Reader Response Criticism : An easy handout for beginners

Reader Response Criticism

As the name itself suggests, Reader Response Criticism focuses on reader's response to literary texts rather than on the author or on the work itself. It considers the reader as an active operator who completes the work of the author by making it come alive through his own interpretation. As a branch of criticism, it began in the 1960s and 1970s, later gained prominence in 1980s. It had its roots in phenomenology put forwarded by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger. The Reader Response theory was largely a reaction against the New Criticism and Formalism, which ignored the psychology of the reader and the reader's role in recreating a text.

Reader Response Critics examine the various responses of the readers to a given work and try to see if the responses are similar to the meaning. They also try to observe if a work can have as many meanings as there are responses, but some responses are more valid than others. In this sphere of criticism readers are not a passive recipient of a literary work but as an active co-creator of the work.

A text's unity lies not in its origin but in its destination. It suggests that the role of the reader is essential to the meaning of the text. A reader can only enlivens a text. A reader can go beyond the text such as the internal feelings of the characters, thus establishing all the possible interpretation. A text does not exist until it is read by some readers. So, readers are the real source of meaning. They shape and initiate the text and becoming an active meaning maker. In fact, there is no text unless there is a reader and the reader is the only one who can say what the text is. In a sense, the reader creates the text as much as the author does. So, the critics should reject the autonomy of the text and to concentrate on the reader and the reading process. The major critics associated to Reader Response Theory are Norman Holland, Louise Rosenblatt, Stanley Fish, David Bleich, Wolfgang Iser and Hans Robert.

Different critics define the reading process and texts in different ways. As a result there are five variants of Reader Response Criticism:Transactional Reader Response Theory, Affective Stylistics, Psychological Reader Response Theory, Subjective Reader Response Theory and Social Reader Response Theory.

 Transactional Reader Response Theory

Often associated with the works of Louise Rosenblatt and supported by Wolfgang Iser, who established a clear cut formula. Transactional Reader Response Theory analyzes the transaction between text and reader. Rosenblatt doesn't reject the importance of the text in favour of the reader; rather she claims that both are necessary in the production of meaning.

The process of transaction takes place, as we read a text, it acts as a stimulus to which we respond in our own personal way. Memories, feelings and all other reactions occur as we read, and these responses influence the way in which we make sense out of the text. After all, reading literature is the sum total of our accumulated knowledge and experience, and even our current physical condition and mood will influence us as well. Thus, the literary work is a product of the transaction between text and reader. Both of which are equally important to the process.

According to Rosenblatt, our approach to the text must be aesthetic rather than efferent. When we read in the efferent mode, we focus just on the information contained in the text. It becomes merely a storehouse of facts and ideas that we could carry away with us. For instance, if we make an efferent stance to Arthur Miller's "Death of a sales man" It would be a play about a traveling salesman who kills himself so that his son will receive his life insurance amount. In contrast, when we read in the aesthetic mode, we experience a personal relationship to the text that focuses our attention on the emotional subtleties of its language and other symbolic devices used in the play. There are several elements that intensify the effect of the play such as the music, setting, light effect, imageries and language. So, without the aesthetic approach, there could be no effective transaction possible between text and the reader. According to Transactinal Theorists, different readers come up with different acceptable interpretations because the text allows for a range of acceptable meanings.

Affective Stylistics

This theory is usually associated with Stanley Fish.  It is also based on the assumption that a text can only come into existence as it is read; therefore, a text cannot have meaning independent of the reader. In his essay "Affective Stylistics", he attacks the notion that reading is a finished activity. The text consists of the results it produces, and those results occur within the reader any time. A sentence for him is an action made upon a reader. It should not be mistaken as the impressionistic responses of the reader, but should be understood as the cognitive analysis of the reading process. The process is described in 'slow motion'; it is the word by word or phrase by phrase analysis of the response of the reader. The reader travels from one word to another as one eats food spoon by spoon.

Subjective Reader Response Theory

David Bleich is the major spokesperson of this theory. It exhibits a radical departure from the above mentioned two theories. Both suggest that the text guides and controls the reader in the reading process. Bleich was of the view that our responses are not determined by the text, reading is completely a subjective entity and the nature of what is perceived is determined solely by the perceiver. The readers interpretation create and enliven a literary text. The act of reading create a conceptual or or symbolic world. Reading is symbolization. So, there is no literary text beyond the meanings created by readers' interpretation.

Psychological Reader Response Theory

Psychoanalytic critic Norman Holland believes that readers' motives strongly influence on how they read. Psychologically speaking he has Freudian leanings in his use of concepts. A work of literature projects fantasies, and our interpretations of literary texts fulfill our psychological needs. The source of pleasure for a reader lies in the transformation of the unconscious wishes through a literary work. The individual's subjective response is a close encounter with the fantasies created by the work. Our interpretations are the result of the desire, fears etc.  So, reading a text is a psychological process.

Social reader response theory

While the individual reader's subjective response to the literary text plays the crucial role in subjective reader response theory, for Social Reader Response Theory, usually associated with the later works of Stanley Fish, there is no purely individual subjective response. According to Fish, what we take to be our individual subjective responses to literature are really products of the interpretive community to which we belong. By interpretive community he means, those who shares the interpretive strategies always result from various sorts of institutionalized assumptions ( assumptions established such as schools, churches and colleges) about what makes a text a piece of literature. Social Reader Response Theory doesn't offer us a new way to read texts. Nor does it promote any form of literary criticism that already exists.

[NB: Remember, these five variations are just an offshoot of Reader Response Theory, so,they seem to be similar in bird's eye view, but slight difference is there.]

Reference & for further reading

• Critical Theory Today A user-friendly guide   by Lois Tyson
• A New Approach to Literary Theory and Criticism  by R.S Malik & Jagdish Batra
• English Literary Criticism and Theory  by M.S Nagarajan. 
• A Glossary of literary Terms  by M.H Abrams. 
• Theory into Practice,an Introduction to Literary Criticism  by Ann.B. Dobie