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Reader Response Criticism: a Rose for Emily

Categories: A Rose For Emily Literary Criticism

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Published: Dec 3, 2020

Words: 915 | Pages: 2 | 5 min read

Introduction, contents of “a rose from emily”, background of “a rose for emily”, my opinion on “a rose for emily”, works cited.

Faulkner, W. (1930). A Rose for Emily. The Forum, 84(1), 37-40.
Blotner, J. L. (1974). Faulkner: A biography. University of Mississippi Press.
Brooks, C. (1963). The formalist critics. In The critical tradition: Classic texts and contemporary trends (pp. 450-462). Bedford/St. Martin's.
Duyfhuizen, B. (2005). "A Rose for Emily" and the carceral logic of patriarchy. Journal of Narrative Theory, 35(2), 181-204. doi:10.1353/jnt.2005.0031
Faulkner, W. (1994). A Rose for Emily. In R. L. Sander & E. R. Peden (Eds.), The complete stories of William Faulkner (pp. 85-92). Vintage.
Gwin, M. (2015). Reading Faulkner's "A Rose for Emily": Critical overview. In A companion to William Faulkner (pp. 66-76). John Wiley & Sons.
Hsu, H.-H. (2014). An ecological analysis of "A Rose for Emily" by William Faulkner. English Language Teaching, 7(10), 55-64. doi:10.5539/elt.v7n10p55
Lewis, R. W. B. (1968). The novels of William Faulkner: A critical interpretation. University of Oklahoma Press.
Sullivan, R. (2005). Faulkner and the self-reflexive novel. University of Nebraska Press.
West, R. (1986). A stylistic analysis of "A Rose for Emily". Studies in Short Fiction, 23(2), 135-144. doi:10.1080/00393278609511267

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Education and Communications

How to Write a Reader Response

Last Updated: March 19, 2024 Fact Checked

This article was co-authored by Diane Stubbs . Diane Stubbs is a Secondary English Teacher with over 22 years of experience teaching all high school grade levels and AP courses. She specializes in secondary education, classroom management, and educational technology. Diane earned a Bachelor of Arts in English from the University of Delaware and a Master of Education from Wesley College. There are 9 references cited in this article, which can be found at the bottom of the page. This article has been fact-checked, ensuring the accuracy of any cited facts and confirming the authority of its sources. This article has been viewed 444,992 times.

A reader response assignment asks you to explain and defend your personal reaction to an assigned text. Reader response papers can be difficult because they force you, the reader, to take responsibility for giving meaning to the text. Often these assignments feel open-ended and vague, but don't worry, a good reader response paper will follow a standard essay format that you can easily master. This guide will walk you through the creation of a well-crafted reader response paper that's sure to wow your instructor and earn you an awesome grade.

Writing the Reader Response

It is often helpful to use the first body paragraph to include more information about the text, the plotline, major themes, etc., and then use the rest of the paragraphs to provide an analysis of how you felt about the text.

Step 3 Remember to explain how, why, and what.

Remember that a reader response is meant to be personal, so it's OK to incorporate personal anecdotes and opinions into your analysis.
Example: "Forcing Hester Prynne to wear the scarlet "A" reminded me of a time when I was cyber-bullied in eighth grade, and my "friends" spread rumors about me online where the whole school could see."

Step 4 Incorporate specific examples into your analysis.

Example: "At the end of The Old Man and the Sea, Manolin promises to once again fish with Santiago, so the old man no longer has to be alone. This was Santiago's greatest wish, but it was a different kind of success than he initially set out to achieve."

Example: "'My big fish must be somewhere,' said Santiago. This is exactly how I felt after I received my third rejection letter, but like Santiago, I kept trying, and eventually I was accepted."
Make sure and cite your examples per class directions. You will usually be required to note the page numbers of any quotations or specific examples in parentheses at the end of the sentence.

A great way to think of your conclusion is that it's one last chance to explain to your reader how you see all of your points fitting together.

Step 7 Proofread, proofread, proofread!!

Sometimes it's hard to see our own mistakes, so it can really help to exchange papers with a friend, and proofread each other's work.

Drafting the Reader Response

Step 1 Identify an angle you can take when talking about the text.

"Even though I found The Scarlett Letter hard to follow at times, Hester Prynne's story is still relatable, and made me think a lot about the effects of publicly shaming people online."
"Some people believe the Old Man and the Sea is a book about failure, but it is really a story of perseverance that teaches us that success may not always come in the form we expect, and even disasters can lead to positive outcomes."

Introduction: 1 paragraph.
Analysis/Body Paragraphs: 3-4 paragraphs. How you organize these paragraphs will depend on the parameters of the assignment.
Conclusion: 1 paragraph.

Step 3 Choose example passages to use in your analysis.

Reading the Text

Step 1 Go over the assignment directions before you begin.

Do you like or dislike the text?
Can you identify the author's purpose?
Do you agree or disagree with the author?
Does the text relate to you and your life? If so, how? If not, why not?
Does the text agree with, or go against your personal world view?
What, if anything, did you learn from the text?

Taking a bit of extra time during this phase will save you a lot of time in the writing process. [9] X Research source

I think that...
I feel that...
I see that...
I have learned that...

Sample Reader Response

Community Q&A

↑ https://penandthepad.com/rules-writing-reading-response-essay-3968.html
↑ https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-jefferson-english102/chapter/reader-response-criticism-american-literature-i/
↑ https://writingstudio.gsu.edu/files/2021/02/Reading-Response.pdf
↑ https://owl.purdue.edu/owl/general_writing/the_writing_process/proofreading/steps_for_revising.html
↑ https://faculty.washington.edu/momara/Reader%20Response.pdf
↑ https://www.grammarly.com/blog/essay-outline/
↑ http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper
↑ http://education-portal.com/articles/Step-by-Step_Guide_to_Writing_a_Great_Reading_Response_Paper.html
↑ https://www.hunter.cuny.edu/rwc/handouts/the-writing-process-1/invention/Writing-a-Response-or-Reaction-Paper

About This Article

To write a reader response, develop a clear thesis statement and choose example passages from the text that support your thesis. Next, write an introduction paragraph that specifies the name of the text, the author, the subject matter, and your thesis. Then, include 3-4 paragraphs that discuss and analyze the text. Finish up with a conclusion paragraph that summarizes your arguments and brings the reader back to your thesis or main point! For tips on analyzing the text before writing your assignment, read on! Did this summary help you? Yes No

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Reader-Response Criticism is

a research method , a type of textual research , that literary critics use to interpret texts
a genre of discourse employed by literary critics used to share the results of their interpretive efforts.

Key Terms: Dialectic ; Hermeneutics ; Semiotics ; Text & Intertextuality ; Tone

The origins of reader-oriented criticism can be located in the United States with Louise Rosenblatt’s development of theories in the 1930s, though she further developed her theories in the late seventies ( The Reader, the Text, the Poem 1978). American critic Stanley Fish has also significantly influenced Reader-Response theory. He conceived of “interpretive communities” that employ interpretive strategies to produce properties and meanings of literary texts (14-15). The thoughts, ideas, and experiences a reader brings to the text, combined with the text and experience of reading it, work together to create meaning. Reader + Text = Meaning.

Reader-response criticism, or reader-oriented criticism, focuses on the reading process. As Charles Bressler notes in Literary Criticism , the basic assumption of reader-oriented criticism is “Reader + Text = Meaning” (80). The thoughts, ideas, and experiences a reader brings to the text, combined with the text and experience of reading it, work together to create meaning. From this perspective, the text becomes a reflection of the reader. The association of the reader with a text differs from the premise of Formalist criticism, which argues for the autonomy of a text. Reader-response criticism does not suggest that anything goes, however, or that any interpretation is a sound one.

The origins of reader-oriented criticism can be located in the United States with Louise Rosenblatt’s development of theories in the 1930s ( Literature as Exploration ). Rosenblatt further developed her theories in the late seventies ( The Reader, the Text, the Poem ). American critic Stanley Fish has also significantly influenced reader-response theory. Fish conceived of “interpretive communities” that employ interpretive strategies to produce properties and meanings of literary texts (14-15).Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World , a novel that critiques the dangers of a fictional utopian society, incorporates an intriguing exploration of reader-response criticism into its plot. John and Mustapha Mond both read texts written by Shakespeare, but they report very different responses to Shakespeare’s plays. For John, a noble savage born on a reservation in New Mexico, plays by Shakespeare represent a useful way to learn about the finest aspects of humanity and human values. In contrast, Mustapha Mond views literary works written by Shakespeare as useless high art. Mustapha Mond’s position as the Resident Controller for Western Europe influences his perspective as a reader as much as John’s encounter with Shakespeare on a Reservation in New Mexico does. Recognizing how John’s and Mustapha Mond’s experiences differ in the novel helps readers understand why these characters respond to Shakespeare in dissimilar ways.

Foundational Questions of Reader-Response Criticism

Who is the reader? Who is the implied reader?
What experiences, thoughts, or knowledge does the text evoke?
What aspects or characters of the text do you identify or disidentify with, and how does this process of identification affect your response to the text?
What is the difference between your general reaction to (e.g., like or dislike) and reader-oriented interpretation of the text?

Online Example: Theodore Roethke’s “My Papa’s Waltz”: A Reader’s Response

Discussion Questions and Activities: Reader-Response Criticism

List and define two to three of the key terms you would consider to approach a text from a reader-response approach.
Explain why a text that has not been interpreted by a reader is an “incomplete text.”
Using the Folger Digital Texts from the Folger Shakespeare Library , interpret the soliloquy in act three, scene one, lines 64-98 of Hamlet from a reader-response approach. Consider the following questions as you construct your response: what previous experiences do you have with the drama or poetry of William Shakespeare, and how have those experiences shaped the way you currently approach his work? If you read this soliloquy in the past, has your view of it changed? Why?
Differentiate between your general opinion of Hamlet’s soliloquy (your like or dislike of it) and your interpretation of it.
In your view, what does Hamlet mean when he says, “To be or not to be—that is the question” (3.1.64)? Defend your interpretation.

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2. Reading Literature as a Critic

Reader-response criticism.

We have examined many schools of literary criticism. Here you will find an in-depth look at one of them: Reader-Response.

The Purpose of Reader-Response

why you like or dislike the text;
explain whether you agree or disagree with the author;
identify the text’s purpose; and
critique the text.

Write as a Scholar

Criticize with examples.

Is the text racist?
Does the text unreasonably puts down things, such as religion, or groups of people, such as women or adolescents, conservatives or democrats, etc?
Does the text include factual errors or outright lies? It is too dark and despairing? Is it falsely positive?
Is the text poorly written?
Does it contain too much verbal “fat”?
Is it too emotional or too childish?
Does it have too many facts and figures?
Are there typos or other errors in the text?
Do the ideas wander around without making a point?

In each of these cases, do not simply criticize, but give examples. As a beginning scholar, be cautious of criticizing any text as “confusing” or “crazy,” since readers might simply conclude that you are too ignorant or slow to understand and appreciate it.

The Structure of a Reader-Response Essay

title of the work to which you are responding;
the author; and
the main thesis of the text.
What does the text have to do with you, personally, and with your life (past, present or future)? It is not acceptable to write that the text has NOTHING to do with you, since just about everything humans can write has to do in some way with every other human.
How much does the text agree or clash with your view of the world, and what you consider right and wrong? Use several quotes as examples of how it agrees with and supports what you think about the world, about right and wrong, and about what you think it is to be human. Use quotes and examples to discuss how the text disagrees with what you think about the world and about right and wrong.
What did you learn, and how much were your views and opinions challenged or changed by this text, if at all? Did the text communicate with you? Why or why not? Give examples of how your views might have changed or been strengthened (or perhaps, of why the text failed to convince you, the way it is). Please do not write “I agree with everything the author wrote,” since everybody disagrees about something, even if it is a tiny point. Use quotes to illustrate your points of challenge, or where you were persuaded, or where it left you cold.
How well does the text address things that you, personally, care about and consider important to the world? How does it address things that are important to your family, your community, your ethnic group, to people of your economic or social class or background, or your faith tradition? If not, who does or did the text serve? Did it pass the “Who cares?” test? Use quotes from the text to illustrate.
What can you praise about the text? What problems did you have with it? Reading and writing “critically” does not mean the same thing as “criticizing,” in everyday language (complaining or griping, fault-finding, nit-picking). Your “critique” can and should be positive and praise the text if possible, as well as pointing out problems, disagreements and shortcomings.
How well did you enjoy the text (or not) as entertainment or as a work of art? Use quotes or examples to illustrate the quality of the text as art or entertainment. Of course, be aware that some texts are not meant to be entertainment or art: a news report or textbook, for instance, may be neither entertaining or artistic, but may still be important and successful.
your overall reaction to the text;
whether you would read something else like this in the future;
whether you would read something else by this author; and
if would you recommend read this text to someone else and why.

Key Takeaways

In reader-response, the reader is essential to the meaning of a text for they bring the text to life.
The purpose of a reading response is examining, explaining, and defending your personal reaction to a text.
When writing a reader-response, write as an educated adult addressing other adults or fellow scholars.
As a beginning scholar, be cautious of criticizing any text as “boring,” “crazy,” or “dull.” If you do criticize, base your criticism on the principles and form of the text itself.
The challenge of a reader-response is to show how you connected with the text.

Reader-Response Essay Example

To Misread or to Rebel: A Woman’s Reading of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”

At its simplest, reading is “an activity that is guided by the text; this must be processed by the reader who is then, in turn, affected by what he has processed” (Iser 63). The text is the compass and map, the reader is the explorer. However, the explorer cannot disregard those unexpected boulders in the path which he or she encounters along the journey that are not written on the map. Likewise, the woman reader does not come to the text without outside influences. She comes with her experiences as a woman—a professional woman, a divorcée, a single mother. Her reading, then, is influenced by her experiences. So when she reads a piece of literature like “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” by James Thurber, which paints a highly negative picture of Mitty’s wife, the woman reader is forced to either misread the story and accept Mrs. Mitty as a domineering, mothering wife, or rebel against that picture and become angry at the society which sees her that way.

Due to pre-existing sociosexual standards, women see characters, family structures, even societal structures from the bottom as an oppressed group rather than from a powerful position on the top, as men do. As Louise Rosenblatt states: a reader’s “tendency toward identification [with characters or events] will certainly be guided by our preoccupations at the time we read. Our problems and needs may lead us to focus on those characters and situations through which we may achieve the satisfactions, the balanced vision, or perhaps merely the unequivocal motives unattained in our own lives” (38). A woman reader who feels chained by her role as a housewife is more likely to identify with an individual who is oppressed or feels trapped than the reader’s executive husband is. Likewise, a woman who is unable to have children might respond to a story of a child’s death more emotionally than a woman who does not want children. However, if the perspective of a woman does not match that of the male author whose work she is reading, a woman reader who has been shaped by a male-dominated society is forced to misread the text, reacting to the “words on the page in one way rather than another because she operates according to the same set of rules that the author used to generate them” (Tompkins xvii). By accepting the author’s perspective and reading the text as he intended, the woman reader is forced to disregard her own, female perspective. This, in turn, leads to a concept called “asymmetrical contingency,” described by Iser as that which occurs “when Partner A gives up trying to implement his own behavioral plan and without resistance follows that of Partner B. He adapts himself to and is absorbed by the behavioral strategy of B” (164). Using this argument, it becomes clear that a woman reader (Partner A) when faced with a text written by a man (Partner B) will most likely succumb to the perspective of the writer and she is thus forced to misread the text. Or, she could rebel against the text and raise an angry, feminist voice in protest.

James Thurber, in the eyes of most literary critics, is one of the foremost American humorists of the 20th century, and his short story “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” is believed to have “ushered in a major [literary] period … where the individual can maintain his self … an appropriate way of assaulting rigid forms” (Elias 432). The rigid form in Thurber’s story is Mrs. Mitty, the main character’s wife. She is portrayed by Walter Mitty as a horrible, mothering nag. As a way of escaping her constant griping, he imagines fantastic daydreams which carry him away from Mrs. Mitty’s voice. Yet she repeatedly interrupts his reveries and Mitty responds to her as though she is “grossly unfamiliar, like a strange woman who had yelled at him in the crowd” (286). Not only is his wife annoying to him, but she is also distant and removed from what he cares about, like a stranger. When she does speak to him, it seems reflective of the way a mother would speak to a child. For example, Mrs. Mitty asks, “‘Why don’t you wear your gloves? Have you lost your gloves?’ Walter Mitty reached in a pocket and brought out the gloves. He put them on, but after she had turned and gone into the building and he had driven on to a red light, he took them off again” (286). Mrs. Mitty’s care for her husband’s health is seen as nagging to Walter Mitty, and the audience is amused that he responds like a child and does the opposite of what Mrs. Mitty asked of him. Finally, the clearest way in which Mrs. Mitty is portrayed as a burdensome wife is at the end of the piece when Walter, waiting for his wife to exit the store, imagines that he is facing “the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last” (289). Not only is Mrs. Mitty portrayed as a mothering, bothersome hen, but she is ultimately described as that which will be the death of Walter Mitty.

Mrs. Mitty is a direct literary descendant of the first woman to be stereotyped as a nagging wife, Dame Van Winkle, the creation of the American writer, Washington Irving. Likewise, Walter Mitty is a reflection of his dreaming predecessor, Rip Van Winkle, who falls into a deep sleep for a hundred years and awakes to the relief of finding out that his nagging wife has died. Judith Fetterley explains in her book, The Resisting Reader, how such a portrayal of women forces a woman who reads “Rip Van Winkle” and other such stories “to find herself excluded from the experience of the story” so that she “cannot read the story without being assaulted by the negative images of women it presents” (10). The result, it seems, is for a woman reader of a story like “Rip Van Winkle” or “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” to either be excluded from the text, or accept the negative images of women the story puts forth. As Fetterley points out, “The consequence for the female reader is a divided self. She is asked to identify with Rip and against herself, to scorn the amiable sex and act just like it, to laugh at Dame Van Winkle and accept that she represents ‘woman,’ to be at once both repressor and repressed, and ultimately to realize that she is neither” (11). Thus, a woman is forced to misread the text and accept “woman as villain.” as Fetterley names it, or rebel against both the story and its message.

So how does a woman reader respond to this portrayal of Mrs. Mitty? If she were to follow Iser’s claim, she would defer to the male point of view presented by the author. She would sympathize with Mitty, as Thurber wants us to do, and see domineering women in her own life that resemble Mrs. Mitty. She may see her mother and remember all the times that she nagged her about zipping up her coat against the bitter winter wind. Or the female reader might identify Mrs. Mitty with her controlling mother-in-law and chuckle at Mitty’s attempts to escape her control, just as her husband tries to escape the criticism and control of his own mother. Iser’s ideal female reader would undoubtedly look at her own position as mother and wife and would vow to never become such a domineering person. This reader would probably also agree with a critic who says that “Mitty has a wife who embodies the authority of a society in which the husband cannot function” (Lindner 440). She could see the faults in a relationship that is too controlled by a woman and recognize that a man needs to feel important and dominant in his relationship with his wife. It could be said that the female reader would agree completely with Thurber’s portrayal of the domineering wife. The female reader could simply misread the text.

Or, the female reader could rebel against the text. She could see Mrs. Mitty as a woman who is trying to do her best to keep her husband well and cared for. She could see Walter as a man with a fleeting grip on reality who daydreams that he is a fighter pilot, a brilliant surgeon, a gun expert, or a military hero, when he actually is a poor driver with a slow reaction time to a green traffic light. The female reader could read critics of Thurber who say that by allowing his wife to dominate him, Mitty becomes a “non-hero in a civilization in which women are winning the battle of the sexes” (Hasley 533) and become angry that a woman’s fight for equality is seen merely as a battle between the sexes. She could read Walter’s daydreams as his attempt to dominate his wife, since all of his fantasies center on him in traditional roles of power. This, for most women, would cause anger at Mitty (and indirectly Thurber) for creating and promoting a society which believes that women need to stay subservient to men. From a male point of view, it becomes a battle of the sexes. In a woman’s eyes, her reading is simply a struggle for equality within the text and in the world outside that the text reflects.

It is certain that women misread “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” I did. I found myself initially wishing that Mrs. Mitty would just let Walter daydream in peace. But after reading the story again and paying attention to the portrayal of Mrs. Mitty, I realized that it is imperative that women rebel against the texts that would oppress them. By misreading a text, the woman reader understands it in a way that is conventional and acceptable to the literary world. But in so doing, she is also distancing herself from the text, not fully embracing it or its meaning in her life. By rebelling against the text, the female reader not only has to understand the point of view of the author and the male audience, but she also has to formulate her own opinions and create a sort of dialogue between the text and herself. Rebelling against the text and the stereotypes encourages an active dialogue between the woman and the text which, in turn, guarantees an active and (most likely) angry reader response. I became a resisting reader.

Works Cited

Elias, Robert H. “James Thurber: The Primitive, the Innocent, and the Individual.” Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 5. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 431–32. Print.

Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader . Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978. Print.

Hasley, Louis. “James Thurber: Artist in Humor.” Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 11. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 532–34. Print.

Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981. Print.

Lindner, Carl M. “Thurber’s Walter Mitty—The Underground American Hero.” Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 5. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 440–41. Print.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. Literature as Exploration . New York: MLA, 1976. Print.

Thurber, James. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Literature: An Introduction to Critical Reading . Ed. William Vesterman. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1993. 286–89. Print.

Tompkins, Jane P. “An Introduction to Reader-Response Criticism.” Reader Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism . Ed. Jane P. Tompkins. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980. ix-xxvi. Print.

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Reader-Response Criticism

By NASRULLAH MAMBROL on October 17, 2020 • ( 0 )

Reader-response criticism can be traced as far back as Aristotle and Plato , both of whom based their critical arguments at least partly on literature’s effect on the reader. It has more immediate sources in the writings of the French structuralists (who stress the role of the perceiver as a maker of reality), the semioticians, and such American critics as Kenneth Burke (esp. his “Psychology and Form,” which defined “form” in terms of the audience’s appetite), Louise Rosenblatt, Walker Gibson (who developed the notion of a “mock reader”), and Wayne Booth . But reader criticism became recognized as a distinct critical movement only in the 1970s, when it found a particularly congenial political climate in the growing anti-authoritarianism within the academy.

Calling it a movement, however, is misleading, for reader-response criticism is less a unified critical school than a vague collection of disparate critics with a common point of departure. That is, reader-response critics share neither a body of critical principles (as Marxist critics, for instance, do), nor a subject matter (as Renaissance critics do). Indeed, they barely share a name. “Reader theory” and “audience theory” are perhaps the most neutral general terms, since the more popular term “reader-response theory” most accurately refers to more subjective kinds of reader criticism, and “ Reception Theory ” most accurately refers to the German school of Receptionkritik represented by Hans Robert Jauss . But these and other terms are often used indiscriminately, and the boundaries separating them are cloudy at best.

What affinity there is among reader-critics comes from their rejection of the New Critical principle (most clearly enunciated in W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley ‘s pivotal essay, “ The Affective Fallacy “) that severs the work itself from its effect and strongly privileges the former, treated in formal terms. Refusing to accept this banning of the reader, reader-critics take the existence of the reader as a decisive component of any meaningful literary analysis, assuming, as Michael Riffaterre puts it, that “readers make the literary event” (116). But once past that first step, there is little unanimity. Indeed, even the meaning of that first step has generated considerable debate, for different critics mean different things when they talk about “the reader.”

Stanley Fish (Christine Buckley/UConn Photo)

For some critics, readers are abstract or hypothetical entities, and even these are of various sorts. The category of hypothetical readers is often thought, for instance, to take in what Gerald Prince calls the “narratee,” the person to whom the narrator is addressing his or her narration (e.g., the “you” to whom Huckleberry Finn directs his opening sentence). For as Prince himself insists, the narratee, like the narrator, is really a character (even if sometimes only implicitly present in the text) and should therefore not be conflated with readers who are outside the text. Also included among hypothetical readers are readers who are implied by the text, that is, readers whose moves are charted out by (and hence more or less controlled by) the work in question. This is the kind of reader referred to, for instance, when one says, “The reader is surprised by the end of an Agatha Christie novel.” Wolfgang Iser describes the implied reader’s progress in phenomenological terms: although he pays particular attention to the indeterminacies in the texts—the gaps that the reader has to fill in on his or her own—his reader remains very much controlled by the author, since those gaps are part of the strategy of the text. On a more general level, some reader-critics examine the hypothetical reader who is implied, not by any specific text, but rather by the broader culture. In Structuralist Poetics , for instance, Jonathan Culler, influenced by French Structuralism and especially by Semiotics , develops the notion of “literary competence,” highlighting the ways in which the reader’s knowledge of conventions allows him or her to make sense of literary texts.

Narratees and implied readers need to be distinguished, however, from at least two other types of hypothetical reader. Since they are in principle the product of textual features, narratees and implied readers both differ from the intended reader (what Rabinowitz calls the “authorial audience”). The intended reader is presumed by rather than marked in the text and therefore can be discovered only by looking at the text in terms of the context in which it arose. In addition, there are postulated readers. Such readers’ characteristics do not emerge from a study of the text or its context; rather, the text’s meaning emerges from perceiving it through the eyes of a reader whose characteristics are assumed by the critic to begin with. Thus, in his early and influential “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics,” Stanley Fish follows the experiences of a “reader” word by word, insisting, in a self-conscious reversal of the Wimsatt-Beardsley position, that what “ happens to, and with the participation of, the reader” is in fact “the meaning” of a text ( Is There 25). But that is not the implied reader; it is, rather, an abstraction Fish calls the “informed reader.” He argues that real readers can become informed readers by developing linguistic, semantic, and literary competence, by making their minds “the repository of the (potential) responses a given text might call out” and by “suppressing, in so far as that is possible,… what is personal and idiosyncratic” (49). As is often the case with postulated readers, Fish’s informed reader is presented as an ideal, the best reader of the text. The distinctions among narratees, implied readers, intended readers, and postulated readers are significant, but they are subtle and not always recognized. As a consequence, they are sometimes blurred as critics (including Fish and Iser) fuse them or move from one to another without notice.

In contrast to those who write about hypothetical readers are those critics who focus on the activities of real readers. In Readings and Feelings , for instance, David Bleich, starting from the assumption that “the role of personality in response is the most fundamental fact of criticism” (4), talks about the specific students in his classes and uses the actual interpretations they have presented in papers they have written, in order to learn where they originate and how the classroom, as a community, can negotiate among them. Janice Radway moves further from the academic center by studying the ways nonacademic women interpret popular romances.

Reader-critics not only differ with respect to what entity they mean by “reader”; they also differ with regard to the perspective from which they treat it. To put it in different terms, most reader-critics admit, to some extent, the necessity of “contextualizing” the act of reading. Stanley Fish, in essays written after “Affective Stylistics,” has made some of the strongest arguments along these lines, claiming that meaning is entirely context-dependent and that there is consequently no such thing as literal meaning. Even audience critics who do not take this extreme position recognize the close relationship between meaning and interpretation on the one hand and context on the other. But readers are not simply in a single context; they are always in several. And there is no more agreement about what constitutes the most appropriate context to study than there is about what the term “reader” means.

For example, one can look at what might loosely be called the cultural context of the reader. Culler, in his discussions of literary conventions, examines the process of reading in the context of the shared cultural practices of the academic community. Fish takes a related but more radical position, rejecting the notion of a generalized literary competence and arguing instead for the study of literature in terms of disparate “interpretive communities” united by shared “article(s) of faith” (e.g., commitment to authorial intention) and “repertoirefs] of [interpretive] strategies.” According to Fish, these strategies do not decode some preexisting meaning, for the meaning of a literary work is not in the text at all. Rather, the very “properties” of the text are in fact “constituted” by whatever strategies the reader happens to bring to bear on the text: “These strategies exist prior to the act of reading and therefore determine the shape of what is read rather than, as is usually assumed, the other way around” ( Is There 171). More recently, Steven Mailloux has expanded on this notion by developing a “rhetorical hermeneutics” that examines, with particular attention to institutional politics, the ways in which interpretations become accepted by given groups.

Reader Response Criticism: An Essay

Alternatively, one can look at the psychological context of the reader. In Dynamics of Literary Response Norman Holland deals primarily with hypothetical readers; in Five Readers Reading he turns his attention to actual students. In both cases, he tries to make sense of interpretive activity by passing it through the lens of Freudian psychoanalysis. Still other critics look at the historical context of the reader. This is one of the distinguishing characteristics of Receptionkritik , most familiar through the writings of Hans Robert Jauss, who argues that the reader makes sense of literature in part through a “horizon of expectations.” Since that horizon varies with history, the literary work offers different “views” at different times (Jauss 21-22). Jane Tompkins, following Fish, pushes the idea further, claiming in her study of American literature ( Sensational Designs ) that the reader’s historical situation does not simply affect our view of the work but actually produces whatever it is that we call the text in the first place: “The circumstances in which a text is read … are what make the text available .. . [and] define the work ‘as it really is’—under those circumstances” (7).

Betty Tompkins is a feminist as well as a historian, and her work reminds us that yet another perspective is offered when the act of reading is studied in the context of gender. Like other forms of reader criticism, feminist reader criticism has moved in several different directions. In The Resisting Reader , for example, Judith Fetterley talks about the effects that reading particular texts can have on women. Radway, more willing to credit the reader’s power to “make” the meaning of the text, asks instead how women (especially women of a particular socioeconomic class) read differently from men (especially male academic critics).

Betty Tompkins, Apologia /Artsy.net

There is disagreement among reader-critics not only about the subject of inquiry but also about the whole purpose of critical activity. It is here that debates can become especially acrimonious. In particular, there is disagreement about the proper relation between the critic and interpretation, and consequently about the descriptive/prescriptive nature of the critical enterprise. Granted, most audience critics agree that to some extent, readers produce literary meaning; but since there are such widespread disagreements about who that “reader” is and what that production consists of, this apparent agreement yields no unity whatever on the issue of the reader’s ultimate freedom to interpret as he or she wishes.

At one extreme, there are critics who start with the text and use the concept of the reader as an analytic tool to perfect traditional interpretive practices. As Mary Louise Pratt has argued, the study of many types of hypothetical readers is consistent with formalism. In traditional formalist interpretive practice, certain textual details are foregrounded, and an interpretation explaining those details is posited as “the” interpretation of the text. To the extent that the implied reader is simply a mirror of those textual features, an implied-reader analysis is often a formalist analysis in different language. Thus, for instance, Wolfgang Iser ‘s interpretations, despite their heavy reliance on descriptions of “the reader’s” activities, could in many cases be translated into formalist terms.

Problems become more acute when we come to analyses based on postulated readers whose activities serve as models for correct behavior. In practice, such readers often turn out to be the critic himself or herself, and the readerly terminology serves primarily as a rhetorical device to persuade us of the general validity of individual interpretations. Riffaterre’s semiotic analyses in Semiotics of Poetry rely heavily on notions of what activities the text requires the reader to perform; readers are forced or compelled by the text, and individuals who, for one reason or another, wander in the wrong direction simply cannot find “the true reading” (142). For all the brilliance of his analyses, Riffaterre (as Culler has argued in Pursuit of Signs ) tells us less about what readers do or have done than about the way he himself reads; in fact, he often explicitly notes that no previous readers have followed what he sees as the dictates of the text. In the end, his use of reader terminology gives his prescriptions of how we ought to read the appearance of objective descriptions of what readers actually do.

Other critics, in contrast, use the concept of the reader not to engage in the act of interpretation but rather to explain how interpretations come about. Culler, for instance, like Riffaterre, describes much of his work as semiotic. But his actual practice is quite different. Arguing that “the interpretation of individual works is only tangentially related to the understanding of literature,” Culler strives to construct a criticism “which seeks to identify the conventions and operations by which any signifying practice (such as literature) produces its observable effects of meaning” ( Pursuits , 48). In contrast to Riffaterre, he builds his arguments not on the text but on interpretations already produced; and he aims not to persuade his own readers of the rightness or wrongness of those interpretations but rather to describe the practices that allowed them to come into being.

Culler’s work in this line is not, strictly speaking, concerned with evaluating interpretations. Indeed, he explicitly claims that the semiotic “project is disrupted whenever one slips back into the position of judge” ( Pursuit 67). Nonetheless, there is a sense in which his work tends to justify those interpretations he discusses. This is especially true because, as Pratt suggests, his arguments are frequently based on his notion of literary competence, and that notion is not really interrogated in terms of who determines competence or under what cultural and political circumstances. Since he tends to start with interpretations produced by professionally trained critics (rather than, as Bleich does, with students’ readings), academic practices are implicitly valorized.

Other reader-critics, therefore, use the notion of reader in yet a different way, neither to persuade nor to explain but to question interpretations. In The Resisting Reader, for instance, Fetterley, without giving up the notion that there are more or less correct intended interpretations of the classical American texts she reads, argues that those interpretations are harmful because they “immasculate” women (i.e., train them to identify with male needs and desires). She therefore calls upon readers to recognize them and resist them. Radway questions interpretations in an even more fundamental way. She criticizes those who use traditional academic interpretive practices to determine the cultural meaning of mass-market romances. Starting with a position fairly close to Fish’s, she insists that the cultural importance of those romances depends on the meaning they have for the actual women who consume them. She goes on to demonstrate, through ethnographic study, that since those women use different interpretive strategies than academic critics do, the texts for them have substantially different meanings.

Given the wide variety of interests and concerns exhibited by various reader-critics, it should not be surprising that audience criticism, as a whole, has not taken any definitive stands, except a negative attitude toward New Criticism , an attitude shared by virtually all other critical schools that have developed since the 1960s. Nonetheless, the very raising of certain questions (even unanswered questions) has had profound consequences for the commonplaces of the literary-critical profession and has, in conjunction with such movements as Deconstruction and Feminism , encouraged general shifts in the direction of literary studies. In the first place, talk of the reader opens up talk of psychology, sociology, and history, and reader criticism has helped break down the boundaries separating literary study from other disciplines. In addition, by highlighting the reader’s interpretive practice, even such prescriptive critics as Riffaterre have clarified the degree to which meaning is dependent upon the reader’s performance. Even if one does not agree with such critics as Robert Crosman (who claims that “‘validity’ is a matter of individual conscience” [381]) or Bleich (who argues that “reading is a wholly subjective process” [ Readings 3]), reader criticism has made it increasingly difficult to support the notion of definitive meaning in its most straightforward form. One can hardly claim that no critics, not even audience critics, continue to support the notion of “right” and “wrong” readings, but it is safe to say that the position is being increasingly discarded, and even critics who do argue for it have become ever more wary of how precarious interpretation is as a procedure and how little we can depend on the texts themselves to provide proper interpretive guidance.

What is most important, perhaps, as definitive meaning is undermined, so is the notion of definitive evaluation, since value is even more contextually determined than meaning. Statements of value are increasingly being put under pressure by the question, Value for whom? and value is increasingly being viewed not as a quality inherent in texts but rather as a function of particular social, historical, and cultural circumstances. By helping to throw into question the belief that texts have determinable, unvarying literary quality, reader-critics have helped fuel the attacks on the canon that have been launched from a number of other quarters, most notably, in the 1970s and 1980s, from feminist critics.

Further Reading David Bleich, Readings and Feelings: An Introduction to Subjective Criticism (1975), Subjective Criticism (1978); Robert Crosman, “Some Doubts about ‘The Reader of Paradise Lost/ ” College English 37 (1975); Jonathan Culler, The Pursuit of Signs: Semiotics, Literature, Deconstruction (1981), Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature (1975); Umberto Eco, The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (1979); Judith Fetterley, The Resisting Reader: A Feminist Approach to American Fiction (1978); Stanley Fish, Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies (1989), Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities (1980); Elizabeth Freund, The Return of the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism (1987); Norman N. Holland, Five Readers Reading (1975); Wolfgang Iser, Der Akt des Lesens: Theorie ästhetischer Wirkung (1976, The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response, trans. Iser, 1978), Der implizite Leser: Kommunikationsformen des Romans von Bunyan bis Beckett (1972, The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett, trans. Iser, 1974); Hans Robert Jauss, Toward an Aesthetic of Reception (trans. Timothy Bahti, 1982); Steven Mailloux, Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction (1982), Rhetorical Power (1989); James Phelan, Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression, and the Interpretation of Narrative (1989); Mary Louise Pratt, “Interpretive Strategies I Strategic Interpretations: On Anglo-American Reader Response Criticism,” Boundary 2 11 (1981-82); Gerald Prince, “Introduction to the Study of the Narratee” (Tompkins, Reader-Response Criticism); Peter J. Rabinowitz, Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation (1987); Janice Radway, Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature (1984); Michael Riffaterre, Semiotics of Poetry (1978); Louise Rosenblatt, The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work (1978); Michael Steig, Stories of Reading: Subjectivity and Literary Understanding (1989); Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crosman, eds., The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation (1980); Jane P. Tompkins, Sensational Designs: The Cultural Work of American Fiction, 1790-1860 (1985); Jane P. Tompkins, ed., Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism (1980). Source: Groden, Michael, and Martin Kreiswirth. The Johns Hopkins Guide to Literary Theory and Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994.

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Reader Response Theory by Susan Browne , Xiufang Chen , Faten Baroudi , Esra Sevinc LAST REVIEWED: 21 April 2021 LAST MODIFIED: 21 April 2021 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0107

This annotated bibliography presents influential work in the area of reader response theory. While providing an overview of major research in the area of reader response, the annotated bibliography also provides current research representing various categories of reader response. The citations are organized by their dominant characteristics although there may be some overlap across categories.

Reader response theory identifies the significant role of the reader in constructing textual meaning. In acknowledging the reader’s essential role, reader response diverges from early text-based views found in New Criticism, or brain-based psychological perspectives related to reading. Literacy scholars such as David Bleich, Norman Holland, Stanley Fish, and Wolfgang Iser are instrumental in crafting what has come to be known as reader response. The theory maintains that textual meaning occurs within the reader in response to text and recognizes that each reader is situated in a particular manner that includes factors such as ability, culture, gender, and overall experiences. However, according to Tomkins’s 1980 edited volume Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-structuralism , reader response is not a representation of a uniform position, but is rather a term associated with theorists whose work addresses the reader, the reading process, and textual response. Although Tompkins omits the work of Louise Rosenblatt, it is Rosenblatt’s work that has come to have a vast influence in the field of reader response. Prior to the work of the New Critics, Louise Rosenblatt wrote the now-seminal text Literature as Exploration , first published in 1938, which was distinct in emphasizing both the reader and the text. In later editions of the text, Rosenblatt draws on the work of John Dewey and shifts from the use of the word “interaction” to describe reading as a “transaction,” thus giving life to the transactional theory of reading. The references in this section, including Applebee 1992 , Beach 1993 , Barton 2002 , and Harkin 2005 , provide an overview of reader response theory.

Applebee, A. “The Background for Reform.” In Literature Instruction: A Focus on Student Response . Edited by J. Langer, 1–18. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1992.

This book chapter reviews a series of studies of the elementary and secondary school curriculum, providing a rich portrait of literature instruction and suggesting a series of issues that needed to be addressed in the teaching of literature. It set the background for reform.

Barton, J. “Thinking about Reader-Response Criticism.” The Expository Times 113.5 (2002): 147–151.

DOI: 10.1177/001452460211300502

An article that outlines reader response criticism through the lens of biblical scholarly inquiry.

Beach, R. A Teacher’s Introduction to Reader-Response Theories . Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English, 1993.

This book offers an in-depth review of reader response theory for teachers to build foundational knowledge to aptly use in their classrooms. Topics discussed include textual theories of response, experiential theories of response, psychological theories of response, social theories of response, cultural theories of response, and applying theory into practice, eliciting response. Key reviews of reader response criticism and glossary terms are also explored throughout the text.

Harkin, P. “The Reception of Reader-Response Theory.” College Composition and Communication 56.3 (2005): 410–425.

This essay provides a historical explanation for the place of reader response theory in English studies. The author takes a genealogical look at how reader response theory has been celebrated or rejected in English departments and what this suggests about conflicted relations between composition studies and literary studies and between research and pedagogy during the past two or three decades in the United States.

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How to Write a Reaction Paper or Reader Response. (A Quick Introduction to Reading and Writing Critically) Analyze the text as an individual reader. This process is as much about YOU as it is about the text you are responding to. As a scholar you stand in judgment over the text. Critical reading: [from the ENGL 0310 Syllabus] "A reader response asks the reader [you] to examine, explain and defend her/his personal reaction to a reading. You will be asked to explore why you like or dislike the reading, explain whether you agree or disagree with the author, identify the reading's purpose, and critique the text. There is no right or wrong answer to a reader response. Nonetheless, it is important that you demonstrate an understanding of the reading and clearly explain and support your reactions. " DO NOT use the standard high school-level approach of just writing: "I liked this book (or article or document or movie) because it is so cool and the ending made me feel happy," or "I hated it because it was stupid, and had nothing at all to do with my life, and was too negative and boring." In writing a response you may assume the reader has already read the text. Thus, do NOT summarize the contents of the text at length . Instead, take a systematic, analytical approach to the text. ---First of all, be sure to mention the title of the work to which you are responding, the author , and the main thesis of the text, using correct English for the first sentence of your paper! Then, try to answer ALL of the questions below. a. What does the text have to do with you, personally , and with your life (past, present or future)? It is not acceptable to write that the text has NOTHING to do with you, since just about everything humans can write has to do in some way with every other human. b. How much does the text agree or clash with your view of the world, and what you consider right and wrong? Use several quotes as examples of how it agrees with and supports what you think about the world, about right and wrong, and about what you think it is to be human. Use quotes and examples to discuss how the text disagrees with what you think about the world and about right and wrong. c How did you learn, and how much were your views and opinions challenged or changed by this text, if at all? Did the text communicate with you? Why or why not? Give examples of how your views might have changed or been strengthened (or perhaps, of why the text failed to convince you, the way it is). Please do not write "I agree with everything the author wrote," since everybody disagrees about something, even if it is a tiny point. Use quotes to illustrate your points of challenge, or where you were persuaded, or where it left you cold. d. How well does it address things that you, personally, care about and consider important to the world? How does it address things that are important to your family, your community, your ethnic group, to people of your economic or social class or background, or your faith tradition? If not, who does or did the text serve? Did it pass the "Who cares?" test? Use quotes to illustrate. e. Critique the text. Reading and writing "critically" does not mean the same thing as "criticizing," in everyday language (complaining or griping, fault-finding, nit-picking). Your "critique" can and should be positive and praise the text if possible, as well as pointing out problems, disagreements and shortcomings. f. How well did you enjoy the text (or not) as entertainment or as a work of art? Use quotes or examples to illustrate the quality of the text as art or entertainment. Of course, be aware that some texts are not meant to be entertainment or art--a news report or textbook, for instance, may be neither entertaining or artistic, but may still be important and successful. g. To sum up, what is your overall reaction to the text? Would you read something else like this, or by this author, in the future or not? Why or why not? To whom would you recommend this text? An important tip from the UTEP History Tutoring Center: Your first draft is just that, and you should expect to re-write your work several times before you consider it completed. This means you should start your writing project in advance of the due date, in order to allow yourself enough time to revise your work. Ask someone else to read your draft(s) and write their comments and suggestions on how you might improve the work directly on your drafts.

Tips from UTEP History Prof. I.V. Montelongo: The goal is to present a coherent essay with a clear argument. ...[Y]ou should state your general argument (your thesis) in an introductory paragraph and then use the rest of the essay to support your position, making sure that you deal carefully with each of the issues the questions raise somewhere in the paper. 1.) You don�t need to use footnotes. When quoting or citing from the documents or your textbook, simply put author and page numbers in parenthesis. Ex. (Gorn, 52) or (Jones, 167). There is absolutely no need to refer to other, outside sources for this assignment�this is a critical essay, not a research paper... 2.) Be very careful to avoid plagiarism. Do not use words or ideas from the internet, from any publication, or from the work of another student without citing the source. Also, if you use more than three words in a row from any source, including the document you�re writing about, those words must be enclosed in quotation marks. 3.) Please just staple your papers in the upper left hand corner. You may use a title page if you like, but please avoid plastic covers. [ However, in English 0310 use no title page, and do not staple! O.W .] 4.) Your essay should be based primarily on evidence drawn from a close, careful reading of the documents. You can also use appropriate background information from the textbook and lectures, but you should use most of your space to discuss the documents. 5.) Writing style counts. You need to revise your paper multiple times to be a successful writer. <http://faculty.utep.edu/Portals/452/Paper%20Assignment%201.doc>

OW 7/06 rev 10/11

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16 Reader Response Lecture Notes and Presentation

Slide One: Reader Response Criticism

Welcome. I’m Dr. Liza Long, and in this presentation, we’re going to learn about reader response theory. I’m expecting that you are already at least a little familiar with reader response, whether you’ve heard it called that or not. This is a type of literary analysis that you have likely engaged in throughout high school and perhaps even in your other English courses.

But now we’ll formalize our study of reader response as a critical theory, learning more about methods and history of this critical approach to texts. You’ll notice that unsurprisingly, the reader is at the center of the analysis when we do reader response. We’re actually going to look at two types of reader response and two type of readers: a subjective reader response (that’s all about you and your interactions with the text), and a receptive reader response, where we consider the implied reader, a hypothetical reader who doesn’t actually exist but for whom the text seems to have been written.

Why focus on the reader? I love this quote from reader response theorist Louise Rosenblatt. She said, “I find it helpful to visualize a little scene: on a darkened stage I see the figures of the author and the reader, with the book—the text of the poem or play or novel—between them. The spotlight focusses on one of them so brightly that the others fade into practical invisibility. Throughout the centuries, it has become apparent, usually either the book or the author has received major illumination. The reader has tended to remain in shadow, taken for granted, to all intents and purposes invisible. Like Ralph Ellison’s hero, the reader might say, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” Here or there a theoretician may start to take him seriously, and the spotlight may seem from time to time to hover over him, but actually he has never for long held the center of attention.”

When doing subjective reader response, some questions you could ask might be, how am I responding to this idea or language? What does this make me think? What am I expecting next? As we read our assigned novel for this class, you’re probably already doing this in your reading responses. In those assignments, I’m explicitly asking you to respond to the text in this subjective, personal way.

Receptive reader response is more common in literary scholarship. With this approach, we’re asking ourselves to consider how a typical or implied reader might respond to the text. Again, this reader is a hypothetical construct, just as, if you think about it, the implied author is also a hypothetical construct. Remember that we learned how the New Critics abandoned author intent because, among other reasons, it’s not actually possible to know what the author intended, even if the author is around to tell us. This is an especially interesting point in light of a concept called paratext, or text that is written about a text. We will learn more about this, with J.K. Rowling and YA author John Green as examples, when we watch Lindsey Ellis’s video “Death of the Author.”

It’s probably already abundantly clear how this type of criticism is different from New Criticism. In fact, it’s in many respects a strong reaction to the sterile and clinical approach that New Critics took to literature, placing the text at the center of the target. Now, with reader response criticism, instead, we’re going to look at how the text affects the reader: either you in subjective criticism, or the implied reader in receptive criticism. As part of our receptive approach, we will also consider how readers from different demographic groups might respond to texts in different ways.

Slide Two: Subjective Reader Response

Just as we took the tool of close reading from New Criticism, we will take subjective reader responses to texts from reader response theory. Going forward, for every text we read, you should engage in a brief reader response exercise. Here are some guidelines for how to do this:

Read the text: Begin by reading the text closely, paying attention to the language, structure, and themes. This should feel familiar from your experiences with New Criticism.
Reflect on your own experiences: Think about how your own experiences and emotions relate to the themes and characters in the text. Consider how the text makes you feel and what thoughts or memories it evokes.
Respond to the text: Write down your thoughts and reactions to the text, either in a journal or as annotations in the margins of the text itself. Consider how your interpretation differs from or aligns with traditional interpretations of the text.
Consider how your response might differ from others’ responses. Share your responses with others and engage in discussion and debate about the different interpretations and perspectives that the text can generate.
Reflect on the process : Reflect on how your personal experiences and emotions influenced your interpretation of the text and consider how this approach differs from other approaches to literary analysis.

Let’s take a look at the poem “What an Indian Thought He Saw When He Saw a Comet” by Tso-le-oh-who, a Cherokee author whose poem was published in the Cherokee Advocate in 1853. We don’t know much else about the poem’s author, but we can conclude that he had literary talent if we look at the complexities throughout the poem. Don’t get too hung up on the poem’s creative spelling. English spelling was not standardized at this point in time. When we’re doing subjective reader response, it’s inevitable that we will all have different reactions to the poem. As I read the poem, think about your responses.

(Reads “What an Indian Thought He Saw When He Saw a Comet”)

For me, the first thing I think of is a book I read last summer called B ury My Heart at Wounded Knee by Dee Brown. This book sought to tell American history from the Native Indigenous perspective, and it really opened my eyes to some of the injustices that Americans perpetrated on Native Americans, including the Trail of Tears, where Cherokee nation members from 1830 to 1850 were forced from their homelands, with many dying along the way. That this poem was written shortly after the worst of that forced relocation was a detail I personally noticed because I had recently read about this historical period. The reference to the explorer John C. Fremont, who came West and found gold, felt especially harsh in light of this historical event. I read the description of the comet as a “sky rocket of eternity” as potentially exacting judgment and retribution on behalf of the Native Americans.

But another thought that comes to me is the clear sense of awe and wonder at a heavenly sight this poem captures so brilliantly. In this, I can connect empathetically with the author and the text. I thought of my own experiences in 2017 when I witnessed the total eclipse of the sun from Ontario, Oregon. It was one of the most magical and mysterious moments of my life. These lines really brought this to mind for me: “Thou that art cloth’d in mistery/ More startling and more glorious than thine own/Encircling fires—profound as the oceans/Of shoreless space.”

And the idea of riding the comet, though impossible, felt exhilarating to me. In crafting a subjective reader response thesis statement, I decide to focus on that second response: “Reading “What an Indian Thought When He Saw a Comet” by Tso-le-oh-woh, I feel connected to our nation’s past through a common experience of celestial wonder as I recall how the 2017 total solar eclipse influenced me. This common experience of wonder can serve to unite us in our humanity.”.

This is what I’m going to be looking for when you write your theoretical response. You’re going to do a subjective reading of the text you choose, then use the questions below the text to create a thesis statement. Then you will support that thesis statement with evidence from the text.

You can engage in a sort of counterargument with this type of criticism as well by considering how other people might interpret the evidence that you use and then explain as you would with a counter argument, why your way is a more correct or a more appropriate reading. As my annotations to the AI draft essays show you, I want to see very specific, concrete examples from the text itself. Focus on the language and how it works to make the reader feel something. What does the reader expect? What does the reader anticipate? Use the checklist and the questions to guide your response.

Slide Three: Terms to Use in Reader Response

Here are some terms to use in reader response. I’ve also bolded some terms that work well in this type of criticism in my annotation to the AI models.

Affect/effect in both senses of these words can be useful to consider. How does the text affect you or the implied reader? Expectation and anticipation are also important concepts for this type of criticism. How does the text meet or not meet your expectations? What do you anticipate will happen and why?

Here’s a simple checklist to follow, starting with your subjective reading of the text you choose to use for your theoretical response. I recommend that you read all three texts, then choose the one that resonates most with you personally.

Practice active reading. Make notes, ask questions, respond to the text, and record your responses.
Focus on the details (much as you do with a close reading) and ask how your response to the text might change if those details changed.
Decide whether you will write a subjective or a receptive response to the text.

You might write in the third person if you’re doing receptive reader response, but subjective should always use the first-person pronoun “I.” I think this will probably be relatively easy, especially compared with New Criticism, but remember that you should still consider formal elements. Also, with this type of criticism, if you have actual information about the actual intended reader, this is worth noting in your response. You may choose either subjective or receptive when you are completing this assignment this week, so have fun with it. As always, if you have questions, feel free to reach out to me. I’m really looking forward to seeing how you interact with the text and how you apply reader response criticism.

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Reader-Response Criticism

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Anne Eidenmuller
Columbia Basin College

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We have examined many schools of literary criticism. Here you will find an in-depth look at one of them: Reader-Response.

The Purpose of Reader-Response

Reader-response suggests that the role of the reader is essential to the meaning of a text, for only in the reading experience does the literary work come alive. For example, in Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), the monster doesn’t exist, so to speak, until the reader reads Frankenstein and reanimates it to life, becoming a co-creator of the text. Thus, the purpose of a reading response is examining, explaining, and defending your personal reaction to a text. Your critical reading of a text asks you to explore:

why you like or dislike the text;
explain whether you agree or disagree with the author;
identify the text’s purpose; and
critique the text.

There is no right or wrong answer to a reading response. Nonetheless, it is important that you demonstrate an understanding of the reading and clearly explain and support your reactions. Do not use the standard approach of just writing: “I liked this text because it is so cool and the ending made me feel happy,” or “I hated it because it was stupid, and had nothing at all to do with my life, and was too negative and boring.” In writing a response you may assume the reader has already read the text. Thus, do not summarize the contents of the text at length. Instead, take a systematic, analytical approach to the text.

Write as a Scholar

When writing a reader-response write as an educated adult addressing other adults or fellow scholars. As a beginning scholar, if you write that something has nothing to do with you or does not pass your “Who cares?” test, but many other people think that it is important and great, readers will probably not agree with you that the text is dull or boring. Instead, they may conclude that you are dull and boring, that you are too immature or uneducated to understand what important things the author wrote.

Criticize with Examples

If you did not like a text, that is fine, but criticize it either from:

Is the text racist?
Does the text unreasonably puts down things, such as religion, or groups of people, such as women or adolescents, conservatives or democrats, etc?
Does the text include factual errors or outright lies? It is too dark and despairing? Is it falsely positive?
Is the text poorly written?
Does it contain too much verbal “fat”?
Is it too emotional or too childish?
Does it have too many facts and figures?
Are there typos or other errors in the text?
Do the ideas wander around without making a point?

The Structure of a Reader-Response Essay

Choosing a text to study is the first step in writing a reader-response essay. Once you have chosen the text, your challenge is to connect with it and have a “conversation” with the text. In the beginning paragraph of your reader-response essay, be sure to mention the following:

title of the work to which you are responding;
the author; and
the main thesis of the text.

Then, do your best to answer the questions below. Remember, however, that you are writing an essay, not filling out a short-answer worksheet. You do not need to work through these questions in order, one by one, in your essay. Rather, your paper as a whole should be sure to address these questions in some way.

What does the text have to do with you, personally, and with your life (past, present or future)? It is not acceptable to write that the text has NOTHING to do with you, since just about everything humans can write has to do in some way with every other human.
How much does the text agree or clash with your view of the world, and what you consider right and wrong? Use several quotes as examples of how it agrees with and supports what you think about the world, about right and wrong, and about what you think it is to be human. Use quotes and examples to discuss how the text disagrees with what you think about the world and about right and wrong.
What did you learn, and how much were your views and opinions challenged or changed by this text, if at all? Did the text communicate with you? Why or why not? Give examples of how your views might have changed or been strengthened (or perhaps, of why the text failed to convince you, the way it is). Please do not write “I agree with everything the author wrote,” since everybody disagrees about something, even if it is a tiny point. Use quotes to illustrate your points of challenge, or where you were persuaded, or where it left you cold.
How well does the text address things that you, personally, care about and consider important to the world? How does it address things that are important to your family, your community, your ethnic group, to people of your economic or social class or background, or your faith tradition? If not, who does or did the text serve? Did it pass the “Who cares?” test? Use quotes from the text to illustrate.
What can you praise about the text? What problems did you have with it? Reading and writing “critically” does not mean the same thing as “criticizing,” in everyday language (complaining or griping, fault-finding, nit-picking). Your “critique” can and should be positive and praise the text if possible, as well as pointing out problems, disagreements and shortcomings.
How well did you enjoy the text (or not) as entertainment or as a work of art? Use quotes or examples to illustrate the quality of the text as art or entertainment. Of course, be aware that some texts are not meant to be entertainment or art: a news report or textbook, for instance, may be neither entertaining or artistic, but may still be important and successful.

For the conclusion, you might want to discuss:

your overall reaction to the text;
whether you would read something else like this in the future;
whether you would read something else by this author; and
if would you recommend read this text to someone else and why.

Key Takeaways

In reader-response, the reader is essential to the meaning of a text for they bring the text to life.
The purpose of a reading response is examining, explaining, and defending your personal reaction to a text.
When writing a reader-response, write as an educated adult addressing other adults or fellow scholars.
As a beginning scholar, be cautious of criticizing any text as “boring,” “crazy,” or “dull.” If you do criticize, base your criticism on the principles and form of the text itself.
The challenge of a reader-response is to show how you connected with the text.

Reader-Response Essay Example

To Misread or to Rebel: A Woman’s Reading of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”

Works Cited

Elias, Robert H. “James Thurber: The Primitive, the Innocent, and the Individual.” Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 5. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 431–32. Print.

Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader . Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978. Print.

Hasley, Louis. “James Thurber: Artist in Humor.” Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 11. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 532–34. Print.

Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981. Print.

Lindner, Carl M. “Thurber’s Walter Mitty—The Underground American Hero.” Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 5. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 440–41. Print.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. Literature as Exploration . New York: MLA, 1976. Print.

Thurber, James. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Literature: An Introduction to Critical Reading . Ed. William Vesterman. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1993. 286–89. Print.

Putting It Together: Defining Characteristics of Romantic Literature. Provided by : Anne Eidenmuller & Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
Reader-Response . Authored by : Daryl Smith O'Hare and Susan C. Hines. Provided by : Chadron State College. Located at : http://www.csc.edu/ . Project : Kaleidoscope Open Course Initiative. License : CC BY: Attribution
Reader-Response. Authored by : Anonymous. Provided by : Anonymous. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
How to Write a Reaction Paper or Reader Response. Authored by : Owen M. Williamson. Provided by : The University of Texas at El Paso. Located at : http://www.utep.edu/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved
To Misread or to Rebel: A Woman's Reading of The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Authored by : Amy Ferdinandt. License : CC BY-NC-SA: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

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Harvard Says It Will No Longer Take Positions on Matters Outside of the University

The policy could ease pressure on the school to issue statements on current events. Officials were criticized for their handling of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks.

The gates to Harvard Yard, with people walking in and out of them.

By Vimal Patel and Anemona Hartocollis

Harvard said on Tuesday that it would now avoid taking positions on matters that are not “relevant to the core function of the university,” accepting the recommendations of a faculty committee that urged the university to dramatically reduce its messages on issues of the day.

If put into practice, Harvard would no longer issue official statements of empathy, which it did for Ukraine, after the Russian invasion, and for the victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel, for example.

“In issuing official statements of empathy, the university runs the risk of appearing to care more about some places and events than others,” the report said. “And because few, if any, world events can be entirely isolated from conflicting viewpoints, issuing official empathy statements runs the risk of alienating some members of the community by expressing implicit solidarity with others.”

The university’s Institutional Voice Working Group, made up of eight faculty members, issued the report, with a set of principles and a recommended path forward, which the administration and governing board accepted.

“Harvard isn’t a government,” Noah Feldman, a Harvard law professor and a co-chair of the committee that developed the recommendations, said in an interview with The Harvard Gazette , released Tuesday as part of the university’s announcement. “It shouldn’t have a foreign policy or a domestic policy.”

The report, however, did not fully embrace “institutional neutrality” — a principle promoted by the University of Chicago, in which universities commit to staying out of political and social matters. Some universities, including Stanford University and Northwestern, announced shortly after the Hamas attack that they would adopt the policy.

Mr. Feldman said though the recommendations had some overlap with institutional neutrality, there were also differences.

A key difference, Mr. Feldman said to The Gazette, is that “as an institution with values, we have a responsibility to promote our core function as an educational institution and defend ourselves against forces that seek to undermine our academic values. In that sense, we aren’t neutral, and we can’t be.”

In an interview, Mr. Feldman provided examples about when Harvard should weigh in on political matters. He mentioned a proposal by former President Donald J. Trump to collect “billions and billions of dollars” by taxing large private university endowments. Advocating against such a plan, he said, “would fall squarely within the function of the university.”

Mr. Feldman also noted that Harvard advocated for affirmative action in the courts, and that admissions policy “would count as a core function of the university.”

Tom Ginsburg, faculty director of the Forum for Free Inquiry and Expression at the University of Chicago, said neither of those examples run afoul of Chicago’s stance on neutrality. Nevertheless, he said, he supported Harvard’s new position.

One of the first sentences in the Harvard report states that the university is not institutionally neutral but then the rest of the report describes how it is committing to institutional neutrality, Mr. Ginsburg said.

“Their policies look like they’re converging in the direction that many other schools have moved in,” Mr. Ginsburg said. “But they don’t want to admit that.”

One reason for that, Mr. Ginsburg said, is that some quarters of the academy see neutrality as a misleading term, with many believing silence itself is taking a stance. Others view it as an impossibility.

“There is no such thing as institutional neutrality,” Peter Wood, president of the National Association of Scholars, said on Tuesday. “Those who claim they are going to abide by it find a myriad fallback positions in which they say, ‘but not in this case.’ When it comes to matters of political salience, universities will do what they’ve always done. Institutional neutrality is a false flag.”

For years, universities had, mostly without controversy, issued messages on any number of world and local events, from the Russian invasion of Ukraine to racism at home. But perhaps unlike any other issue, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict split university communities, and clarified the downsides of such statements on highly contested topics.

Harvard came under withering criticism for how it communicated after the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas on Israel.

Harvard, for some critics, like the university’s former president Lawrence H. Summers, was woefully slow in denouncing a pro-Palestinian letter by a student coalition, which held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for the unfolding violence.” Dr. Summers suggested that the void left by Harvard’s slow response had allowed the student statement to stand as the university’s official position in the minds of some people.

After Harvard’s president at the time, Claudine Gay, released a series of statements, including one that condemned the “terrorist atrocities perpetrated by Hamas” and called them “abhorrent,” the administration was accused of capitulating to influential alumni and wealthy donors. She ended up resigning, in part for her handling of the protests over the Israel-Hamas war.

Mr. Feldman said the transition would not be easy. It would require a culture change, for people inside and outside of the university to accept that “the university has genuinely adopted a ‘say less’ policy,” he told The Gazette.

Susan C. Beachy contributed research.

Vimal Patel writes about higher education with a focus on speech and campus culture. More about Vimal Patel

Anemona Hartocollis is a national reporter for The Times, covering higher education. More about Anemona Hartocollis

The Campus Protests Over the Gaza War

News and Analysis

Harvard said that it will no longer take positions on matters outside of the university , accepting the recommendations of a faculty committee that urged the school to reduce its messages on issues of the day.

Weeks after counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, the university police have made the first arrest related to the attack .

A union for academic workers in the University of California system announced that an ongoing strike challenging the system’s handling of pro-Palestinian demonstrations would extend to two more campuses , U.C.L.A. and U.C. Davis.

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2.1.2.11.4.4.1: Reader-Response Criticism

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We have examined many schools of literary criticism. Here you will find an in-depth look at one of them: Reader-Response.

The Purpose of Reader-Response

why you like or dislike the text;
explain whether you agree or disagree with the author;
identify the text’s purpose; and
critique the text.

Write as a Scholar

Criticize with examples.

Is the text racist?
Does the text unreasonably puts down things, such as religion, or groups of people, such as women or adolescents, conservatives or democrats, etc?
Does the text include factual errors or outright lies? It is too dark and despairing? Is it falsely positive?
Is the text poorly written?
Does it contain too much verbal “fat”?
Is it too emotional or too childish?
Does it have too many facts and figures?
Are there typos or other errors in the text?
Do the ideas wander around without making a point?

The Structure of a Reader-Response Essay

title of the work to which you are responding;
the author; and
the main thesis of the text.
What does the text have to do with you, personally, and with your life (past, present or future)? It is not acceptable to write that the text has NOTHING to do with you, since just about everything humans can write has to do in some way with every other human.
How much does the text agree or clash with your view of the world, and what you consider right and wrong? Use several quotes as examples of how it agrees with and supports what you think about the world, about right and wrong, and about what you think it is to be human. Use quotes and examples to discuss how the text disagrees with what you think about the world and about right and wrong.
What did you learn, and how much were your views and opinions challenged or changed by this text, if at all? Did the text communicate with you? Why or why not? Give examples of how your views might have changed or been strengthened (or perhaps, of why the text failed to convince you, the way it is). Please do not write “I agree with everything the author wrote,” since everybody disagrees about something, even if it is a tiny point. Use quotes to illustrate your points of challenge, or where you were persuaded, or where it left you cold.
How well does the text address things that you, personally, care about and consider important to the world? How does it address things that are important to your family, your community, your ethnic group, to people of your economic or social class or background, or your faith tradition? If not, who does or did the text serve? Did it pass the “Who cares?” test? Use quotes from the text to illustrate.
What can you praise about the text? What problems did you have with it? Reading and writing “critically” does not mean the same thing as “criticizing,” in everyday language (complaining or griping, fault-finding, nit-picking). Your “critique” can and should be positive and praise the text if possible, as well as pointing out problems, disagreements and shortcomings.
How well did you enjoy the text (or not) as entertainment or as a work of art? Use quotes or examples to illustrate the quality of the text as art or entertainment. Of course, be aware that some texts are not meant to be entertainment or art: a news report or textbook, for instance, may be neither entertaining or artistic, but may still be important and successful.
your overall reaction to the text;
whether you would read something else like this in the future;
whether you would read something else by this author; and
if would you recommend read this text to someone else and why.

Key Takeaways

In reader-response, the reader is essential to the meaning of a text for they bring the text to life.
The purpose of a reading response is examining, explaining, and defending your personal reaction to a text.
When writing a reader-response, write as an educated adult addressing other adults or fellow scholars.
As a beginning scholar, be cautious of criticizing any text as “boring,” “crazy,” or “dull.” If you do criticize, base your criticism on the principles and form of the text itself.
The challenge of a reader-response is to show how you connected with the text.

Reader-Response Essay Example

To Misread or to Rebel: A Woman’s Reading of “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty”

Works Cited

Elias, Robert H. “James Thurber: The Primitive, the Innocent, and the Individual.” Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 5. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 431–32. Print.

Fetterley, Judith. The Resisting Reader . Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978. Print.

Hasley, Louis. “James Thurber: Artist in Humor.” Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 11. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 532–34. Print.

Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981. Print.

Lindner, Carl M. “Thurber’s Walter Mitty—The Underground American Hero.” Contemporary Literary Criticism . Vol. 5. Ed. Dedria Bryfonski. Detroit: Gale Research, 1980. 440–41. Print.

Rosenblatt, Louise M. Literature as Exploration . New York: MLA, 1976. Print.

Thurber, James. “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty.” Literature: An Introduction to Critical Reading . Ed. William Vesterman. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace, 1993. 286–89. Print.

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Putting It Together: Defining Characteristics of Romantic Literature. Authored by : Anne Eidenmuller & Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution

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Reader Response Criticism: An Essay. Alternatively, one can look at the psychological context of the reader. ... In The Resisting Reader, for example, Judith Fetterley talks about the effects that reading particular texts can have on women. Radway, more willing to credit the reader's power to "make" the meaning of the text, asks instead ...
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2.1.2.11.4.4.1: Reader-Response Criticism
The purpose of a reading response is examining, explaining, and defending your personal reaction to a text. When writing a reader-response, write as an educated adult addressing other adults or fellow scholars. As a beginning scholar, be cautious of criticizing any text as "boring," "crazy," or "dull.".

Reader Response Criticism: a Rose for Emily

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2. Reading Literature as a Critic

The Purpose of Reader-Response

Write as a Scholar

The Structure of a Reader-Response Essay

Key Takeaways

Reader-Response Essay Example

Literary Theory and Criticism

Reader-Response Criticism

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Reader Response Theory by Susan Browne , Xiufang Chen , Faten Baroudi , Esra Sevinc LAST REVIEWED: 21 April 2021 LAST MODIFIED: 21 April 2021 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780190221911-0107

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