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Reader response critique focuses on how the reader receives a literary work, making it more like performance art. The reader’s experience and interpretation are valued over the author’s intent or context. Different approaches include individual, psychological, and social reader response. Critics argue that it can devalue the content of the text and ignore cultural context.
While many discuss works of literature objectively, absolutely, and with respect to how the author developed the ideas on the page, reader response critique focuses on the reader and how she or he receives the work of literature. In a sense, this causes the text not to exist by itself, such as on the physical pages of a book, and instead assumes that the text only exists when it is read. This theory makes literary works more like performance art where the reader’s act of reading and interpreting the text is the performance. Critical theorists continue to develop this approach, considering the nature of the reader and what he brings to the text, along with the different “lenses” through which the text can be viewed.
Fundamental Beliefs
In reader response criticism, the act of reading is like a dialogue between the reader and the text that has meaning only when the two are joined in conversation. It redefines the role of text from an independent object to something that can only exist when it is read and interacts with the mind of the reader. In this way the reader is not a passive recipient of what the text says, but assumes an active role. The text then acts as a catalyst to stimulate memories and thoughts within the reader allowing him to connect the text to personal experiences and thus fill in the spaces left by the text. This allows theorists to explain why people may have different responses and interpretations of the same text.
This form of criticism even goes so far as to examine the role that individual words and phrases in the text play as they interact with the reader. The sounds and shapes that words make or even how they are pronounced or pronounced by the reader can substantially alter the meaning of the text, it is suggested. Some critics of reader response go so far as to analyze a text sentence by sentence in order to determine how much of the reading experience is predetermined and then analyze how each reader’s experience changes that initial meaning.
Approaches within the critique of reader response
Reader response critique begins with what formalist literary criticism calls the “affective fallacy”—that reader response is relevant to understanding a text—and uses it as the core of approaching a work of literature. However, there are different approaches within this school of critical theory; some look at the work from the point of view of the individual reader, while others focus on how groups or communities view the text. For these schools of criticism, what the text does to the reader is important, and not necessarily the work itself, the author’s intent, or the social, political, or cultural context in which it was written.
The label “reader-oriented criticism” has become popular as the reader’s experiences and expectations often change over time. Also, a reader may approach the text with different points of view, or lenses. That is, the reader may be able to see the value in their own personal response while also analyzing the text based on another critical approach.
Individual readers
Louise Rosenblatt is generally credited with formally introducing the idea that the reader’s experience and interaction with the text creates true meaning. This idea developed into what became known as transactional critique of reader response. Rosenblatt argued that while the reader is guided by the ideas and words the author has set forth, it is ultimately each individual reader’s experience in reading the work that actually gives it meaning. Because each person brings unique knowledge and beliefs to the reading transaction, the text will mean different things to different people. It is that meaning – the reader’s meaning – that should be valued, instead of solely looking at the author’s text in a vacuum.
Other critics focus on how the reader’s mind relates to the text, in what is known as a critique of the psychological reader’s response. The reader is seen as a psychological subject who can be studied on the basis of his unconscious drives brought to the surface by his reaction to a text. Reading the text can almost become a therapeutic experience for the reader, as the connections he makes reveal truths about his personality.
Psychological critique of reader response in many ways fueled another similar theory – subjective critique of reader response – which carries the personal psychological component even further. In this theory, the reader’s interpretation of a text is thought to be deeply influenced by personal and psychological needs first, rather than being guided by the text. Each reading is thought to bring to the surface psychological symptoms, from which the reader can find their unconscious motivations.
The Uniform Reader
Other schools of reader response criticism look at the reader not as an individual, but as a theoretical reader. The ‘implied reader’, for example, an idea introduced by Wolfgang Iser, is the reader required of the text, the reader that the author imagines while writing and for whom he is writing. This reader is guided by the text, which contains gaps for the reader to fill in, explain, and make links within the text. The reader ultimately creates meaning based not only on what is in the text, but on what the text has provoked within him. Theorist Stanley Fish introduced what he called the “informed reader,” which brings prior, shared knowledge to the reading experience.
Social reader response
Critique of social reader response focuses on “interpretive communities” – groups that have shared beliefs and values – and how these groups use particular strategies that influence both the text and their reading behaviors. It is the group that then determines what an acceptable interpretation of the text is, meaning that it is whatever the group says it is. A book club or group of college students, for example, based on their group and cultural beliefs, generally agree on the ultimate meaning of a text.
As an extension of social theory, these like-minded groups may also approach and see the text from different lenses. If the group feels that some elements are more significant than others, they could examine the text from this particular point of view, or lens. For example, feminist literary critics may focus on the feminine elements of a piece of writing, while new historicists may focus on the culture and era in which the text is being read.
Arguments against criticism of reader response in general
It is often argued that criticism of the reader’s response allows any interpretation of a text to be considered valid and, consequently, can devalue the content of the text. Others argue that the text is ignored completely or that it is impossible to interpret a text correctly without taking into account the culture or era in which it is written. Also, a larger complaint is that these theories by no means allow for the reader’s knowledge and experience to be expanded by the text.
