READER RESPONSE

Reader Response is a name for critical approaches to reading & interpreting literature

Reader Response is also the name of a particular theory developed in response to the New Criticism

While New Criticism saw the reader's work as uncovering all the devices that conveyed the text's inherent meaning...

Reader response sees the reader's work as cooperatively creating meaning by interacting with the text

Reader response led to other theories like Marxism, feminism, post-colonialism, New Historicism

Instead of New Criticism's view that a text contains all the answers...

Reader response sees a text as having gaps that a reader interprets

THIS VIEW...

• is more affective than objective
• depends on the view of the reader to be complete

The interpretation is not within the text but in the reading of it

But that doesn't mean we
should read
any way
we want in an academic setting

We read as 'implied readers' rather than our 'real' selves

We know literature is created to have an effect...

so we read it looking to create & find meaning & effect

Combine New Criticism's close reading with reader response's active engagement