RECEPTION & READER-RESPONSE THEORY

Reader-response theory may be traced initially to theorists such as I. A. Richards & Louise Rosenblatt A reader brings certain assumptions to a text based on the interpretive strategies he/she has learned in a particular interpretive community Reading is a dialectical process between the reader and text A reader's aesthetic experience is always bound by time and historical determinants

..."the making and revising of assumptions, the rendering and regretting of judgments, the coming to and abandoning of conclusions, the giving and withdrawing of approval, the specifying of causes, the asking of questions, the supplying of answers, the solving of puzzles" (Stanley Fish, Is There a Text in This Class?, 1980, 00. 158-9)

..."The significance of the work...does not lie in the meaning sealed within the text, but in the fact that the meaning brings out what had been previously sealed within us....Through gestaltforming, we actually participate in the text, and this means that we are caught up in the very thing we are producing. This is why we often have the impression, as we read, that we are living another life." (Iser, The Act of Reading, pp. 157, 132.)

The process of reading thus entails a progressive growth of insight: of the reader into the text as something other than himself, and into himself as one who is transformed by his encounter with the texts." (Samuel Weber, "Caught in the Act of Reading," in Demarcating the Disciplines: Philosophy, Literature, Art, 1986, p. 185)

Key Terms
Horizons

of expectations: A term developed by Hans Robert Jauss to explain how a reader's "expectations" or frame of reference is based on the reader's past experience of literature and what preconceived notions about literature the reader possesses (i.e., a reader's aesthetic experience is bound by time and historical determinants).

Implied reader: A term developed by Wolfgang Iser; the implied reader [somewhat akin to an "ideal reader"] is "a hypothetical reader of a text. The implied reader embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect -predispositions laid down, not by an empirical outside reality, but by the text itself. Consequently, the implied reader as a concept has his roots firmly planted in the structure of the text; (Greig E. Henderson and Christopher Brown Glossary of Literary Theory)

Interpretive communities - a concept, articulated by Stanley Fish, that readers within an "interpretive community" share reading strategies, values and interpretive assumptions (Barbara McManus)

Kinds of Reader-Response Criticism

Individualists: those who focus upon the individual reader's experience Experimenters: those who conduct psychological experiments on a defined set of readers Uniformists: those who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers

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 textdriven and uniform (with individual variations that can be ignored). The individualists, 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 unifomists, 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.

"The reader is left with everything to do, yet everything has already been done; the work only exists precisely on the level of his abilities; while he reads and creates, he knows that he could always create more profoundly; and this is why the work appears to him as inexhaustible and as impenetrable as an object." (Sartre, What is Literature (1949)

People have one agenda when they read a work for the first time, and very different ones, when they reread. Developing a strong interpretation requires being very conscious of all of these processes and changes in reading, understanding individual responses better by comparing them with others, and thus seeing multiple interpretive possibilities. In a sense, by comparing readings at both the first reading and re-reading stages, students come to understand which points are most compelling and persuasive--and which are idiosyncratic and/or poorly based on text.

The Reading Process

Pre-Reading

Defining the horizon of expectations. In retracing the work's "horizon of expectation," reading can tease out the sociocultural contexts activated by a work, and participate in their reformulation. Similarly, by identifying his/her own expectations, a reader can begin to understand the assumptions, experiences, preconceptions that he/she brings to the process of reading. 2. Identifying assumptions, interests, preconceptions.

Pre-reading Questions

Text:

What assumptions do you have about the author of the text? Have you read any of his other works? Knowing when and where this story/poem was written, what are your expectations of theme, character treatment, techniques? Do you have any expectations of genre from glancing at the text? What suggestions/expectations does the title convey?

Reader

What are your dominant feelings before reading this text? Are you looking forward to reading a text by this particular author? Does the author, genre, type of literature appeal to you? What are your general expectations from reading? Does it matter if you read for pleasure or for "study"? Do you use different techniques and assumptions in reading "for pleasure'? Are you aware of any of your strengths and weaknesses in reading?

First Reading

We are trained to react in more or less similar ways to narrative texts during first reading. Strong generic, textual and cultural expectations regulate our responses. Many of us read fiction self-indulgently, seeking a reconfirmation of our expectations and biases. We smooth over contradictions and follow the narrative to settled conclusions even when we distrust the narratorial voice. On the other hand, we find stories that thwart such expectations disappointing, obscure, and "dry."

While you read, pause periodically and make a note of some of the following: details of plot or character that are emphasized, or that you have singled out as significant; narrative sequences, their role in foreshadowing and building thematic coherence; temporal, spatial, words, clusters of images that stick in your memory; your immediate response to these textual sequences; associations, connections, fantasies triggered by the text's situations; specific insights they offer about text and reader; "gaps," contradictions, unresolved questions in the story's plot, characterization or overall structure;

what seems to carry forward the flow of reading, or, on the contrary, obstruct it; narratorial voices, their authority and trustworthiness; focalization, point of view expectations upon opening this story and how these are fulfilled/thwarted by the text; your overall reactions to the story, aspects you found challenging or hard to accept.

Rereading

First reading often yields an incomplete, impressionistic interpretation that tends "to settle too soon, too quickly" the text. Having little more than first reading responses to depend on, readers will resort in their written "explications" to a literalist, "blocked" pattern approach:

"they lift various segments out of the text and then combine them through arbitrary sequential connections (usually conjunctions)--a composing mode that is marked by a consistent restriction of options to explore and develop ideas." (Mariolina Salvatori, "Reading and Writing a Text: Correlations between Reading and Writing Patterns," College English, 45 [1983]: 659) first and second reading are perceived as separate, even conflicting. First reading is described as sequential, superficial, mimetic. Only a second, retroactive reading can produce "significance" by identifying and reconfiguring the various perspectives of the text (Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry, pp. 81ff)

One way of making rereading more effective is to organize it around specific questions that call for a comparison between first and second reading, between response and critical interpretation. Readers will be asked to reexamine their position toward the story after second reading, to ponder some of the exclusions, distortions, misreading they have perpetrated during first reading. They are also asked to speculate on how successfully they have attended to details, how closely they have monitored the progress of the story through inferences, predictions, connections.

2nd Reading Questionnaire

how did the story's general purport and orientation change after second reading? what aspects of the story have you "misremembered," adapted to conform to your first reading? what possibilities of the text have you ignored (not account for) during earlier reading?

what "mysteries" or "gaps" in the narrative have you tried to settle and how successfully? what aspects in the story are still unresolved, what questions unanswered? who did you identify with during first reading, and how did this identification affect your understanding of the story? have your generic or thematic expectations about the story changed?

is the story more/or less satisfying after second reading, and why? as you begin to sort out the textual "evidence" in support of an interpretation of the story, which details do you find useful, and which seem difficult to resolve with your interpretation? has this approach to reading given you more confidence in your judgments and helped you understand the intricate details of the text better?

Reader-Response Theory in EFL

Students need to read, write, reread, and rewrite, exploring leading questions related to each genre/work in order to think critically about a text; To keep this reading/writing process from being too subjective (and thus sometimes wandering far from the text), it needs to be done collectively and comparatively, negotiating questions and meaning as a class and not just as an individual. Thus students gradually come to understand the strengths and weaknesses of their individual readings, when challenged by other readings and responses to their own reading, and so learn to develop stronger and more persuasive interpretations;

Every student must participate fully in order for the class dynamic to work, and in order to develop the strongest, most detailed readings of a work; Students must have as much information about biographical, socio-cultural and historical contexts and leading, open questions related to the text as possible, but presented in a voluntary, timely fashion (e.g. they should have it available when they "ask" for it); The teacher's role, then, is more of a coach and collegial reader than the authoritative establisher of interpretation, participating as a more knowledgeable re-reader but still another reader in the class whose interpretation should be comparatively muted.

THE END!!!