Introduction to Literary Criticism

READER RESPONSE CRITICISM

Reader Response Criticism
 Turns the spotlight on the reader, without
whose attention and reactions the text would
be inert and meaningless.
 In one sense, the work would not exist at all. It
would be like the proverbial tree that makes
no sound when it falls because there is nobody
there to hear it.
 There is no one true interpretation, readers
discover rich, complex, diverse possibilities.
When they recognize that there is no right or
wrong answer but instead a variety of
readings that grow out of individual
experiences and feelings, literature becomes
alive for them. When their own lives intersect
with the text, that text takes on vitality.
 Rosenblatt
 offered a “transactional” theory of reading. As
she explained it, a given text is not always read in
the same way.
 Instead, readings vary with the purpose, needs,
experiences, and concerns of the reader, who
adopts a “stance” toward a text, an attitude that
determines what signals to respond to so that
certain results can be achieved. The two o
Reader Response Crit
 A literary work thus becomes an evolving
creation, as it is possible for there to be many
interpretations of the same text by different
readers or several interpretations by a single
reader at different times.
 As Wolfgang Iser explained in The Act of
Reading (1978), “The significance of the work,
then, does not lie in the meaning sealed
within the text, but in the fact that that
meaning brings out what had previously been
sealed within us.”
 The effect is not limited to the understanding
of a text, however. It extends to the
understanding of the self as well. Because
reader-response criticism calls for
introspection and reflection on one’s own
values and beliefs, it can lead the reader to
deeper personal knowledge and greater
cultural awareness.
1960s Reader Response
Criticism
 Known as reception theory, recognizes that
readers in different historical periods are not
likely to interpret or judge a given work in
precisely the same way and that as literary
fashions and interests change, the
characteristics that find favor in one century
may be disparaged in the next.
Stanley Fish
 Stanley Fish, calling his approach affective
stylistics, argues that readers create a text as
they read it—word by word and sentence by
sentence. He is interested in how readers’
responses develop as the words and sentences
succeed each other one by one—that is, how the
style affects the reader.
 Fish describes interpretation as the product of
interpretive communities, or groups of informed,
linguistically competent readers who read and
make meaning based on assumptions and
strategies that they hold in common.
Every reading is not valid
 “wrong” readings can exist even when the
reader is using the reader-response model.
Mistaking one word for another or
misunderstanding the definition of a word,
for example, can lead a reader to make
inferences that are clearly off the mark.
Although a variety of interpretations of a
single work are possible using this approach,
some simply will not fit.