of the poem-as-object, and the neglect of both author and reader” (p. xii).

In Chapter 1: The Invisible Reader, Rosenblatt says that toward the end of the eighteenth century, the author emerged as a dominant entity in a work of literature. “Even those who seemed to continue the concern for reality admitted ultimately the preeminence of the author [. . .]. Thus the reader was left to play the role of invisible eavesdropper” (p. 2). Further, the “twentieth-century reaction against the obsession with the poet and his emotions” brought “even more unrelenting invisibility” to the reader (p. 3).

Chapter 2: The Poem as Event rejects New Criticism’s contention that a literary work exists on its own, independent of either its author or the reader:

The poem [. . .] must be thought of as an event in time. It is not an object or an ideal entity. It happens during a coming-together, a compenetration, of a reader and a text. The reader brings to the text his past experience and present personality. Under the magnetism of the ordered symbols of the text, he marshals his resources and crystallizes out from the stuff of memory, thought, and feeling a new order, a new experience, which he sees as the poem. This becomes part of the ongoing stream of his life experience, to be reflected on from any angle important to him as a human being. (p. 12)

“The text of a poem or of a novel or a drama is like a musical score” (p. 13), Rosenblatt says. Further, “’The Poem’ seen as an event in the life of a reader, as embodied in a process resulting from the confluence of reader and text, should be central to a systematic theory of literature” (p. 16).

Chapter 3: Efferent and Aesthetic Reading sets out to define the difference between reading a work of literature and reading another kind of written communication such as a newspaper article or scientific treatise “by showing how the event that produces the reading of a poem differs from other reading-events” (p. 23). Rosenblatt defines the type of reading in which the main purpose is to take away information (e.g., reading a newspaper article, a recipe, a history book) as “efferent” (p. 24). “In aesthetic reading, in contrast, the reader’s primary concern is with what happens during the actual reading event” (p. 24). She acknowledges that sometimes “the same text may be read either efferently or aesthetically” (p. 25). In explaining her theory of the reader’s experience, Rosenblatt refers to Coleridge’s famous statement about poetry: “The reader should be carried forward, not merely or chiefly by the mechanical impulse of curiosity, or by a restless desire to arrive at the final solution; but by the pleasurable activity of mind excited by the attractions of the journey itself” (p. 28).

In Chapter 4: Evoking a Poem Rosenblatt explains that the experience of evoking the poem goes on as the reader gets further into the work. The term poem here refers to the artistic creation that the reader constructs while reading a literary work. (Rosenblatt is not discussing only poetry here, but any artistic work of literature.) The reader, she continues, “is immersed in a creative process that goes on largely below the threshold of awareness” (p. 52). This process “imposes the delicate task of sorting the relevant from the irrelevant in a continuing process of selection, revision, and expansion” (p. 53):

As one decodes the opening lines or sentences and pages of a text, one begins to develop a tentative sense of a framework within which to place what will follow. Underlying this is the assumption that this body of words, set forth in certain patterns and sequences on the page, bears the potentiality for a reasonably unified or integrated, or at the very least coherent, experience. One evolves certain expectations about the diction, the subject, the ideas, the themes, the kind of text, that will be forthcoming. Each sentence, each phrase, each word, will signal certain possibilities and exclude others, thus limiting the arc of expectations. What the reader has elicited from the text up to any point generates a receptivity to certain kinds of ideas, overtones, or attitudes. Perhaps one can think of this as an alerting of certain areas of memory, a stirring-up of certain reservoirs of experience, knowledge, and feeling. As the reading proceeds, attention will be fixed on the reverberations of implications that result from fulfillment or frustration of those expectations. (p. 54)

This process itself is part of the appeal of reading a work of literature:

interest seems to be the name given to the reader’s need to live through to some resolution of the tensions, questions, curiosity or conflicts aroused by the text. This need to resolve, to round out, gives impetus to the organizing activity of the reader. What we call a sense of form also manifests itself in such progression, the arousal of expectations, the movement toward some culmination or completion. (pp. 54-55)

Perhaps this notion of interest explains the appeal of a book like Corelli’s Mandolin , in which not much seems to happen for the first 150 pages or so. “Underlying all this organizing activity [. . .] is the assumption that the text offers the basis for a coherent experience [. . .]. If such a putting-together, such a com-position, does not eventually happen, the cause may be felt to be either a weakness in the text, or a failure on the reader’s part” (p. 55).

One potential objection to the reader-response theory of literary criticism is that it suggests that anyone’s reading of a work is just as valid as any other reading, since the whole point is for a particular person to react to the work. But Rosenblatt explains that some readings are more informed than others and that people can become better readers through practice and experience:

Past literary experiences serve as subliminal guides as to the genre to be anticipated, the details to be attended to, the kinds of organizing patterns to be evolved [ . . ]. Traditional subjects, themes, treatments, may provide the guides to organization and the background against which to recognize something new or original in the text [. . .]. Awareness—more or less explicit—of repetitions, echoes, resonances, repercussions, linkages, cumulative effects, contrasts, or surprises is the mnemonic matrix for the structuring of emotion, idea, situation, character, plot—in short, for the evocation of a work of art. (pp. 57-58)

“For the experienced reader, much of this has become automatic, carried on through a continuing flow of responses, syntheses, readjustment, and assimilation. Under such pressure, the irrelevant or confusing referents for the verbal symbols evidently often are ignored or are not permitted to rise into consciousness” (p. 58). Anyone who has seen the movie The Sixth Sense with Bruce Willis knows how this process of ignoring what doesn’t fit works. The reader’s reading process allows “compatible associations into the focus of attention” (p. 60).

Rosenblatt further addresses this potential objection to reader-response criticism in Chapter 5: The Text: Openness and Constraint. Here she is concerned with “the wide range of referential and affective responses that might be activated, and the fact that the reader must manage these responses, must select from them” (p. 75). Remembering that the reading process is a “two-way, ‘transactional’ relationship,” she insists that a reader’s response to the text must be grounded in the text itself: “when we turn from the broader environment of the reading act to the text itself, we need to recognize that a very important aspect of a text is the cues it provides as to what stance the reader should adopt” (p. 81).

The importance of the text is not denied by recognition of its openness. The text is the author’s means of directing the attention of the reader [. . .]. The reader, concentrating his attention on the world he [the author] has evoked, feels himself freed for the time from his own preoccupations and limitations. Aware that the blueprint of this experience is the author’s text, the reader feels himself in communication with another mind, another world. (p. 86)

Finally, one becomes a better reader through practice and experience: “As with all texts, the reader must bring more than a literal understanding of the individual words. He must bring a whole body of cultural assumptions, practical knowledge, awareness of literary conventions, readinesses to think and feel. These provide the basis for weaving a meaningful structure around the clues offered by the verbal symbols” (p. 88).

Rosenblatt continues this argument in Chapter 6: The Quest for “The Poem Itself,” where she emphasizes that she does not “claim that anything any reader makes of the text is acceptable. Two prime criteria of validity as I understand it are the reader’s interpretation not be contradicted by any element of the text, and that nothing be projected for which there is no verbal basis” (p. 115). The New Critics, she argues, sought

to rescue the poem as a work of art from earlier confusions with the poem either as a biographical document or as a document in intellectual and social history. A mark of twentieth-century criticism thus became depreciation of such approaches to literature and development of the technique of “close reading” of the work as an autonomous entity [. . .]. The reaction against romantic impressionism fostered the ideal of an impersonal or objective criticism. Impressionist critics were charged with forgetting “the poem itself” as they pursued the adventures of their souls among masterpieces. (p. 102)

In the final chapter, Chapter 7: Interpretation, Evaluation, Criticism, Rosenblatt addresses what she sees as a division that has resulted from too great an emphasis on New Criticism:

Recent critical and literary theory is replete with references to “the informed reader,” “the competent reader,” “the ideal reader.” All suggest a certain distinction from, if not downright condescension toward, the ordinary reader. This reflects the elitist view of literature and criticism that in recent decades has tended to dominate academic and literary circles. (p. 138)

Let us look at the reality of the literary enterprise, of “literature” as a certain kind of activity of human beings in our culture. Instead of a contrast or break between the ordinary reader and the knowledgeable critic, we need to stress the basic affinity of all readers of literary works of art. The general reader needs to honor his own relationship with the text. (p. 140)

She wishes to break down elitism based upon the supposed quality of one’s reading preferences: “Despite the differences between the readings of great or technically complex works and the readings of popular ‘trashy’ works, they share some common attributes: the aesthetic stance, the living-through, under guidance of the text, of feelings, ideas, actions, conflicts, and resolutions beyond the scope of the reader’s own world” (p. 143).

The literary critic is, after all, just another reader:

Like other readers, critics may reveal the text’s potentialities for responses different—perhaps more sensitive and more complex—from our own. The critic may have developed a fuller and more articulate awareness of the literary, ethical, social, or philosophic concepts that he brings to the literary transaction, and may thus provide us with a basis for uncovering the assumptions underlying our own responses. In this way, critics may function not as stultifying models to be echoed but as teachers, stimulating us to grow in our own capacities to participate creatively and self-critically in literary transactions. [. . .] we must at least hope for an increasingly independent body of readers, who take the critic not as model but as a fellow reader, with whom to agree or disagree, or whose angle of vision may in some instances seem remote from their own. (pp. 148-149)

Finally, Rosenblatt wants to put the joy back into reading: “it is hard at times, in reading twentieth-century analyses of the themes and symbols and technical strategies of a work, to discover whether the critic had even a glimmering of personal pleasure in the literary transaction, or a sense of personal significance” (p. 158).

The concept of transactional analysis of literature has profound implications for the educational system, Rosenblatt says:

a primary concern throughout would be the development of the individual’s capacity to adopt and to maintain the aesthetic stance, to live fully and personally in the literary transaction. From this could flow growth in all the kinds of resources needed for transactions with increasingly demanding and increasingly rewarding texts. And from this would flow, also, a humanistic concern for the relation of the individual literary event to the continuing life of the reader in all its facets—aesthetic, moral, economic, or social. (p. 161)

This theory of reading, she implies, will give literature back to the people: “The academic critical culture persists in ignoring, or at least laments, the mass and ‘middlebrow’ literary institutions in our society. The transactional formulation offers a theoretical bridge between the two literary cultures that now exist side by side” (p. 160). Indeed,

Perhaps we should consider the text as an even more general medium of communication among readers. As we exchange experiences, we point to those elements of the text that best illustrate or support our interpretations. We may help one another to attend to words, phrases, images, scenes, that we have overlooked or slighted. We may be led to reread the text and revise our own interpretation. Sometimes we may be strengthened in our own sense of having “done justice to” the text, without denying its potentialities for other interpretations. Sometimes the give-and-take may lead to a general increase in insight and even to a consensus. (p. 146)

And it is this final point that makes the reader-response theory of literary criticism so appealing right now. For what is Rosenblatt describing in this passage but a book group? And, even before Oprah jumped on the bandwagon, book groups were among the hottest crazes across America.

Mary Daniels Brown

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Reader-Response Theory Introduction

When you think about literature, you probably think of authors and texts. Authors write literary works. So they're the ones who decide what a text means , right? And us readers? Well, we're secondary to authors, because hey, we're just readers.

Yeah, not so fast.

If you hadn't already guessed by the name of the movement, Reader-Response theory says that readers are just as important as the authors who write literary works. Hey, if a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? Same goes for The Iliad and War and Peace : if no reader is around to get through those hundreds of pages, then it's almost like that text doesn't exist.

Don't let this blow your mind, but Reader-Response theorists actually think that readers are active participants who create a work of literature in the process of reading it. The meaning of a text, according to Reader-Response theorists, exists somewhere between the words on the page and the reader's mind.

Think of it this way. If we say, "The Shmoop labradoodle totally ate that cupcake," each individual person reading that sentence will have a different image of the Shmoop labradoodle, of the Shmoop headquarters, and of the cupcake. Some readers will probably imagine a cute dog, others will imagine a naughty dog, and everyone will try to fill in the blanks to figure out what happened and why. It'll all depend on each individual reader's experience with dogs, cupcakes, and Shmoop.

The interpretation each reader has will probably be similar, but each will be slightly different.

The big contribution of Reader-Response theorists was to call attention to the importance of the reader in the making of literary meaning. Reader-Response theorists like to ask questions like: How do we feel when we read a certain poem, or a passage from a novel? Why do we feel that way? How does our psychology affect the way we read literary texts? How does each of us read differently? Only when we ask those questions, these theorists argue, can we truly begin to understand literature.

What is Reader-Response Theory About and Why Should I Care?

Why should readers care.

Ever read a book and think, "I'm just not getting this. Am I stupid or something?" Ever get bored to death by the text, or so excited you want to jump up and run and tell everyone you know how great this book is? That's part of being a reader, right?

Texts move you or they don't move you. They confuse you or they clarify things for you. Characters in a novel may remind you of real people in your life; a description in a poem may make you remember some childhood incident; heck, a book can even change your life. Reading is a totally personal experience, after all.

Well, that's the whole point of Reader-Response theory. This theory allows you to take your own personal feelings and your own perspective into account when you analyze a literary text. According to Reader-Response theorists, it is significant that a certain character reminds you of Dad, or that a certain passage recalls something from your childhood. Reader-Response theory isn't just about understanding a text better; it's also about understanding yourself better.

Why Should Theorists Care?

Up until the 1960s, New Criticism reigned supreme in American universities. New Criticism was all about focusing on the text itself: you weren't supposed to think about the context, or about the author—and certainly not about the reader.

Reader-Response theorists helped dethrone New Criticism from its privileged position by, well, drawing attention to the reader. They also helped pave the way for a lot of other literary schools that followed in the 1970s and 1980s, like Poststructuralism and New Historicism . The ideas of both these schools were closely affiliated with the focus on reading and subjectivity that the Reader-Response theorists first called attention to.

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Poe’s Works: Exploring ‘Unity of Effect’ and Reader Response Criticism

Students will choose a topic for research which will include the following: a.) primary text (any text read during the course) b.) Supplementary text (optional) c.) critical discourse The students will form a critical analysis based on the above mentioned aspects and their understanding of the Gothic tropes. The project should open up avenues for further discussion/research into Gothic Literature as a significant genre in today's world.

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Reader-Response Criticism and Heart of Darkness

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Ross C. Murfin 2 &
Peter J. Rabinowitz

Part of the book series: Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism ((CSICC))

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Students arc routinely asked in English courses for their reactions to the texts they arc reading. Sometimes there arc so many different reactions that wc may wonder whether everyone has read the same text. And some students respond so idiosyncratically to what they read that wc say their responses arc “totally off the wall.” This variety of response interests rcadcr-rcsponsc critics, who raise theoretical questions about whether our responses to a work arc the same as its meanings, whether a work can have as many meanings as we have responses to it, and whether some responses arc more valid than others. They ask what determines what is and what isn’t “off the wall.” What, in other words, is the wall, and what standards help us define it?

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Works Cited

Achebe, Chinua. “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays . New York: Doubleday, 1989. 1–20. Rpt. of “An Image of Africa.” Research in African Literatures 9.1 (1978): 1–15.

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Bergstrom, Robert F. “Discovery of Meaning: Development of Formal Thought in the Teaching of Literature.” College English 45.8 (1983): 745–55.

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Berthoud, Jacques. Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase . Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978.

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Blake, Susan L. “Racism and the Classics: Teaching Heart of Darkness.” College Language Association Journal 25.4 (1982): 396–404.

Bleich, David. Readings and Eeelings: An Introduction to Subjective Criticism . Urbana: NCTE, 1975.

Brantlinger, Patrick. Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914 . Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988.

Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative . New York: Knopf, 1984.

Conrad, Joseph. The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, Volume 2: 1898–1902 . Ed. Frederick R. Karl and Laurence Davies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.

Duffey, Mrs. E.B. The Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Etiquette: A Complete Manual of the Manners and Dress of American Society. Containing Forms of Letters, Invitations, Acceptances and Regrets. With a Copious Index . New rev. ed. Philadelphia: David McKay, 1911.

Fish, Stanley. “Affective Stylistics.” Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities . Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980.

Guerard, Albert J. Conrad the Novelist . Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958.

Holland, Norman N. The Dynamics of Literary Response . 1968. New York: Norton, 1975.

Holland, Norman N. 5 Readers Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1975.

Iser, Wolfgang. The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993.

Kahane, Claire. “Seduction and the Voice of the Text: Heart of Darkness and The Good Soldier.” Seduction and Theory: Readings of Gender, Representation and Rhetoric . Ed. Dianne Hunter. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1989. 135–53.

Kartiganer, Donald M. “The Divided Protagonist: Reading as Repetition and Discovery.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 30.2 (1988): 151–78.

London, Bette. “Reading Race and Gender in Conrad’s Dark Continent.” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 31:3 (Summer 1989): 235–52.

Miller, J. Hillis. “ Heart of Darkness Revisited.” Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness .” Ed. Ross C Murfin. 2nd ed. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1996. 206–20.

Phelan, James. Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression, and the Interpretation of Narrative . Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989.

Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation . Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987.

Rabinowitz, Peter J. “Whiting the Wrongs of History: The Resurrection of Scott Joplin.” Black Music Research Journal 11.2 (1991): 157–76.

Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature . Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1984.

Reeves, Charles Eric. “A Voice of Unrest: Conrad’s Rhetoric of the Unspeakable.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 27.3 (1985): 284–310.

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Ridley, Florence H. “The Ultimate Meaning of ‘Heart of Darkness.’” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 18 (1963): 43–53.

Sams, Larry Marshall. “Heart of Darkness: The Meaning Around the Nutshell.” International Fiction Review 5.2 (1978): 129–33.

Shaffer, Brian W. “‘Rebarbarizing Civilization’: Conrad’s African Fiction and Spencerian Sociology.” PMLA 108.1 (1993): 45–58.

Stewart, Garrett. “Lying as Dying in Heart of Darkness.” PMLA 95.3 (1980): 319–31.

Trilling, Lionel. Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning . New York: Harcourt, 1965.

Wasserman, Jerry. “Narrative Presence: The Illusion of Language in Heart of Darkness.” Critical Essays on Joseph Conrad . Ed. Ted Billy. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1987. 102–13.

Watt, Ian. “Conrad’s Heart of ’Darkness and the Critics.” North Dakota Quarterly 57.3 (1989): 5–15.

Young, Gloria. “Kurtz as Narcissistic Megalomaniac in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” Working Papers in Linguistics and Literature . Ed. A. Kakouriotis and R. Parkin-Gounelas. Thessaloniki: Aristotle U, 1989. 255–63.

Some Introductions to Reader-Response Criticism

Beach, Richard. A Teacher’s Introduction to Reader-Response Theories . Urbana: NCTE, 1993.

Fish, Stanley E. “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics.” New Literary History 2 (1970): 123–61. Rpt. in Fish, Text 21–67, and in Primeau 154–79.

Freund, Elizabeth. The Return of the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism . London: Methuen, 1987.

Holub, Robert C. Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction . New York: Methuen, 1984.

Leitch, Vincent B. American Literary Criticism from the Thirties to the Eighties . New York: Columbia UP, 1988.

Mailloux, Steven. “Learning to Read: Interpretation and Reader-Response Criticism.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 12 (1979): 93–108.

Mailloux, Steven. “Reader-Response Criticism?” Genre 10 (1977): 413–31.

Mailoux, Steven. “The Turns of Reader-Response Criticism.” Conversations: Contemporary Critical Theory and the Teaching of Literature . Ed. Charles Moran and Elizabeth F. Penfield. Urbana: NCTE, 1990. 38–54.

Rabinowitz, Peter J. “Whirl Without End: Audience-Oriented Criticism.” Contemporary Literary Theory . Ed. G. Douglas Atkins and Laura Morrow. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1989. 81–100.

Chapter Google Scholar

Rosenblatt, Louise M. “Towards a Transactional Theory of Reading.” Journal of Reading Behavior 1 (1969): 31–47. Rpt. in Primeau 121–46.

Suleiman, Susan R. “Introduction: Varieties of Audience-Oriented Criticism.” Suleiman and Crosman 3–45.

Tompkins, Jane P. “An Introduction to Reader-Response Criticism.” Tompkins ix-xxiv.

Reader-Response Criticism in Anthologies and Collections

Flynn, Elizabeth A., and Patrocinio P. Schweickart, eds. Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986.

Garvin, Harry R., ed. Theories of Reading, Looking, and Listening . Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1981. Essays by Cain and Rosenblatt.

Machor, James L., ed. Readers in History: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. Contains Mailloux essay “Misreading as a Historical Act: Cultural Rhetoric, Bible Politics, and Fuller’s 1845 Review of Douglass’s Narrative .”

Primeau, Ronald, ed. Influx: Essays on Literary Influence . Port Washington: Kennikat, 1977. Essays by Fish, Holland, and Rosenblatt.

Suleiman, Susan R, and Inge Crosman, eds. The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation . Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980. See especially the essays by Culler, Iser, and Todorov.

Tompkins, Jane P., ed. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980. See especially the essays by Bleich, Fish, Holland, Prince, and Tompkins.

Reader-Response Criticism: Some Major Works

Bleich, David. Subjective Criticism . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978.

Booth, Stephen. An Essay on Shakespeare’s Sonnets . New Haven: Yale UP, 1969.

Booth, Wayne C. A Rhetoric of Irony . Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974.

Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts . Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1979.

Fish, Stanley Eugene. Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies . Durham: Duke UP, 1989.

Fish, Stanley Eugene. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities . Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980. This volume contains most of Fish’s most influential essays, including “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics,” “What It’s Like to Read L’Allegro and Il Penseroso,” “Interpreting the Variorum ,” “Is There a Text in This Class?” “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One,” and “What Makes an Interpretation Acceptable?”

Fish, Stanley Eugene. Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature . Berkeley: U of California P, 1972.

Fish, Stanley Eugene. Surprised by Sin: The Reader in “Paradise Lost .” 2nd ed. Berkeley: U of California P, 1971.

Holland, Norman N. 5 Readers Reading . New Haven: Yale UP, 1975.

Holland, Norman N. “UNITY IDENTITY TEXT SELF.” PMLA 90 (1975): 813–22.

Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978.

Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974.

Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception . Trans. Timothy Bahti. Intro. Paul de Man. Brighton, Eng.: Harvester, 1982.

Mailloux, Steven. Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction . Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982.

Mailloux, Steven. Rhetorical Power . Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989.

Messent, Peter. New Readings of the American Novel: Narrative Theory and Its Application . New York: Macmillan, 1991.

Prince, Gerald. Narratology . New York: Mouton, 1982.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. Literature as Exploration . 4th ed. New York: MLA, 1983.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work . Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1978.

Slatoff, Walter J. With Respect to Readers: Dimensions of Literary Response . Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1970.

Steig, Michael. Stories of Reading: Subjectivity and Literary Understanding . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.

Exemplary Short Readings of Major Texts

Anderson, Howard. “ Tristram Shandy and the Reader’s Imagination.” PMLA 86 (1971): 966–73.

Berger, Carole. “The Rake and the Reader in Jane Austen’s Novels.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 15 (1975): 531–44.

Booth, Stephen. “On the Value of Hamlet.” Reinterpretations of English Drama: Selected Papers from the English Institute . Ed. Norman Rabkin. New York: Columbia UP, 1969. 137–76.

Easson, Robert R. “William Blake and His Reader ’ in Jerusalem.” Blake’s Sublime Allegory . Ed. Stuart Curran and Joseph A. Wittreich. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1973. 309–28.

Kirk, Carey H. “ Moby-Dick : The Challenge of Response.” Papers on Language and Literature 13 (1977): 383–90.

Leverenz, David. “Mrs. Hawthorne’s Headache: Reading The Scarlet Letter” Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Scarlet Letter .” Ed. Ross C Murfin. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1991. 263–74.

Lowe-Evans, Mary. “Reading with a ‘Nicer Eye’: Responding to Frankenstein.” Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein .” Ed. Johanna M. Smith. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1992. 215–29.

Rabinowitz, Peter J. “’A Symbol of Something’: Interpretive Vertigo in ‘The Dead.’” James Joyce, “The Dead.” Ed. Daniel R. Schwarz. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1994. 137–49.

Treichler, Paula. “The Construction of Ambiguity in The Awakening” Kate Chopin, “The Awakening .”Ed. Nancy A. Walker. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1993. 308–28.

Other Works Referred to in What Is Reader-Response Criticism?

Culler, Jonathan. Structural Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature . Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975.

Koestenbaum, Wayne. “Wilde’s Hard Labor and the Birth of Gay Reading.” Engendering Men: The Question of Male Feminist Criticism . Ed. Joseph A. Boone and Michael Cadden. New York: Rout-ledge, 1990.

Richards, I.A. Practical Criticism . New York: Harcourt, 1929. Rpt. in Criticism: The Major Texts . Ed. Walter Jackson Bate. Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt, 1970. 575.

Wimsatt, William K., and Monroe C. Beardsley. The Verbal Icon . Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1954. See especially the discussion of “The Affective Fallacy,” with which reader-response critics have so sharply disagreed.

Reader-Oriented Approaches to Heart of Darkness

Lenta, Margaret. “Narrators and Readers: 1902 and 1975.” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 20 (1989): 19–36.

Rosmarin, Adena. “Darkening the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism and Heart of Darkness” Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness .” Ed. Ross C Murfin. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1989.

Straus, Nina Pelikan. “The Exclusion of the Intended from Secret Sharing in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 20(1987): 123–37.

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Murfin, R.C., Rabinowitz, P.J. (1996). Reader-Response Criticism and Heart of Darkness . In: Murfin, R.C. (eds) Heart of Darkness. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14016-9_4

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BRIEF CONTENTS 1. An Introduction, Theoretically 2. Critical Words: A Selective Tour 3. Unifying the Work: New Criticism 4. Creating the Text: Reader-Response Criticism 5. Opening Up the Text: Structuralism and Deconstruction 6. Connecting the Text: Historical and New Historical Criticism 7. Minding the Work: Psychological Criticism 8. Gendering the Text: Feminist Criticism, Post-feminism, and Queer Theory
COMPREHENSIVE CONTENTS PREFACE 1. An Introduction, Theoretically Textual Tours Checking Some Baggage "Is There One Correct Interpretation of a Literary Work?" "So, Are All Opinions About Literature Equally Valid?" Anything to Declare? Theory Enables Practice You Already Have a Theoretical Stance This is an Introduction Here's the Plan Works Cited and Recommended Further Reading
2. Critical Worlds: A Selective Tour Brendan Gill, from Here at "The New Yorker" New Criticism Reader-Response Criticism Structuralist and Deconstructive Criticism Historical, Postcolonial, and Cultural Studies Psychological Criticism Political Criticism Other Approaches Works Cited and Recommended Further Reading
3. Unifying the Work: New Criticism The Purpose of New Criticism Basic Principles Reflected Archibald MacLeish, "Ars Poetica" Radicals in Tweed Jackets How to Do New Criticism Film and Other Genres The Writing Process: A Sample Essay Gwendolyn Brooks, "The Mother" Preparing to Write Shaping Drafting Practicing New Criticism Stephen Shu-ning Liu, "My Father's Martial Art" Questions Ben Jonson, "On My First Son" Questions The Parable of the Prodigal Son Questions Useful Terms for New Criticism Checklist for New Criticism Works Cited Recommended Further Reading
4. Creating the Text: Reader-Response Criticism The Purpose of Reader-Response Criticism New Criticism as the Old Criticism The Reader Emerges Hypertextual Readers How to Do Reader-Response Criticism Preparing to Respond Sandra Cisneros, "Love Poem #1" Making Sense Subjective Response Receptive Response The Writing Process: A Sample Essay Preparing to Respond Ernest Hemingway, A Very Short Story Preparing to Write Shaping Drafting Practicing Reader-Response Criticism Michael Drayton, "Since There's No Help"
Questions Judith Minty, Killing the Bear
Questions Tom Wayman, "Did I Miss Anything?"
A. Williams "deep as space"
Questions Useful Terms for Reader-Response Criticism Checklist: Using Reader-Response Criticism Works Cited Recommended Further Reading
5. Opening Up the Text: Structuralism and Deconstruction The Purposes of Structuralism and Deconstruction Structuralism and Semiotics Poststructuralism and Deconstruction How to Do Structuralism and Deconstruction William Butler Yeats, "Sailing to Byzantium" The Writing Process: A Sample Essay Amy Clampitt, "Discovery" Preparing to Write Shaping Drafting Practicing Structuralist and Deconstructive Criticism Questions Cut through the anxiety, the unknown, the hassle ... William Blake, "London" Questions Linda Pastan, "Ethics" Questions John Donne, "Death Be Not Proud" Questions Useful Terms for Deconstruction Checklist for Deconstruction Works Cited Recommended Further Reading 6. Connecting the Text: Historical and New Historical Criticism The Purposes of Historical and New Historical Criticism Biographical and Historical Criticism John Milton, "When I Consider How My Light Is Spent" Cultural Studies New Historicism History as Text Marxist Criticism Postcolonial and Ethnic Studies How to Do Biographical and Historical Criticism The Writing Process: Sample Essays John Cheever, Reunion A Biographical Essay Preparing to Write Shaping Drafting A New Historical Essay Preparing to Write Shaping.
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Reader Response Essay Part I, II and III
Reader's Perspective
'What is Criticism?' by Roland Barthes, Notes and Summary, MA English SEM 2, Poststructuralism, UGC
Multi-Modal Essay
Reader-response criticism vs. New Criticism

COMMENTS

What Is Reader Response?
An Excerpt from Reader Response Scholarship. Read the following excerpt from Louise Rosenblatt's 1978 book, The Reader, the Text, and the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. before proceeding with this chapter. (The entire book can be read at the Internet Archive). Critics and literary theorists, who have traditionally lavished attention on authors and texts, have only ...
Reader-Response Criticism
The origins of reader-oriented criticism can be located in the United States with Louise Rosenblatt's development of theories in the 1930s, though she further developed her theories in the late seventies (The Reader, the Text, the Poem 1978). American critic Stanley Fish has also significantly influenced Reader-Response theory.
Reader-response theory
Reader-response theory. A theory, which gained prominence in the late 1960s, that focuses on the reader or audience reaction to a particular text, perhaps more than the text itself. Reader-response criticism can be connected to poststructuralism's emphasis on the role of the reader in actively constructing texts rather than passively ...
Reader-response criticism
Reader-response criticism. Two Girls Reading by Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader (or "audience") and their experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.
8.4: Reader-response to "My Papa's Waltz"
Click on the link below to read an essay responding to the poem "My Papa's Waltz," using reader-response criticism. "Reaction to Poem: 'My Papa's Waltz,' Theodore Roethke" from Hubpages
Reader-Response Criticism Critical Essays
Reader-Response Criticism ... (1938) that "a poem is what the reader lives through under the guidance of the text and experiences as relevant to the text." The significance Rosenblatt and ...
Reader-Response Criticism
The purpose of a reading response is examining, explaining, and defending your personal reaction to a text. When writing a reader-response, write as an educated adult addressing other adults or fellow scholars. As a beginning scholar, be cautious of criticizing any text as "boring," "crazy," or "dull.". If you do criticize, base ...
4.9: Reader-Response Criticism In Brief
Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader (or "audience") and their experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work. Although literary theory has long paid some attention to the reader's role ...
6.3: Focus on Reader-Response Strategies
A pioneer in reader-response criticism is Louise Rosenblatt, whose Literature as Exploration (5th ed ... A student in a modernist poetry class, for example, would interpret Wallace Stevens's "Anecdote of the Jar" in terms of modernism and the poetic movements in modernism and be at ease making claims about the poem's meaning. Literary ...
PDF Reader-Response Criticism and
out the poem"); and (3) show, therefore, that the reader's response is, or is analogous to, the story's action or conflict_ For instance, Stephen Booth calls Hamlet the tragic story of "an audience that cannot make up its mind" (Mailloux, "Learning" 103)_ Although reader-response criticism is often said to have emerged
A Reader-Response Approach to Poetry
This one, "A Reader-Response Approach to Poetry" was inspired by Louise Rosenblatt's book, The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Rosenblatt begins the book with the image of two figures on a stage, the author and the reader, with the book between them. In various ages the spotlight focuses brightly ...
What Is Reader Response Criticism?
In reader response criticism, the act of reading is like a dialogue between the reader and the text that has meaning only when the two are joined in conversation. ... For example, if you take a poem that could legitimately be interpreted in two different ways, the meaning would exist in the reader's struggle to choose, not in one of the two ...
Reader-response to "My Papa's Waltz"
Poetry Readings and Responses. Search for: Reader-response to "My Papa's Waltz" Click on the link below to read an essay responding to the poem "My Papa's Waltz," using reader-response criticism. "Reaction to Poem: 'My Papa's Waltz,' Theodore Roethke" from Hubpages; Licenses and Attributions : . : Previous ...
PDF Reader-Response Criticism in the Teaching of Poetry
Understanding the reader-response critical theory can help teachers plan their poetry. lessons and develop more effective teaching practices. This project begins with a survey of the literature of the reader-response criticism. and provides a summary of the theory. The link between theory and practice is.
Reader-Response Criticism
Reader-Response Criticism By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 17, 2020 • ( 0). Reader-response criticism can be traced as far back as Aristotle and Plato, both of whom based their critical arguments at least partly on literature's effect on the reader.It has more immediate sources in the writings of the French structuralists (who stress the role of the perceiver as a maker of reality), the ...
The reader, the text, the poem: the influence and challenge of Louise
This paper is a re-examination of Louise Rosenblatt's seminal work of reader-response theory, The Reader, The Text, The Poem. I argue that poems are essentially social in nature and that they open up a space in which conversation and interpretation can take place. ... This includes the tradition of the New Criticism, with its emphasis on ...
"The Reader, the Text, the Poem" by Louise M. Rosenblatt
Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work Carbondale, Ill., 1978Hardcover, 196 pagesISBN -8093-0883-5 Highly Recommended Rosenblatt is one of the proponents of the reader-response theory of literary criticism, a concept that emerged in the U.S. in the 1960s and 1970s as a reaction to New Criticism, which treated
Reconsidering Readers: Louise Rosenblatt and Reader-Response Pedagogy
reader encounters a text and the "transactional" theory of reader response was born. In 1978, her second book, The Reader, the Text , the Poem, refined and augmented the transactional theory of reading set forth in her earlier work. According to Rosenblatt, the role of the reader had been overlooked in previous theoretical discussion on reading ...
Reader-Response Theory Introduction
Reader-Response theorists helped dethrone New Criticism from its privileged position by, well, drawing attention to the reader. They also helped pave the way for a lot of other literary schools that followed in the 1970s and 1980s, like Poststructuralism and New Historicism .
Poe's Works: Exploring 'Unity of Effect' and Reader Response Criticism
The response of reader completes the story's meaning through individual perception and interpretation. Through Poe's unity of effect, combined with reader response criticism, a story attains its target directed by the author. It seems as if the story and its characters are in direct conversation with the reader.
PDF Reader-Response Criticism and
out the poem"); and (3) show, therefore, that the reader's response is, or is analogous to, the story's action or conflict. For instance, Stephen Booth calls Hamlet the tragic story of "an audience that cannot make up its mind" (Mailloux, "Learning" 103). Although reader-response criticism is often said to have emerged
writing about literature with critical theory
Contents. BRIEF CONTENTS 1. An Introduction, Theoretically 2. Critical Words: A Selective Tour 3. Unifying the Work: New Criticism 4. Creating the Text: Reader-Response Criticism 5. Opening Up the Text: Structuralism and Deconstruction 6. Connecting the Text: Historical and New Historical Criticism 7. Minding the Work: Psychological Criticism 8.

12 What Is Reader Response?

Learning Objectives

An Excerpt from Reader Response Scholarship

Subjective Reader Response: A Tool to Use with Many Types of Analysis

Receptive Reader Response: The Implied Reader

Applying Subjective and Receptive Reader Response Techniques to Literature

What an Indian Thought When He Saw a Comet

Limitations of Reader Response Criticism

Reader Response Scholars

Further Reading

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Table of Contents

Foundational Questions of Reader-Response Criticism

Brevity - Say More with Less

Clarity (in Speech and Writing)

Coherence - How to Achieve Coherence in Writing

Flow - How to Create Flow in Writing

Inclusivity - Inclusive Language

The Elements of Style - The DNA of Powerful Writing

Suggested Edits

Other Topics:

Citation - Definition - Introduction to Citation in Academic & Professional Writing

Collaboration - What is the Role of Collaboration in Academic & Professional Writing?

Information Literacy - Discerning Quality Information from Noise

Rhetoric: Exploring Its Definition and Impact on Modern Communication

The Writing Process - Research on Composing

Writing Studies

Featured Articles

Academic Writing – How to Write for the Academic Community

Professional Writing – How to Write for the Professional World

Authority – How to Establish Credibility in Speech & Writing

6.3: Focus on Reader-Response Strategies

Textual Reader-Response Strategies

Literature as Transaction: Gap Filling and Ghost Chapters

Transaction: The Rhetoric of Fiction

THE HARE AND THE TORTOISE

Experiential Reader Response

Psychological Reader Response

Subjective Analysis

Identity Analysis

Social Reader Response

Thrice unlucky Herman Melville!…

Miss Hurston seems to have no desire whatever to move in the direction of serious fiction… [ellipses in original]

CLASS PROJECT: RECEPTION REVIEW

Cultural Reader Response

Teaching Text Rhetorically

A Reader-Response Approach to Poetry

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What Is Reader Response Criticism?

Foundational Beliefs

Approaches Within Reader Response Criticism

Individual Readers

The Uniform Reader

Social Reader Response

Arguments Against Reader Response Criticism Generally

AS FEATURED ON:

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Discussion Comments

Poetry Readings and Responses

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“The Reader, the Text, the Poem” by Louise M. Rosenblatt

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Mary Daniels Brown

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Poe’s Works: Exploring ‘Unity of Effect’ and Reader Response Criticism

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