O M I D
05-27-2012, 05:43 PM
Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Literary_theory) that focuses on the reader (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Reading_%28process%29) (or "audience (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Audience)") and his or her experience of a literary work (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Literary_work), in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Mode_%28literature%29) of the 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, in work by Norman Holland (http://www.blogsky.com/w/index.php?title=Norman_Holland&action=edit&redlink=1), Stanley Fish (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Stanley_Fish), Wolfgang Iser (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Wolfgang_Iser), Hans-Robert Jauss (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Hans-Robert_Jauss), Roland Barthes (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Roland_Barthes), and others. Important predecessors were I. A. Richards (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/I._A._Richards), who in 1929 analyzed a group of Cambridge (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Cambridge_University) undergraduates' misreadings; Louise Rosenblatt (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Louise_Rosenblatt), who, in Literature as Exploration (1938), argued that it is important for the teacher to avoid imposing any "preconceived notions about the proper way to react to any work"; and C. S. Lewis (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/C._S._Lewis) in An Experiment in Criticism (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/An_Experiment_in_Criticism) (1961).
Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts "real existence" to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Formalism_%28literature%29) and the New Criticism (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/New_Criticism), in which the reader's role in re-creating literary works is ignored. New Criticism had emphasized that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the authority or intention of the author (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Authorial_intentionality), nor to the psychology (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Psychology) of the reader, was allowed in the discussions of orthodox New Critics. The New Critics' position assumed an objective, fixed text that could be studied apart from any human being,[clarification needed (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_clarify)] and this assumption persisted even into postmodern (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Postmodernism) criticism.
Kind of reader-response criticism
One can sort reader-response theorists into three groups: those who focus upon the individual reader's experience ("individualists"); those who conduct psychological (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Psychological) experiments on a defined set of readers ("experimenters"); and those who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers ("uniformists"). One can therefore draw a distinction between reader-response theorists who see the individual reader driving the whole experience and others who think of literary experience as largely text-driven and uniform (with individual variations that can be ignored). The former theorists, who think the reader controls, derive what is common in a literary experience from shared techniques for reading and interpreting which are, however, individually applied by different readers. The latter, who put the text in control, derive commonalities of response, obviously, from the literary work itself. The most fundamental difference among reader-response critics is probably, then, between those who regard individual differences among readers' responses as important and those who try to get around them.
Objections
Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience. Traditional, text-oriented critics often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Anarchic) subjectivism (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Subjectivism), allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want. They accuse reader-response critics of saying the text doesn't exist. (Reader-response critics respond that they are only saying that to explore someone's literary experience, one must ask the someone, not pore over the text.) By contrast, text-oriented critics assume that one can understand a text while remaining immune to one's own culture, status, personality (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Personality_psychology), and so on, and hence "objectively".
To reader-response based theorists, however, reading is always both subjective (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Subject_%28philosophy%29) and objective (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Objectivity_%28philosophy%29), and their question is not "which" but "how".[clarification needed (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_clarify)] Some reader-response critics (uniformists) assume a bi-active model of reading: the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls part. Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls the whole transaction (individualists). In such a reader-active model, readers and audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading (shared by many others) as well as their personal issues and values.
Another objection to reader-response criticism is that it fails to account for the text being able to expand the reader's understanding. While readers can and do put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally overlooked in reader-response criticism.
Extensions
Reader-response criticism relates to psychology, both experimental psychology (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Experimental_psychology) for those attempting to find principles of response, and psychoanalytic psychology (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Psychoanalytic_psychology) for those studying individual responses. Post-behaviorist (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Behaviorist) psychologists of reading and of perception (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Perception) support the idea that it is the reader who makes meaning. Increasingly, cognitive psychology (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Cognitive_psychology), psycholinguistics (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Psycholinguistics), neuroscience, and neuropsychoanalysis (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Neuropsychoanalysis) have given reader-response critics powerful and detailed models for the aesthetic process.
Because it rests on psychological principles, a reader-response approach readily generalizes to other arts: cinema (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Film) (David Bordwell (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/David_Bordwell)), music, or visual art (E. H. Gombrich (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/E._H._Gombrich)), and even to history (Hayden White (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Hayden_White)). In stressing the activity of the scholar, reader-response theory justifies such upsettings of traditional interpretations as, for example, deconstruction (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Deconstruction) or cultural criticism (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Cultural_criticism).
Since reader-response critics focus on the strategies readers are taught to use, they address the teaching (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Teaching) of reading and literature. Also, because reader-response criticism stresses the activity of the reader, reader-response critics readily share the concerns of feminist (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Feminist_theory) critics and critics writing on behalf of gays, ethnic minorities, or post-colonial peoples.
Some argue that 'artworks' are now purposely being fabricated which lack meaning but rather the 'artworks' are fabricated only to generate a reader response. The reader response then is corralled via interpretative communities. Reader response rather than handing a freedom to the reader empowers the leaders of an interpretative community against the reader. The reader has no ground to evaluate the 'artwork' as the artwork is senseless. Only a reader response, basically an emotive response, is legitimate. The Web provides an ideal way to form such interpretative communities. The power of reader response strategy is that people are fundamentally 'hungry' for culture and will attempt to impart meaning even to artworks that are senseless. Of course, people can always opt out of these interpretative communities centered around senseless artworks with little to no loss vis-a-vis culture and almost certainly a cultural gain.
Paradoxically reader response criticism as done by critics today attempts to tell the reader what the reader is allegedly thinking about an artwork. Basically when employing reader response theory to criticism it has to be this way as otherwise the critic fails to connect to the audience in any way as otherwise the idiosyncratic views of the reviewer, perhaps based on neuropsychoanalysis, for example, are put forward with a loss of a popular audience. Moreover, being a leader of an interpretative community has attractions over detailed analysis of summer blockbusters. Reader response criticism is clearly a cultural dominant amongst those who do popular criticism.
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, in work by Norman Holland (http://www.blogsky.com/w/index.php?title=Norman_Holland&action=edit&redlink=1), Stanley Fish (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Stanley_Fish), Wolfgang Iser (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Wolfgang_Iser), Hans-Robert Jauss (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Hans-Robert_Jauss), Roland Barthes (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Roland_Barthes), and others. Important predecessors were I. A. Richards (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/I._A._Richards), who in 1929 analyzed a group of Cambridge (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Cambridge_University) undergraduates' misreadings; Louise Rosenblatt (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Louise_Rosenblatt), who, in Literature as Exploration (1938), argued that it is important for the teacher to avoid imposing any "preconceived notions about the proper way to react to any work"; and C. S. Lewis (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/C._S._Lewis) in An Experiment in Criticism (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/An_Experiment_in_Criticism) (1961).
Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts "real existence" to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Formalism_%28literature%29) and the New Criticism (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/New_Criticism), in which the reader's role in re-creating literary works is ignored. New Criticism had emphasized that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the authority or intention of the author (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Authorial_intentionality), nor to the psychology (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Psychology) of the reader, was allowed in the discussions of orthodox New Critics. The New Critics' position assumed an objective, fixed text that could be studied apart from any human being,[clarification needed (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_clarify)] and this assumption persisted even into postmodern (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Postmodernism) criticism.
Kind of reader-response criticism
One can sort reader-response theorists into three groups: those who focus upon the individual reader's experience ("individualists"); those who conduct psychological (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Psychological) experiments on a defined set of readers ("experimenters"); and those who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers ("uniformists"). One can therefore draw a distinction between reader-response theorists who see the individual reader driving the whole experience and others who think of literary experience as largely text-driven and uniform (with individual variations that can be ignored). The former theorists, who think the reader controls, derive what is common in a literary experience from shared techniques for reading and interpreting which are, however, individually applied by different readers. The latter, who put the text in control, derive commonalities of response, obviously, from the literary work itself. The most fundamental difference among reader-response critics is probably, then, between those who regard individual differences among readers' responses as important and those who try to get around them.
Objections
Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience. Traditional, text-oriented critics often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Anarchic) subjectivism (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Subjectivism), allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want. They accuse reader-response critics of saying the text doesn't exist. (Reader-response critics respond that they are only saying that to explore someone's literary experience, one must ask the someone, not pore over the text.) By contrast, text-oriented critics assume that one can understand a text while remaining immune to one's own culture, status, personality (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Personality_psychology), and so on, and hence "objectively".
To reader-response based theorists, however, reading is always both subjective (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Subject_%28philosophy%29) and objective (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Objectivity_%28philosophy%29), and their question is not "which" but "how".[clarification needed (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Wikipedia:Please_clarify)] Some reader-response critics (uniformists) assume a bi-active model of reading: the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls part. Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls the whole transaction (individualists). In such a reader-active model, readers and audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading (shared by many others) as well as their personal issues and values.
Another objection to reader-response criticism is that it fails to account for the text being able to expand the reader's understanding. While readers can and do put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally overlooked in reader-response criticism.
Extensions
Reader-response criticism relates to psychology, both experimental psychology (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Experimental_psychology) for those attempting to find principles of response, and psychoanalytic psychology (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Psychoanalytic_psychology) for those studying individual responses. Post-behaviorist (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Behaviorist) psychologists of reading and of perception (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Perception) support the idea that it is the reader who makes meaning. Increasingly, cognitive psychology (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Cognitive_psychology), psycholinguistics (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Psycholinguistics), neuroscience, and neuropsychoanalysis (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Neuropsychoanalysis) have given reader-response critics powerful and detailed models for the aesthetic process.
Because it rests on psychological principles, a reader-response approach readily generalizes to other arts: cinema (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Film) (David Bordwell (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/David_Bordwell)), music, or visual art (E. H. Gombrich (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/E._H._Gombrich)), and even to history (Hayden White (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Hayden_White)). In stressing the activity of the scholar, reader-response theory justifies such upsettings of traditional interpretations as, for example, deconstruction (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Deconstruction) or cultural criticism (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Cultural_criticism).
Since reader-response critics focus on the strategies readers are taught to use, they address the teaching (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Teaching) of reading and literature. Also, because reader-response criticism stresses the activity of the reader, reader-response critics readily share the concerns of feminist (http://www.blogsky.com/wiki/Feminist_theory) critics and critics writing on behalf of gays, ethnic minorities, or post-colonial peoples.
Some argue that 'artworks' are now purposely being fabricated which lack meaning but rather the 'artworks' are fabricated only to generate a reader response. The reader response then is corralled via interpretative communities. Reader response rather than handing a freedom to the reader empowers the leaders of an interpretative community against the reader. The reader has no ground to evaluate the 'artwork' as the artwork is senseless. Only a reader response, basically an emotive response, is legitimate. The Web provides an ideal way to form such interpretative communities. The power of reader response strategy is that people are fundamentally 'hungry' for culture and will attempt to impart meaning even to artworks that are senseless. Of course, people can always opt out of these interpretative communities centered around senseless artworks with little to no loss vis-a-vis culture and almost certainly a cultural gain.
Paradoxically reader response criticism as done by critics today attempts to tell the reader what the reader is allegedly thinking about an artwork. Basically when employing reader response theory to criticism it has to be this way as otherwise the critic fails to connect to the audience in any way as otherwise the idiosyncratic views of the reviewer, perhaps based on neuropsychoanalysis, for example, are put forward with a loss of a popular audience. Moreover, being a leader of an interpretative community has attractions over detailed analysis of summer blockbusters. Reader response criticism is clearly a cultural dominant amongst those who do popular criticism.