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Reader Response Theory: College Od Arts/ Department Od English Senior Students/evening Classes

Reader Response Theory focuses on how readers interact with and interpret texts. It considers readers' reactions as vital to understanding a work's meaning. There are different approaches within Reader Response Theory, such as using psychoanalytic, feminist, or structuralist lenses, but they all maintain that a text's meaning cannot be separated from how it affects readers. Reader Response theorists believe readers actively create meaning rather than passively receiving the author's intended meaning, and that a full analysis considers both the reader and text in how meaning is constructed.

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27 views5 pages

Reader Response Theory: College Od Arts/ Department Od English Senior Students/evening Classes

Reader Response Theory focuses on how readers interact with and interpret texts. It considers readers' reactions as vital to understanding a work's meaning. There are different approaches within Reader Response Theory, such as using psychoanalytic, feminist, or structuralist lenses, but they all maintain that a text's meaning cannot be separated from how it affects readers. Reader Response theorists believe readers actively create meaning rather than passively receiving the author's intended meaning, and that a full analysis considers both the reader and text in how meaning is constructed.

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LAYLA •
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Reader Response Theory

College od Arts/ Department od English


Senior Students/evening classes
Reader-Response Criticism (1960s-present) •

At its most basic level, reader-response criticism considers readers' reactions to literature as vital to •
interpreting the meaning of the text. However, reader-response criticism can take a number of different
approaches. A critic deploying reader-response theory can use a psychoanalytic lens, a feminist lens, or
even a structuralist lens. What these different lenses have in common when using a reader-response
.approach is they maintain "...that what a text is cannot be separated from what it does" (Tyson 154)
Tyson explains that "...reader-response theorists share two beliefs: 1) that the role of the reader cannot •
be omitted from our understanding of literature and 2) that readers do not passively consume the
meaning presented to them by an objective literary text; rather they actively make the meaning they
find in literature" (154). In this way, reader-response theory shares common ground with some of the
deconstructionists discussed in the Post-structural area when they talk about "the death of the author,"
.or his displacement as the (author)itarian figure in the text
: •
assumptions
they believe that a literary work’s interpretation is created when a
reader and a text interact and transact, that’s why they believe that a
proper study of textual analysis should consider both the reader and
.the text

Reader+Text= Meaning
hence, it is only in context, with a reader actively involved in the
.reading process, does meaning emerge

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