Reader-Response Criticism and Interpretive Communities in Literary Theory
Chapter 11: Reader-Response Criticism
Reader-Response Criticism and the Naratee
Reader-response criticism centers on the idea of basing our critical perspective on what critics often call “the reader.” This concept particularly resonated with critics and students.
The naratee is the person “inside” the text to whom the narrator is speaking.
Jakobson’s Model of Communication
Roman Jakobson’s model of communication outlines six key elements:
- The addresser sends a message to the addressee.
- For the message to be effective, it requires a context.
- The context must be understandable by the addressee.
- The message should be verbal or capable of being verbalized.
- A code, fully or partially shared by the addresser and addressee, is necessary.
- Contact, both a physical channel and a psychological connection, enables communication between the addresser and addressee.
- Communication, particularly the conative function, focuses on the addressee. This function is most evident in imperatives and vocatives (expressions that directly address the addressee).
- The addressee, as the reader, is central to reader-response criticism.
- The declarative function emphasizes the referential function, referring to the context and the world around us.
- The emotive/expressive function highlights the addresser’s expression of attitudes or emotions.
- Phatic messages establish, maintain, or break off contact between the addresser and addressee.
- Metalingual communication refers to the code used for communication itself.
The Concept of the Reader in the Text
Types of Readers
- Implied reader: The text makes assumptions about its readers, their knowledge, and beliefs. Critics like Fish and Iser suggest readers respond by forming and testing hypotheses against the text.
- Ideal reader: This concept reflects the author’s intentions and strategies during writing, not the work’s impact on them.
- Actual readers: (Holland and Bleich) Each reader forms a unique ego or “primary identity” based on early experiences, projecting these concerns onto the text. This model emphasizes individual responses over the text itself.
Gaps and Blanks
Gaps/Blanks in a text require the reader to fill in missing information, initiating communication and interpretation.
Louise Rosenblatt: Transactional Reading
Louise Rosenblatt describes reading as a dynamic transaction between the text and the reader. The text guides responses, creating a continuous dialogue between its shifting directions and the reader’s evolving understanding.
Theory of Transactional Reading and Text
- Readers: Draw upon past experiences to form expectations, constantly shaping and testing their understanding of the text.
- Text: The writer engages in a transaction with their personal, social, and cultural environment. The writing process, through drafts and revisions, guides the reader’s attention. The text regulates what is brought to the forefront of the reader’s mind.
Efferent vs. Aesthetic Responses
- Efferent responses: Focus on the text as a whole, drawing conclusions and extracting information.
- Aesthetic responses: Centered on sensory experiences and emotions evoked by the text, leading to individual interpretations.
Stanley Fish and Interpretive Communities
Stanley Fish argues that our understanding of literary texts depends on interpretive communities (ICs) rather than inherent meaning within the text itself. These communities share interpretive strategies and conventions, shaping how individuals perceive and interpret literature.
Key Concepts of Interpretive Communities
- ICs provide a framework for understanding shared interpretations, drawing on shared experiences, education, and social influences.
- Fish emphasizes that the act of reading is inseparable from interpretation.
- ICs are not static; they evolve and are shaped by ongoing interactions and changing conventions.
Reception Theory and Reception History (Hans Robert Jauss)
Reception Aesthetics/Reception Theory
– interpreting the history of the ways people read a literary work by studying the horizon of expectations that surrounds that work.
–horizon of expectations- what the reader “expects” of the text will change according to the time and place of the reader
-have changed, words on page are the same but meanings have shifted
-H.O.E formed through the reader’s life experience, customs & understanding of the world, which have an effect on reader’s social behaviour
-H.O.E crucial element in connecting lit. & society
–Reception History- studies the history of how readers have responded to a given film, literary work, writer