Create a new account

It's simple, and free.

Responding as a Reader

The encounter between a reader and a written text, be it fiction or non-fiction, is invariably shaped by many factors. As Stanley Fish (34) has noted, this encounter and its outcome may depend in large measure on the reader and his or her attitudes, beliefs, values, and experiences rather than upon the text or the textÆs creator. While texts can be said to contain embedded meaning, meaning that is placed therein by the authorial voice, the way in which this meaning is acquired, interpreted and then understood or known is the product, so to speak, of the readerÆs own actions. What a writer intends in his or her work is, therefore, subject to what a reader brings to the process of reading that work. Thus, the critical approach to textual and literary analysis known as reader-response criticism places the reader in a dominant position vis-a-vis the text.

Analyzing and criticizing literature is a process that can take many forms or move from any number of theoretical perspectives. The school of reader-response criticism is broadly defined as any literary theory that investigates the process of reading (Wright 529). Reader-response criticism involves the systematic examination of the aspects of a text that arouse, shape, and guide a readerÆs response. In this approach, the reader is a producer rather than a consumer of meanings, a hypothetical construct of norms and expectations that can be derived or projected or extrapolated from a work and even said to inhere in the work. Reader-response criticism ranges from the phenomenological theories of Wolfgang Iser (86) to the relativistic analysis of Stanley Fish (46).

Generally, reader-response criticism rejects the notion that a literary work is an object (Fish 42). This approach to literary criticism positions the reader in a seminally important role and suggests that every reader ôknowsö or understands written texts as the result of a personalized yet specific stra...

Page 1 of 40 Next >

More on Responding as a Reader...

Loading...
APA     MLA     Chicago
Responding as a Reader. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 04:48, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1709274.html