Responses of Real Readers

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.
Randolph Stows Midnite
•How do child readers in Australia and Germany respond to the ironic
humor of the book?

• “How do real readers respond to the suggestion of ironic

identification?”
- However Mr. Hans Heino Ewere tends to deny this.
An Australian children definitely recognized Captain Midnite as a
variation of the traditional image of the bushranger.

A German children were capable of responding to him as a funny

divergence either what a robber or what a hero is support to be like.

There is an eleven year old bilingual child named Thomas who respond
to Midnite accordance to Jauss Ironic Identification.
According to Thomas, ‘Midnite really doesn’t behave like a
bushranger…. He is always in between. Quite peaceful or quite furious.
He assaulted them and was very polite. Funny.’

If Thomas is an exception in expressing a sort of dual response to the

main character, almost all the children seemed to notice some
elements of paradox or contradiction in Stow’s Book.
Researcher asked three Australian children, aged ten, eleven and
twelve years, who in recalling their pleasure in reading the book.

The different levels of children’s responses to literature answered by a

“Piagetian Framework.”

Their conversation about Midnite reveals the children’s different

capacities for understanding complexities of the book.
The children are generally experiencing what Jauss would call
sympathetic identification where the hero, Midnite, isactually
recognized as silly or foolish—yet friendly and likeable enough. The
children are very much involved with the story.

Having considered the national and international appeal of Midnite,

the bushranger, and how this affected child and adult readers.
Must considered a range of responses, from naive child readers, to
responsive child readers, to adults who could not identify with the
book at all and those who thoroughly enjoyed the process.

“The best we can say is that the capacity to experience ironic

identification extends along a spectrum of reading encounters which
vary in intensity.”