1. Reader Response Theory

2. WHAT
Readers have different experiences after and while reading a literary work
Reached Prominence in : 1970s. Dated back in the very old times when literature it self is founded.
Readers give responses or affected by the literary works : Plato, Aristotle.
Concentration : readers, works, history, authors, objects / texts ,

3. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
I.A. RICHARDS
Experimenting on the college students’ response on a literary work : Students’ gave different opinions and interpretations

4. Transaction of meaning : Text –Rader – Meaning
HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT
LOUISE M. ROSENBLAT
Literature as Exploration (1937) :The Readers and the Texts must work together to produce meaning
Transactional Experience : the reader and the text produce a new creation, a poem.
Poem : the result of an event that takes place during the reading process = aesthetic transaction
Transaction of meaning : Text –Rader – Meaning

5. Assumption
readers have active participation in creating meaning. There is transaction of meanings
What happens during the reading process?
Investigate three factors :
The reader : worldview, background, purpose,
knowledge of the word, knowledge
of the words, etc.
2. The text : various linguistics elements
Meaning : interaction of reader and the
text

6. Methodology Structuralism Narratology Phenomenology
Subjective cRiticism

7. Structuralism
A reader brings to the text a predetermined system of ascertaining meaning ( a complex system of signs or codes like the sirens and the red light and applies this sign system directly to the text.

8. Narratology
The process of analyzing a story using all the elements involved in its telling, such as narrator, voice, style, verb tense, personal pronouns, audience, and so forth.
Get meaning by seeing the narratee
Narratee : Real readers, virtual readers, ideal readers.

9. Phenomenology
A modern philosophical tendency that emphasizes the perceiver. Objects exist if and only we register them on our consciousness.
The true poem can exist only in the readers consciousness.

10. Phenomenology
Hans Robert Jauss
Critics must examine how any given text was accepted or received by its contemporary readers.
Reception theory : readers from any given historical period devise for themselves the criteria whereby they will judge a text.
The text remains important in the interpretative process , but the readers play important roles.
Horizon of Expectation : a text is seen from different historical perspectives.

11. Phenomenology
Wolfang Iser
The critics’ job is not to dissect or explain a text but to examine and explain the text’s effect on the reader
Two kinds of readers : implied readers and actual readers
Readers fill in the gap in the text using their knowledge base grounded in their world view.

12. Subjective Criticism
Meaning is based on the readers’ thoughts, beliefs, and experiences
We shape and find our self identities in the reading process.

13. Normand Holland Using Freudian psychoanalysis
Subjective Criticism
Normand Holland
Using Freudian psychoanalysis
Primary identity from Mother + life experience : identity theme
A text is important because it has its own theme. A reader transfroms a text into a private world where one works with his fantacies which are medieted by the text so that they will be socially accepted. .
Textual interpretation becomes a matter of working out our own fears, desires, and needs to maintain our psychological health.
The act of interpretation is a subjective experience.

14. Subjective Criticism
David Bleich
Meaning is developed when the readers work in cooperation with other readers to achieve the text collective meaning. Only when each a reader is able to articulate his or her individual responses within a group about the text, then and only then can a group, working together, negotiate meaning.
Interpretation = the collective meaning