Social reader‑response theory

6 Reader‑response criticism

As its name implies, reader‑response criticism focuses on readers’ responses to literary texts. Many new students of critical theory are relieved and happy when they get to the unit on reader‑response criticism, perhaps because they enjoy the idea that their responses are important enough to become the focus of literary interpretation. Or perhaps they assume that reader‑response criticism means “I can’t be wrong because any way I interpret the text is my response, so the profes‑ sor can’t reject it.” Let me break the bad news to you up front. Depending on the kind of reader‑response theory we’re talking about, your response to a literary text can be judged insufficient or less sufficient than others. And even when a given reader‑response theory does assert that there is no such thing as an insuffi‑ cient (or inaccurate or inappropriate) response, your job as a practitioner of that theory isn’t merely to respond but to analyze your response, or the responses of others, and that analysis can be found wanting. The good news, however, is that reader‑response criticism is a broad, exciting, evolving domain of literary studies that can help us learn about our own reading processes and how they relate to, among other things, specific elements in the texts we read, our life experiences, and the intellectual community of which we are a member. In addition, for those of you who plan on teaching or are already doing so, reader‑response theory offers ideas that can help you in the classroom, whether that classroom is in an elementary school or on a college campus. If you’re getting the feeling that reader‑response criticism covers a good deal of diverse ground, you’re right. In fact, any time an essay analyzes the act of reading or readers’ responses, one could classify that essay as reader‑response criticism. For example, psychoanalytic criticism, when it investigates the psychological motives for certain kinds of interpretations of a literary text, is also a form of reader‑response criticism. Feminist criticism, when it analyzes how patriarchy teaches us to interpret texts in a sexist manner, is also a form of reader‑response criticism. Structuralist criticism, when it examines the literary conventions a reader must have consciously or unconsciously internalized in order to be able