Reader-response criticism is a school of
literary theory that focuses on the
reader 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 in
creating the meaning and experience of a
literary work, modern reader-response
criticism began in the 1960s and '70s,
particularly in the US and Germany, in
work by Norman Holland, Stanley Fish,
Wolfgang Iser, Hans-Robert Jauss, Roland
Barthes, and others. Important
predecessors were I. A. Richards, who in
1929 analyzed a group of Cambridge
undergraduates' misreadings; Louise
Rosenblatt, who, in Literature as
Exploration, argued that it is important
for the teacher to avoid imposing any
"preconceived notions about the proper
way to react to any work"; and C. S.
Lewis in An Experiment in Criticism.
Reader-response theory recognizes the
reader as an active agent who imparts
"real existence" to the work and
completes its meaning through
interpretation. Reader-response
criticism argues that literature should
be viewed as a performing art in which
each reader creates their own, possibly
unique, text-related performance. It
stands in total opposition to the
theories of formalism and the New
Criticism, in which the reader's role in
re-creating literary works is ignored.
New Criticism had emphasized that only
that which is within a text is part of
the meaning of a text. No appeal to the
authority or intention of the author,
nor to the psychology of the reader, was
allowed in the discussions of orthodox
New Critics.
Types
There are multiple approaches within the
theoretical branch of reader-response
criticism, yet all are unified in their
belief that the meaning of a text is
derived from the reader through the
reading process. Lois Tyson endeavors to
define the variations into five
recognized reader-response criticism
approaches whilst warning that
categorizing reader-response theorists
explicitly invites difficultly due to
their overlapping beliefs and practices.
Transactional reader-response theory,
led by Louise Rosenblatt and supported
by Wolfgang Iser, involves a transaction
between the text's inferred meaning and
the individual interpretation by the
reader influenced by their personal
emotions and knowledge. Affective
stylistics, established by Stanley Fish,
believe that a text can only come into
existence as it is read; therefore, a
text cannot have meaning independent of
the reader. Subjective reader-response
theory, associated with David Bleich,
looks entirely to the reader's response
for literary meaning as individual
written responses to a text are then
compared to other individual
interpretations to find continuity of
meaning. Psychological reader-response
theory, employed by Norman Holland,
believes that a reader’s motives heavily
affect how they read, and subsequently
use this reading to analyze the
psychological response of the reader.
Social reader-response theory is Stanley
Fish's extension of his earlier work,
stating that any individual
interpretation of a text is created in
an interpretive community of minds
consisting of participants who share a
specific reading and interpretation
strategy. In all interpretive
communities, readers are predisposed to
a particular form of interpretation as a
consequence of strategies used at the
time of reading.
An alternative way of organizing
reader-response theorists is to separate
them into three groups: those who focus
upon the individual reader's experience;
those who conduct psychological
experiments on a defined set of readers;
and those who assume a fairly uniform
response by all readers. One can
therefore draw a distinction between
reader-response theorists who see the
individual reader driving the whole
experience and others who think of
literary experience as largely
text-driven and uniform. The former
theorists, who think the reader
controls, derive what is common in a
literary experience from shared
techniques for reading and interpreting
which are, however, individually applied
by different readers. The latter, who
put the text in control, derive
commonalities of response, obviously,
from the literary work itself. The most
fundamental difference among
reader-response critics is probably,
then, between those who regard
individual differences among readers'
responses as important and those who try
to get around them.
= Individualists=
In the 1960s, David Bleich’s
pedagogically inspired literary theory
entailed that the text is the reader’s
interpretation of it as it exists in
their mind, and that an objective
reading is not possible due to the
symbolization and resymbolization
process. The symbolization and
resymbolization process consists of how
an individual’s personal emotions, needs
and life experiences affect how a reader
engages with a text; marginally altering
the meaning. Bleich supported his theory
by conducting a study with his students
in which they recorded their individual
meaning of a text as they experienced
it, then response to their own initial
written response, before comparing it
with other student’s responses to
collectively establish literary
significance according to the classes
"generated" knowledge of how particular
persons recreate texts. He used this
knowledge to theorize about the reading
process and to refocus the classroom
teaching of literature.
Michael Steig and Walter Slatoff have,
like Bleich, shown that students' highly
personal responses can provide the basis
for critical analyses in the classroom.
Jeffrey Berman has encouraged students
responding to texts to write anonymously
and share with their classmates writings
in response to literary works about
sensitive subjects like drugs, suicidal
thoughts, death in the family, parental
abuse and the like. A kind of catharsis
bordering on therapy results. In
general, American reader-response
critics have focused on individual
readers' responses. American magazines
like Reading Research Quarterly and
others publish articles applying
reader-response theory to the teaching
of literature.
In 1961, C. S. Lewis published An
Experiment in Criticism, in which he
analyzed readers' role in selecting
literature. He analyzed their selections
in light of their goals in reading.
In 1967, Stanley Fish published
Surprised by Sin, the first study of a
large literary work that focused on its
readers' experience. In an appendix,
"Literature in the Reader", Fish used
"the" reader to examine responses to
complex sentences sequentially,
word-by-word. Since 1976, however, he
has turned to real differences among
real readers. He explores the reading
tactics endorsed by different critical
schools, by the literary professoriate,
and by the legal profession, introducing
the idea of "interpretive communities"
that share particular modes of reading.
In 1968, Norman Holland drew on
psychoanalytic psychology in The
Dynamics of Literary Response to model
the literary work. Each reader
introjects a fantasy "in" the text, then
modifies it by defense mechanisms into
an interpretation. In 1973, however,
having recorded responses from real
readers, Holland found variations too
great to fit this model in which
responses are mostly alike but show
minor individual variations.
Holland then developed a second model
based on his case studies 5 Readers
Reading. An individual has a core
identity theme. This core gives that
individual a certain style of being—and
reading. Each reader uses the physical
literary work plus invariable codes plus
variable canons plus an individual style
of reading to build a response both like
and unlike other readers' responses.
Holland worked with others at the State
University of New York at Buffalo,
Murray Schwartz, David Willbern, and
Robert Rogers, to develop a particular
teaching format, the "Delphi seminar,"
designed to get students to "know
themselves".
= Experimenters=
Reuven Tsur in Israel has developed in
great detail models for the expressivity
of poetic rhythms, of metaphor, and of
word-sound in poetry. Richard Gerrig in
the U.S. has experimented with the
reader's state of mind during and after
a literary experience. He has shown how
readers put aside ordinary knowledge and
values while they read, treating, for
example, criminals as heroes. He has
also investigated how readers accept,
while reading, improbable or fantastic
things, but discard them after they have
finished.
In Canada, David Miall, usually working
with Donald Kuiken, has produced a large
body of work exploring emotional or
"affective" responses to literature,
drawing on such concepts from ordinary
criticism as "defamiliarization" or
"foregrounding". They have used both
experiments and new developments in
neuropsychology, and have developed a
questionnaire for measuring different
aspects of a reader's response.
There are many other experimental
psychologists around the world exploring
readers' responses, conducting many
detailed experiments. One can research
their work through their professional
organizations, the International Society
for the Empirical Study of Literature
and Media, and International Association
of Empirical Aesthetics, and through
such psychological indices as PSYCINFO.
Two notable researchers are Dolf
Zillmann and Peter Vorderer, both
working in the field of communications
and media psychology. Both have
theorized and tested ideas about what
produces emotions such as suspense,
curiosity, surprise in readers, the
necessary factors involved, and the role
the reader plays. Jenefer Robinson, a
researcher in emotion, has recently
blended her studies on emotion with its
role in literature, music, and art.
= Uniformists=
Wolfgang Iser exemplifies the German
tendency to theorize the reader and so
posit a uniform response. For him, a
literary work is not an object in itself
but an effect to be explained. But he
asserts this response is controlled by
the text. For the "real" reader, he
substitutes an implied reader, who is
the reader a given literary work
requires. Within various polarities
created by the text, this "implied"
reader makes expectations, meanings, and
the unstated details of characters and
settings through a "wandering
viewpoint". In his model, the text
controls. The reader's activities are
confined within limits set by the
literary work.
Another important German reader-response
critic was Hans-Robert Jauss, who
defined literature as a dialectic
process of production and reception. For
Jauss, readers have a certain mental
set, a "horizon" of expectations, from
which perspective each reader, at any
given time in history, reads.
Reader-response criticism establishes
these horizons of expectation by reading
literary works of the period in
question.
Both Iser and Jauss, and the Constance
School they exemplify, return
reader-response criticism to a study of
the text by defining readers in terms of
the text. In the same way, Gerald Prince
posits a "narratee", Michael Riffaterre
posits a "superreader", and Stanley Fish
an "informed reader." And many
text-oriented critics simply speak of
"the" reader who typifies all
readers....
Objections
Reader-response critics hold that in
order to understand a text, one must
look to the processes readers use to
create meaning and experience.
Traditional text-oriented schools, such
as formalism, often think of
reader-response criticism as an anarchic
subjectivism, allowing readers to
interpret a text any way they want.
Text-oriented critics claim that one can
understand a text while remaining immune
to one's own culture, status,
personality, and so on, and hence
"objectively."
To reader-response based theorists,
however, reading is always both
subjective and objective. Some
reader-response critics assume a
bi-active model of reading: the literary
work controls part of the response and
the reader controls part. Others, who
see that position as internally
contradictory, claim that the reader
controls the whole transaction. In such
a reader-active model, readers and
audiences use amateur or professional
procedures for reading as well as their
personal issues and values.
Another objection to reader-response
criticism is that it fails to account
for the text being able to expand the
reader's understanding. While readers
can and do put their own ideas and
experiences into a work, they are at the
same time gaining new understanding
through the text. This is something that
is generally overlooked in
reader-response criticism.
Some argue that 'artworks' are now
purposely being fabricated which lack
meaning but rather the 'artworks' are
fabricated only to generate a reader
response. The reader response then is
corralled via interpretative
communities. Reader response rather than
handing a freedom to the reader empowers
the leaders of an interpretative
community against the reader. The reader
has no ground to evaluate the 'artwork'
as the artwork is senseless. Only a
reader response, basically an emotive
response, is legitimate. The Web
provides an ideal way to form such
interpretative communities. The power of
reader response strategy is that people
are fundamentally 'hungry' for culture
and will attempt to impart meaning even
to artworks that are senseless. Of
course, people can always opt out of
these interpretative communities
centered on senseless artworks with
little to no loss vis-à-vis culture and
almost certainly a cultural gain.
Extensions
Reader-response criticism relates to
psychology, both experimental psychology
for those attempting to find principles
of response, and psychoanalytic
psychology for those studying individual
responses. Post-behaviorist
psychologists of reading and of
perception support the idea that it is
the reader who makes meaning.
Increasingly, cognitive psychology,
psycholinguistics, neuroscience, and
neuropsychoanalysis have given
reader-response critics powerful and
detailed models for the aesthetic
process. In 2011 researchers found that
during listening to emotionally intense
parts of a story, readers respond with
changes in heart rate variability,
indicative of increased activation of
the sympathetic nervous system. Intense
parts of a story were also accompanied
by increased brain activity in a network
of regions known to be involved in the
processing of fear, including amygdala.
Because it rests on psychological
principles, a reader-response approach
readily generalizes to other arts:
cinema, music, or visual art, and even
to history. In stressing the activity of
the scholar, reader-response theory
justifies such upsettings of traditional
interpretations as, for example,
deconstruction or cultural criticism.
Since reader-response critics focus on
the strategies readers are taught to
use, they address the teaching of
reading and literature. Also, because
reader-response criticism stresses the
activity of the reader, reader-response
critics readily share the concerns of
feminist critics, and critics of Gender
and Queer Theory and Post-Colonialism.
Notes and references
Further reading
Tompkins, Jane P.. Reader-response
Criticism: From Formalism to
Post-structuralism. Johns Hopkins
University Press. ISBN 0-8018-2401-X.
Tyson, Lois. Critical theory today: a
user-friendly guide, 2nd edn. Routledge,
New York and London.
External links
Definition of Reader-Response Criticism
