Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Chapter 6: Reader-Response Criticism

According to Tyson, (1999) reader-response criticism focuses on readers’ reaction to literary texts. Where New Criticism focused exclusively on the text itself, reader response acknowledges the interaction between the text and a reader. This theory did not receive much attention until the 1970s, at which time there was awareness that the role of the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature and readers do not passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text: rather they actively make the meaning they find in literature. Each person may read the same text differently based on the uniqueness of that reader, “in fact, reader-response theorists believe that even the same reader reading the same text on two different occasions will probably produce different meanings because so many variables contribute to our earpiece of the text” (p. 154). Theorists disagree about how our responses are formed and what role, if any; the text plays in creating them, “opinion range from the belief that the literary text is active as the reader in creating meaning to the belief that the text doesn’t exist at all as it is created by readers (p. 157). As such, five headings are loosely organized so we can better understand this idea; they include 1) transactional reader-response theory, 2) affective stylistics, 3) subjective reader-response theory, 4) psychological reader-response theory, and 5) social reader-response theory.

Transactional reader-response theory analyzes the transaction between text and reader. As we read a text, it acts as a interviewer: stimulus to which we reasons in our own personal way. Feelings, associations, and memories occur as we read, and these responses influence the way in which we make sense of the text as we move through it. There are two different modes that we approach text, the first being efferent mode, which focuses on the information contained in the text, as if it were a storehouse of facts and ideas that we carry away with us. The second is aesthetic mode, which we experience as a personal relationship to the text. We focus on the subtleties of its language and encourage us to make judgments. I was reminded of Gestalt psychology, in which images are perceived as a pattern or a whole rather than merely as a sum of distinct component parts. The context of an image plays a key role. For instance, in the context of a city silhouette the shape of a spire is perceived as a church steeple. Where the author provides a positive definition, the reader completes the picture by filling in the “gaps” in the text.

Affective stylistics is the analysis of text that comes into being as it is read and is examined closely, often line by line or even word by word in order to understand how (stylistics) it affects (affective) the reader in the process of reading. This response is then used to show that the meaning of the text does not consist of the conclusion we draw about what the text says; rather, the meaning of the text consists of our experience of what the text does to us as we read it.

In subjective reader-response theory, the focus is not on the text; instead, readers’ responses are the text and meaning is created by readers’ interpretations. In this interaction, the real objects (e.g. tables, chairs, cars, books) are transformed into symbolic objects, because it occurs not in the physical world but in the conceptual world, that is, in the mind of the reader. “Therefore, when we interpret the meaning of the text we are actually in our own symbolization: we are interpreting the meaning of the conceptual experience we created in response to the text” (p. 164).

Psychological reader-response theory looks at the motives and what interpretation reveals about the readers themselves. Our responses to characters are based on our interpretations, which are products of our personal fears, defenses, needs, and desires we project onto the text.

Social reader-response theory is associated with the meaning a text is given by a group process, assumptions established, for example, in high schools, churches, and colleges by prevailing cultural attitudes and philosophies.

The four take away points from this summery are (1) this type of criticism attempts to describe the internal ways of the readers mental process as a creative act and process, (2) no text is self contained, independent of the readers interpretive design, (3) critics study how different readers see the same text differently, and how religious, cultural, and social values effect the reading of the text, and (4) instead of focusing only on the values embedded in the text, this type of criticism studies the values embedded in the reader.

1 Comments:

At 1:22 AM, Blogger binita thapa said...

how does it differ from social response crit6icism

 

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