Reader Response Criticism

9 Key excerpts on "Reader Response Criticism"

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  Biblical Criticism: A Guide for the Perplexed

  • Eryl W. Davies(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • T&T Clark

    (Publisher)

  The text-centred approach of the New Critics, however, gradually came to be viewed as grossly inadequate, for there was an increasing awareness that literary compositions could not be hermetically sealed from history and isolated from the cultural context in which they were written. Nor, indeed, could they be studied in isolation from their readers. The role of the reader could not simply be marginalized or ignored, for readers were active participants in the determination of literary meaning and creative contributors to the interpretative process. Literary compositions should not be prised away from their contexts of meaning and response, for texts meant what they meant to particular people at particular times and in particular circumstances. The subject (reader) and the object (text) were indivisibly bound together, and the relationship between them was a dynamic process, for texts only became alive and meaningful when people became involved with them and responded to them.

  This new approach, known as ‘reader-response criticism’, clearly represented a radical departure from the type of methodology advocated by the New Critics.1 While the latter had exalted the text over both author and reader, the reader-response critics sought to challenge the privileged status of the text and emphasize instead the role of the reader and the profound significance of the reading experience. While the New Critics had dismissed the reader’s response as subjective and hopelessly relativistic, the reader-response critics argued that the interplay between text and reader was of considerable significance for the interpretation of a literary work.

  This interplay was particularly emphasized by Wolfgang Iser, who was one of the leading advocates of the reader-response approach (1974; 1978). As the quotation at the beginning of this chapter indicates, Iser argued that the reader must take into account not only the text itself but also the actions involved in responding to that text. Such actions were determined, in large measure, by the literary text itself, for the text was usually full of gaps and indeterminacies, and it was precisely these gaps that activated readers’ faculties and stimulated their creative participation. The reader was invited to engage with the text by filling in the blanks and inferring that which the text had withheld. Reading was a process of anticipation and retrospection which involved the deciphering of words and sentences, the relating of parts to the whole, the modifying of perspectives, the revising of assumptions, the readjustment of perceptions, the asking of questions and the supplying of answers. Instead of looking behind the text for the meaning, the meaning was to be found in front of

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  A Companion to Faulkner Studies

  • Charles Peek, Robert W. Hamblin, Charles Peek, Robert W. Hamblin(Authors)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Greenwood

    (Publisher)

  Precise definition, however, is impossible. "Rhetorical and Reader- Response Criticism" is a deceptively tidy classification, embracing numerous groups and individuals, who worked with a wide variety of critical practices, rooted in very different intellectual traditions; and even at the height of their influence, only a few identified themselves as part of a distinct movement. It is little wonder, then, that most general introductions to this topic sound cautionary notes. In 1980, at the start of The Reader in the Text, a landmark col- lection of original essays on reader-response theory, Susan Suleiman memo- rably warned that those setting out into this terrain are faced with "a multiplicity of divergent tracks . . . whose complexity dismays the brave and confounds the faint of heart." 3 If identifying an approach brings problems, so too does defining "the reader" whose "response" the general label evokes. Like the unitary "we" I conventionally address in this chapter, this is a simplifying shortcut, disguising differences. In almost every instance, the reader's specific "character" under- went often-radical variations and revisions as an individual critic's approach evolved, and new branches of the species multiplied like Snopeses. Many of these will lie beyond the scope of this chapter. A thorough survey would need a lengthy book. At one end of the spectrum, for example, we find analyses drawing on the traditional schema of classical and Renaissance rheto- ric (from the neo-Aristotelian work of R. S. Crane and the Chicago group in the 1950s to James A. Snead's Faulknerian "figures of division" in the 1980s) and at the other, empirical studies of real readers, or the pedagogic projects described in College English, where many of the most animated reader debates of the 1970s were aired.

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  Using Critical Theory

  How to Read and Write About Literature

  • Lois Tyson(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Chapter 2

  Using concepts from reader-response theory to understand our own literary interpretations

  Why should we learn about reader-response theory?

  Most of us are intrigued, I think, by the prospect of learning something interesting or useful about ourselves. That’s precisely what reader-response theory offers us, and perhaps that’s why it has become a popular framework for the study of literature.

  There are, however, several different kinds of reader-response theory, and they aren’t all interested in the same kinds of self-knowledge. Some reader-response approaches examine the ways in which our literary interpretations are influenced by social factors: for example, by the social or cultural group with which we identify, by the system of education that tells us what literary works are important and how they should be interpreted, or even by the classmates whose opinions influence our responses as we read literary works together. Other reader-response approaches analyze literary works themselves in order to determine how our responses are guided by the way a work is written: for instance, the amount of information provided about characters and plot, the order in which that information is provided, and the attitude of the narrator that provides it. Finally, some reader-response approaches try to determine how our responses to literary works are influenced by our personal experiences, by the emotional or psychological dimension of our daily lives: for example, our likes and dislikes, our loves, our fears, our desires, and our memories.

  It is this last kind of reader-response theory that we are interested in here. For despite their differences, all reader-response theories have one important thing in common. They all believe that readers play an active role in making

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  Literacy and Learning

  A Reference Handbook

  • Brett Elizabeth Blake, Robert W. Blake(Authors)
  • 2002(Publication Date)
  • ABC-CLIO

    (Publisher)

  They then use close reading techniques to support their primary responses. The chief aim of such an approach is to encourage all students not to rely on authoritative statements of meaning from teachers or from writers of textbooks but to trust their own responses, becoming courageous readers. The emphasis of the Classroom Reader Response system is to move away from an interest in what the author meant by his text—authorial intent—and away from an emphasis on the inherent meaning of a text (generally known only to a teacher or professor) toward an emphasis on each individual student’s creation of a highly personal meaning. At the highest mental and emotional levels, rather than learning how to criticize and judge literature, students learn how to read and respond to worthwhile Page 217 literature as a means to learning about themselves and at the same time understanding their place in the culture in which they find themselves. References Arenson, Karen W. 2002. “Columbia Soothes the Dogs of War in Its English Department.” New York Times, March 17, 321. Beach, Richard. 1993. A Teacher’s Introduction to ReaderResponse Theories. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. Beach, Richard, and James Marshall. 1991. Teaching Literature in the Secondary School. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Beloof, Richard. 1965. “A Spring Night.” In Poems and Poets, ed. David Aloian. New York: McGrawHill. Blake, Robert W. 1996. ‘‘Reader Response: Toward an Evolving Model for Teaching Literature in the Elementary Grades.” Language and Literacy Spectrum 6 (Spring): 39–44. ———, ed. 1991. Literature as a Way of Knowing: Critical Thinking and Moral Reasoning through Literature. Albany: New York State English Council. ———, ed. 1989. Reading, Writing, and Interpreting Literature: Pedagogy, Positions, and Research. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.

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  American Literary Criticism from the Thirties to the Eighties

  • Vincent B. Leitch(Author)
  • 2019(Publication Date)
  • Columbia University Press

    (Publisher)

  Because reader-response methods applied to any literature from any period and genre, there was no drive to invent or privilege a special canon the way the New Critics did. However, Reader-Response Critics, particularly of the phenomenological and hermeneutical variety, slowed the pace of normal reading (as did certain Deconstructive Critics). This change entailed an attack on theories of spatial form in favor of new concepts of serial, or sequential, or temporal form. Unlike the New Critics, who preferred short, poetic kinds of literature, Reader-Re-sponse Critics were as comfortable with long as with short kinds and as content with prose as with poetry. Consequently, long-standing limits on the canon were loosened somewhat. Although a more generous and inclu-sive view of the canon evolved, a countervailing need to assess and judge works aesthetically did not emerge. Like historical criticism, judicial crit- R E A D E R -R E S P O N S E C R I T I C I S M 237 icism remained out of favor. In the absence of these two discredited prac-tices, reformation of the canon was unlikely to occur in reader-response criticism. Not surprisingly, feminists, Black Aestheticians, and other ethnic critics had reason to complain about the status of the canon in the hands of leading Reader-Response Critics. Even in later years, when they turned toward sociological theory, Reader-Response Critics focused primarily on small communities of students and professors, avoiding analysis of society and culture at large. Starting in the late seventies, feminist receptionists set out to change this narrow focus and to revise the limited canon—a project in line with the new turn to historical, political, and ideological analysis. To arrive at a fuller understanding of the various branches of American reader-response criticism, we shall have to consider the contributions of certain Structuralist Critics to theories of reading and the reader.

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  Tribals, Empire and God

  A Tribal Reading of the Birth of Jesus in Matthew's Gospel

  • Zhodi Angami(Author)
  • 2017(Publication Date)
  • T&T Clark

    (Publisher)

  465-85. 69. Stanley E. Fish, Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority ofInterpretive Communities (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980). 2. Reader-Response Criticism 43 In summation of the aforementioned reader-response theorists and theories, it is apparent that the theorists differ in their perception of the importance of the reader vis-a-vis the text. While the distinctions tend to blur, the overall impression is that reader-response theorists who wish to stay close to the text impose limitation upon the reading process by theorizing an 'implied reader', while those who give greater authority to the reader emphasize the reader's psyche or situation as having a bearing upon the meaning of a literary work. For the first group, interpretation begins with the text whereas the latter group starts with the actual readers and works back to the text. Reader-response criticism sparked off quite a number of critical studies that applied the method to analysis of biblical texts.™ Although it is not overtly as postmodern as deconstructs or ideological criticism, it is regarded as a sound postmodern approach to biblical study- In the next section, I will turn to the use of reader-response criticism in biblical studies. In particular, I will discuss the method of Mark Allan Powell, whose Chasing the Eastern Star is one of the more recent studies in New Testament that uses reader-response criticism.- Treating Powell's work in greater detail will make the method of this research clearer-by pointing out the critical distinctions that I borrow from him.

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  A Road Less Traveled

  Critical Literacy and Language Learning in the Classroom, 19641996

  • Robert W. Blake, Brett Elizabeth Blake(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Peter Lang Inc., International Academic Publishers

    (Publisher)

  Elements of an evolving reader response approach conclude this article. We are living through a disturbingly unsettled but wonderfully challeng- ing time for teaching literature in the elementary grades. Moving from an era when children learned to find a single, “correct” meaning in a text by a step-by-step, systematic method, we have entered another period in which children are learning to read literature in a radically different way; that is, by creating, rather than finding, their own personal meanings within a learning community. That a worthwhile literary text compels the reader, watcher, or listener to experience a story both emotionally and intellectually is, as I view it, one of the principal features of reader response. When a person approaches a literary 220 a road less traveled text in the traditional manner examining it logically and rationally as a lin- guistic puzzle to be solved, she assumes the perspective of the scientist, acting as a detached observer. On the other hand, when an individual allows herself to appre- hend a text with all her senses, she invariably becomes involved in the story and is able to see how it is related to real life. The feeling and memory responses, key aspects of reader response, are the most powerful techniques for compelling children to see literature as an extension of reality, not as a perfunctoty, frequently meaningless school exercise. Signs are many that such a sea of change is occurring. Here are a few examples. Some teachers have moved from “process writing” in their class- rooms to “process” literature instruction (David, Doney, Kreider & Titus, 1990). Elementary school teachers report that they are employing success- fully response and dialogue response journals (Hancock, 1992). The use of “real” books for literature-based reading instruction results in “… stunning levels of success with all types of students and particularly with disabled and uninterested readers” (Tunnell & Jacobs, 1989, 470).

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  Formalist Criticism and Reader-Response Theory

  • Todd Davis, Kenneth Womack(Authors)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Red Globe Press

    (Publisher)

  The very notion of meaning is itself a vexed proposition that literary critics inevitably confront during the business of interpretation. Verbal meaning refers, of course, to a particular combination of linguistic signs that allow for the meaning’s conveyance. Yet, as reader-response criticism demonstrates, the construction of meaning ulti-mately resides in the auspices of readers, who approach literary texts from particularized vantage points – or perhaps more accurately, from their own subjectified perspectives. In other words, there is no single correct meaning that one can derive from a literary text, espe-cially within the boundaries of a literature classroom brimming with divergent personalities and socially disparate points of view. ‘Once we decide that readers can make meaning, and ought to be doing so, we begin to see it happening all around us – that is what reading is, after 6 6 A C r i t i c a l I n t r o d u c t i o n all. Meaning is made precisely as we want it to be made, and as usual we want different things,’ Crosman writes in ‘Do Readers Make Meaning?’ ‘Unanimity is neither possible nor desirable,’ he adds, ‘and reality is never unequivocal’ (164). As critics such as Holland, Bleich, and Crosman reveal, the psycho-logical impact of Crosman’s last remark is truly profound. In short, reader-response critics must contend – in dramatic contrast with some of their formalist precursors – that we can never derive an ulti-mate interpretation for any literary work, just as philosophers under-stand the absolute nonexistence of universal truth and textual critics must inevitably concede the fallacy of compiling a truly lasting, defin-itive, and authoritative edition of anything. In Reading Paradise Lost (1980), Crosman wrestles with the challenging issue regarding the psychological needs that humans quench via the reading process.

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  Children's Literature

  New Approaches

  • K. Lesnik-Oberstein(Author)
  • 2004(Publication Date)
  • Palgrave Macmillan

    (Publisher)

  93 5 The Implied Reader. Response and Responsibility: Theories of the Implied Reader in Children’s Literature Criticism Neil Cocks As long ago as 1990 ‘The Reader in the Book’ by Aidan Chambers was included in Peter Hunt’s anthology of Children’s Literature Criticism with the warning that it ‘was written […] in the very early days of response/recep- tion criticism – at least in terms of its availability to a general audience. In this sense, the article has certain limitations, and Chambers has taken his arguments further since then.’ 1 Michael Benton, in his 1996 survey-article of developments in ‘reader-response criticism’ within children’s literature, however, still also sees Aidan Chambers’s work as groundbreaking in partic- ular respects, writing that Chambers’s article is ‘regarded as a landmark’, but also that ‘this lead has been followed so infrequently’. 2 Benton’s explana- tion for this is that ‘criticism has moved on’. 3 This chapter will argue instead that ‘The Reader in the Book’ is still relevant to the study of Children’s Literature because contemporary criticism is still laboring under the same assumptions such texts make about the child and its reading, and employ many of the problematic moves made by that text. This ‘Childist’ 4 criticism may be read as an attempt to move away from what it regarded as the reduc- tive simplicity of contemporary Children’s Literature Criticism, seeking to ‘break the power attributed to the text itself by the intrinsic criticism which dominated literary studies throughout the twentieth century, and empower the reader instead’. 5 However, despite focusing on readers and authors, this criticism also wanted to avoid falling into the trap of producing the kind of unproblematic autobiographical criticism that had also gained widespread acceptance among Children’s Literature Critics.

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