Literary Theory

Reader-Response

Subjective vs. Objective• When we refer to something as “subjective” we mean

that it pertains to the individual (the reader). A subjective reading of a text is one in which emphasis is placed on the attitudes, moods, and opinions of the reader.• When we refer to something as “objective” we mean

that it pertains to an object (the text) separate from the individual (the reader). An objective reading of a text is one that is uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices.• Reader-Response criticism offers a subjective, or

egocentric, reading of a text. Egocentrism refers to anything that regards the self of the individual as the center of all things.

What is Reader-Response?•RR critics believe that a reader’s interaction with the text gives the text its meaning. The text cannot exist without the reader.• If a tree falls in the forest and no one is around to hear it does it make a noise? If a text sits on a shelf in a bookstore and no one is around to read it, does the text have meaning?

What is Reader-Response?• RR criticism is NOT a free-for-all school of thought where anything goes. RR criticism is still a disciplined theory deserving of a careful reading of the text.• RR critics are focused on finding meaning in the act of reading itself and examining the ways individual readers or communities of readers experience texts. • The reader joins with the author to “help the text mean.”

What is Reader-Response?• A successful reader-response critic does not just respond to a text—anyone can do that—but analyzes his or her response, or the responses of others.•Our life experiences and the communities we belong to greatly influence our reading of a text• Because each reader will interact with the text differently, the text may have more than one valid interpretation.

READER-RESPONSE STYLISTICS

According to Jonathan Culler (1981), RR examines the reader’s response to a text as a response to a horizon of expectations. By a horizon of expectations, is meant that there is multiplicity of meanings of interpretations in a text and these can be accessed by the reader according to his or her level or literary competence.

A reader’s literary competence is highly informed by the social world in which a text is produced as it usually has a shaping effect on his or her interpretation of a such text.

In RR, there is an interaction between the structure of the text and the reader’s response. It evokes a situation where individual readers give meaning to the text. This is because each reader will interact with the text differently, as the text may have more than one vivid interpretation.

RR theorists share two beliefs:

1. The role of the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature (unlike New Critics who believe that the meaning of a text is contained in the text alone).

2. Readers do not passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text. Instead, readers actively make the meaning they find in literature.

Reader Response Theory, simply stated, is the reader's response to literary text. Tyson (2006) describes in Critical Theory Today the five types of Reader Response theories and the differences that lie within each. The following table summarizes each theory, the noted researcher(s) associated with the theory, and provides a basic definition.

Theory Theorist(s) Definition

Transactional Louise Rosenblatt;Wolfgang Iser

Transactional Reader Response Theory analyzes the transaction between the text and reader. Both are seen as equally important. A reader can take an efferent stance, based on determinant meanings in a text, or an aesthetic stance, based on determinant and indeterminacy of meanings.

Affective Stylistics Stanley Fish Affective Stylistics Reader Response Theory examines a text in a "slow motion" format, in which each line is studied in order to determine "how (stylistics) affects (affective) the reader in the process of reading" (Tyson, 2006, p. 175).

Subjective David Bleich Subjective Reader Response Theory believes that the readers' responses are the text, and that all meaning of a text lies in the readers' interpretations.

Psychological Norman Holland Psychological Reader Response Theory znalyzes what the readers' interpretations and responses reveal about the reader, not the text.

Social Stanley Fish Social Reader Response Theory believes that readers approach a text with interpretative strategies that are the products of the "interpretive communities" in which they belong.

Transactional Reader Response

Analyzes the transaction between reader and text both the reader and the text are necessary in the production of meaning As we read, the text acts as a stimulus to which we respond feelings, associations, and memories all influence the way we make sense of a text as we read it.

CONCLUSION

Reader response theory is the best theory which makes the reader and students to be active and to analysis a text by their own ways it achieved great importance in 19th century and for students and teacher it is the most reliable method of studying and teaching.