LITCRIT 311
READER RESPONSE
THEORY
RAYNER LAGMAN
RHINE JOSEPH MARGALLO
DEFINITION AND BRIEF HISTORY
A theory, that gained prominence in the late 1960s,
focuses on the reader or audience’s reaction to a
particular text, perhaps more than the text itself.
Reader-response criticism argues that a text has no
meaning before a reader experiences—reads—
it.
DEFINITION AND BRIEF HISTORY
The reader-response critic’s job is to examine the
scope and variety of reader reactions and analyze
the ways in which different readers, sometimes called
“interpretive communities,” make meaning out of
both purely personal reactions and inherited or
culturally conditioned ways of reading.
KEY IDEAS OF READER RESPONSE CRITISM
The key idea of Reader Response Criticism is that
readers create meaning rather than find it in a
text. Works of literature are always incomplete
without a reader to put in their half of the work to
create meaning.
KEY IDEAS OF READER RESPONSE CRITISM
However, from this point, they often disagree on
whether there are valid and invalid
interpretations and the extent to which a text shapes
the reader's responses to the text.
KEY IDEAS OF READER RESPONSE CRITISM
The Reader-Reader Response Criticism focuses on
the reader's psychological experience of reading
a text, and how the reader creates meaning from
what the text has given them as they read. While this
approach sees readers as creating their own, unique
meanings, that is not to say that they can come up with
any random interpretation; interpretations always need
to have textual support
KEY IDEAS OF READER RESPONSE CRITISM
Implied reader- The implied reader is who the
author has in mind when they are writing the text,
who they expect to react to, pick up on, interpret
and experience aspects of the text in a certain way
Fish argues that individual reader responses must be
seen as part of the bigger picture - in the context of
the wider interpretive community that they belong to
KEY IDEAS OF READER RESPONSE CRITISM
The Text-Ordinarily, when we use the term 'text', we are
referring to a physical or digital copy of a work of
literature. Reader Response critics also focuses on
the importance of the reading experience,
performing art, event, and interaction.
KEY IDEAS OF READER RESPONSE CRITISM
how the text tries to structure a specific
experience,
the extent to which readers' experiences match
the intended experience,
and the ways in which readers' experiences
differ from the intended experience.
KEY THEORISTS OF READER RESPONSE CRITICISM
The work of Hans Robert Jauss
takes a reader response
approach that considers how
society and time period
influence readers'
interpretations of texts. Based
on the culture and time period
the reader belongs to, they will
have a certain kind of 'horizon of
HANS ROBERT JAUSS expectations'.
(1921-1997)-
KEY THEORISTS OF READER RESPONSE CRITICISM
KEY THEORISTS OF READER RESPONSE CRITICISM
She saw reading as a transaction
between reader and text, where
both are equally important.
Rosenblatt is one of the Reader
Response critics that thinks
there are acceptable and less-
acceptable interpretations of
texts - not all are valid.
LOUISE ROSENBLATT
(1904-2005)
KEY THEORISTS OF READER RESPONSE CRITICISM
FOUNDATIONAL QUESTIONS OF READER-RESPONSE
CRITICISM
WHO IS THE READER? WHAT EXPERIENCES,
WHO IS THE IMPLIED THOUGHTS, OR
READER? KNOWLEDGE DOES THE
TEXT EVOKE?
FOUNDATIONAL QUESTIONS OF READER-RESPONSE
CRITICISM
WHAT ASPECTS OR WHAT IS THE DIFFERENCE
CHARACTERS OF THE TEXT DO BETWEEN YOUR GENERAL
YOU IDENTIFY OR DISIDENTIFY REACTION TO (E.G., LIKE OR
WITH, AND HOW DOES THIS DISLIKE) AND READER-
PROCESS OF IDENTIFICATION ORIENTED INTERPRETATION
AFFECT YOUR RESPONSE TO OF THE TEXT?
THE TEXT?
LITERATURE
SAMUEL RICHARDSON'S PAMELA; OR VIRTUE REWARDED (1740)
It is about a young woman who is rewarded for keeping her "virtue"
by eventually marrying the man who robbed her of her innocence
by assaulting and kidnapping her. This text's implied reader is someone
who believes that innocence and "virtue" are good values and who wants to
take a moral message from this text.
However, The literary critic Judith Fetterley found the concept of the
implied reader problematic and came up with the concept of a 'resisting
reader', who refuses to fulfill the role of the implied reader - who refuses to
read the text how it was "supposed to be read".
LITERATURE
SAMUEL RICHARDSON'S PAMELA; OR VIRTUE REWARDED (1740)
To further prove this claim, If we take the example of Pamela above, Samuel
Richardson's identity as a man and the fact that he was writing in a
socio-historical context where women were unequal to men means
that his ideologies and biases are built into the novel. A reader may
read Pamela through a feminist lens and resist the idea that it is
virtuous to marry an abusive rake.
LITERATURE
'PARADISE LOST' (1663)
Stanley E. Fish wrote a whole book on the experience of reading John
Milton's Paradise Lost, which tells the story of Adam and Eve. He
argues that the reading experience is part of the poem's meaning. To Fish,
the reading experience mirrors the fall of Adam and Eve into sin
LITERATURE
JACOB'S ROOM (1922)
Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room is about an unnamed narrator
trying to chase Jacob and understand him. The reader also feels
desperate to understand Jacob, and, like the narrator, the reader feels
distanced from him and unable to know him. The chase-like reading
experience mirrors the narrator's chase.
IMPORTANCE
READER-RESPONSE READER-RESPONSE
CRITICISM RECOGNIZES THAT CRITICISM EMBRACES
READERS BRING THEIR THIS DIVERSITY AND
UNIQUE PERSPECTIVES, VALUES THE VARIOUS
EXPERIENCES, AND WAYS IN WHICH READERS
EMOTIONS TO THE READING ENGAGE WITH AND MAKE
PROCESS. SENSE OF A TEXT.
DO YOU HAVE ANY
QUESTIONS?
THANK YOU!
LAGMAN AND MARGALLO
