Reader Response Criticism
Reader response stresses the importance of the reader's role in interpreting texts. Rejecting the idea that there is a single, fixed meaning inherent in every literary work, this theory holds that the individual creates his or her own meaning through a "transaction" with the text based on personal associations. Because all readers bring their own emotions, concerns, life experiences, and knowledge to their reading, each interpretation is subjective and unique.
|
Reader response theory : An Explanation "So, are all interpretations of a work of text or art equal?"
"Reader response criticism also evaluates interpretive communities. Interpretive communities are groups of critics who have agreed upon certain elements in a text as being more significant than others. Feminist literary critics, for example, would prefer texts that support feminist thinking. Images of the feminine might be of more interest than predominantly masculine images"
|
Many trace the beginning of reader-response theory to scholar Louise Rosenblatt's influential 1938 work Literature As Exploration. Rosenblatt's ideas were a reaction to the formalist theories of the New Critics, who promoted "close readings" of literature, a practice which advocated rigid scholarly detachment in the study of texts and rejected all forms of personal interpretation by the reader. According to Rosenblatt, the New Critics treated the text as "an autonomous entity that could be objectively analyzed" using clear-cut technical criteria. Rosenblatt believed instead that "the reading of any work of literature is, of necessity, an individual and unique occurrence involving the mind and emotions of some particular reader and a particular text at a particular time under particular circumstances.
http://kaj.upol.cz/materialy/Milena/childlit/ReaderResponse.htm