Reader Response Theory Essay

literary unfavorable judgment is non an abstract, intellectual exercise it is a natural human response to literature. Literary comment is nothing more than discoursespoken or writtenabout literature. Reader-response criticism attempts to describe what happens in the readers mind while interpreting a work of illustration. This type of literary criticism recognizes that like writing, reading is a creative process. Reader-response critics believe that no text bring home the bacons self-contained meaning literary texts do not have meaning independently from readers interpretations.According to this school, a text is not over(p) until it is read and interpreted. The easiest elbow room to explain reader-response criticism is to relate it to the common experience of re-reading a favorite criminal record after many years. A book one read as a child world power seem shockingly different when re-read as an adolescent or as an adult. The character once remembered favorably might seem l ess admirable while another character becomes more sympathetic. The book has not changed. However, our life experiences between the first reading and any subsequent re-reading can affect the way we oppose to a story.Reader-response criticism explores how different individuals see the same text differently. It emphasizes how religious, cultural, and social values affect the way we read and respond to a work of fiction. Of course, no two individuals will necessarily read a text in exactly the same way nor will they agree on its meaning. Rather than hold in one interpretation correct and the other mistaken, reader-response criticism recognizes that different insights are inevitable.Instead of trying to ignore or reconcile the contradictions, it explores them. Reader-response criticism also overlaps with gender criticism in exploring how men and women read the same text with different assumptions. While reader-response criticism rejects the notion that there can be a one correct re ading for a literary text, it doesnt consider all readings permissible. Each text creates limits to its affirmable interpretations. We cannot suddenly change the setting, the way a storys plot unfolds, or redefine its characters. memory a readers journal is a great way to keep track of the fiction you read and your emotional responses to the stories. You can use the journal to explore ideas for essays, note important quotations, and list lecture to look up in the dictionary. Use your readers journal while studying Sun, Stone, and Shadows to provide a convenient way of documenting your own response to the stories you read in the anthology. Excerpted from The Longman Anthology of Short Fiction by Dana Gioia and R. S. Gwynn, eds.