Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present)

Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader (or
“audience") and his or her experience of a literary 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 America and Germany,
Basically, reader response theories reject the New Criticism of the late 1930s through the
1950s which assumed that the texts themselves were central and that teachers were to teach
the skills of close, concise, attentive analysis while discouraging expression of and attention
to differences in students' own individual responses.
Theoretical Assumptions:

Literature is a performative art and each reading is a performance, analogous to

playing/singing a musical work, enacting a drama, etc. Literature exists only when it is read;
meaning is an event (versus the New Critical concept of the “affective fallacy").
The literary text possesses no fixed and final meaning or value; there is no one "correct"
meaning. Literary meaning and value are "transactional," "dialogic," created by the
interaction of the reader and the text. According to Louise Rosenblatt, a poem is "what the
reader lives through under the guidance of the text."
Although a reader response critic rejects the idea that there is any one single way to read a
text, it does not endorse the idea that any interpretation is a valid interpretation of the work
either. It is not a free-for-all type of interpretation of the work.
View of literary works
When readers accept the assumption that there is no one true interpretation, they 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.
A literary work is 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.
Literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own,
possibly unique, text-related performance
Reader response critics also look at the different classes of people who read the same text,
and compare how this impacts his or her interpretation of the work.
Reader response criticism examines how religious, cultural and social values impact the
interpretations of different readers of the same text.
Reader-response critics share two beliefs:
1) that the role of the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature and
2) that readers do not passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective
literary text; rather they actively make the meaning they find in literature
Reader’s Point of View
There are different approaches within this school of critical theory. Some look at the work
from :
1. the individual reader's point of view
a. Transactional Reader Response Criticism
b. Psychological Reader Response Criticism.
c. Subjective Reader Response Criticism

2. groups or communities’ point of view

Social Reader Response: look not at the reader as an individual, but as a

theoretical reader.
these like-minded groups can also approach and view the text from different
lenses. If the group finds certain elements to be more significant than others, it
might examine the text from this particular viewpoint, or lens. For example,
feminist literary critics may find focus on the female elements of a writing,
whereas new historicists might focus on the culture and era in which the text is
read.

Reader-Response Criticism Methods

 Transactional (Louise Rosenblatt)
 Affective Stylistics, (Stanley Fish)
 Subjective, (David Bleich)
 Psychological ( Norman Holland)
 Social Reader-Response (Stanley Fish)

The “transactional theory” (1978)-Louise Rosenblatt

emphasizing the essentiality of both reader and text, in contrast to other theories that make
one or the other determinate....‘ Transaction'...permits emphasis on the to-and-fro, spiraling,
nonlinear, continuously reciprocal influence or reader and text in the making of meaning. The
meaning — the poem — 'happens' during the transaction between the reader and the signs on
the page. (p. xvi)
the reader and the text are both necessary in the production of meaning.
as we read a text, it acts as a stimulus to which we respond in our own personal way -
affected by literature read previously, our mood and physical state at the time of reading and
our current knowledge has an impact on our responses to the text we read
The Reader, The Text, The Poem (1978)
in order for the transaction between text and reader to occur, our approach to the text must be
aesthetic rather than efferent.
efferent - the reader concentrates on information to be extracted from the writing (reading
to get information)
aesthetic involves senses, feelings, and intuitions about “what is being lived through during
the reading event.” The reader experiences a personal relationship to the text.(reading for the
experience or for pleasure)  (Rosenblatt)
The Transactional Model
To use the transactional model, you can begin by asking yourself some of the following
questions:

a. What does the text have to do with you, personally, and with your life (past, present or
future)? 

b. How much does the text agree or clash with your view of the world, and what you
consider right and wrong?

Use several quotes as examples of how it agrees with and supports what you think about
the world, about right and wrong, and about what you think it is to be human. 

Use quotes and examples to discuss how the text disagrees with what you think about the
world and about right and wrong. 

c  How did you learn, and how much were your views and opinions challenged or
changed by this text, if at all? 

Did the text communicate with you? Why or why not?  Give examples of how your views
might have changed or been strengthened (or perhaps, of why the text failed to convince
you, the way it is).

 d. How well does it address things that you, personally, care about and consider
important to the world?

How does it address things that are important to your family, your community, your
ethnic group, to people of your economic or social class or background, or your faith
tradition?

e. How well did you enjoy the text (or not) as entertainment or as a work of art? Use
quotes or examples to illustrate the quality of the text as art or entertainment. 

f.  To sum up, what is your overall reaction to the text? Would you read something else
like this, or by this author, in the future or not?  Why or why not?  To whom would you
recommend this text?