U1L6 Reader Response Criticism
Background
●Seeks to explain the diversity (and
often divergence) of readers’ response
to literary works
●Regards fiction as what the reader
experiences under the guidance of the
text and their own experiences
●Argues that texts contain gaps that
affect the reader, who must fill in the
gaps by explaining them, creating in his
or her mind aspects of a work that
aren’t in the text but are incited by the
text
●Distinguishes between the implied
reader, one who is expected to respond
in specific way to “response inviting
structures” of the text, and the actual
reader, whose responses inevitable
coloured by his or her own experiences
●No longer is the reader the passive
recipient of those ideas that an author
has planted in a text. The reader is
active
, reading is something you do -
the reader is an active maker of
meaning
Background and Application
●Argues that a reader who has acquired
“literary competence” makes sense of
what s/he is reading anticipating what
is still to come. These anticipations may
be fulfilled, but are often mistaken.
These mistakes are an integral part of
the meaning of the text
●Analysis shows a coherence in the kind
of mistakes and meaning experiences
affected in the reader by various texts
○Interpretative communities
composed of members who share
a particular reading strategy or
set of community assumptions
they bring to reading
○More modern approach involves
“situating” a particular reading
of a text in its historical setting to
show the extent to which
interpretation and evaluation of
literature is determined by a
reader’s ideology and biases
○Some reader-response critics
view the reader’s response not as
one “guided” by the text but
rather as one motivated by
deep-seated, personal
psychological needs and suggest
that, when we read, we find our
own theme in the text by using
the literary work to symbolize
and finally replicate our own
characteristic patterns of desire
The Power of the Text
●Since readers come to a work with
literary competence, they are
