ROSEN BLANETT READER RESPONSE THEORY_1.pptx

Reader Oriented Criticism based on the approach of transactional theory by Blanett

1. Louise M. Rosenblatt Transactional Reader-Response Theory

2. Background Transactional reader-response theory, led by Louise Rosenblatt and supported by Wolfgang Iser , involves a transaction between the text's inferred meaning and the individual interpretation by the reader influenced by their personal emotions and knowledge . https:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reader-response_

3. Transactional Reader-Response Theory Often associated with the work of Louise Rosenblatt, who formulated many of its premises, transactional reader-response theory analyzes the transaction between text and reader. In the 1930s, Rosenblatt, literary theorist, author, scholar, and professor of literacy, further developed Richards’s earlier assumptions concerning the contextual nature of the reading process. She asserts that both the reader and the text must work together to produce meaning . Rosenblatt does not reject the importance of the text in favor of the reader; rather she claims that both are necessary in the production of meaning. She differentiates among the terms text, which refers to the printed words on the page; reader; and poem, which refers to the literary work produced by the text and the reader together. Unlike the New Critics, she shifts the emphasis of textual analysis away from the text alone and views the reader and the text as partners in the interpretative process. (Tyson 157-158, Bressler 78)

4. Louise M. Rosenblatt For Rosenblatt, a text is not an autotelic artifact , and there are no generic literary works or generic readers . Instead, there are millions of potential individual readers of the potential millions of individual texts. Readers bring their individual personalities, their memories of past events, their present concerns, their particular physical condition, and all of their personhood to the reading of a text. Rosenblatt asserts the validity of multiple interpretations of a text shaped not only by the text but also by the reader. ( Bressler 78).

5. The Reader, The Text, the Poem, The Reader, The Text, the Poem , written by Rosenblatt, was published in 1978 and became a pivotal force in helping to cause a paradigm shift in the teaching of literature by changing the focus from the text alone to a reader’s individual response to a text as a key element in the interpretive process. According to Rosenblatt, the reading process involves both a reader and a text. The reader and the text participate in or share a transactional experience : The text acts as a stimulus for eliciting various past experiences, thoughts, and ideas from the reader, those found in both our everyday existence and in past reading experiences. ( Bressler 78-79).

6. Through this transactional experience, the reader and the text produce a new creation, a poem. For Rosenblatt and many other reader-oriented critics , a poem is defined as the result of an event that takes place during the reading process, or what Rosenblatt calls the “aesthetic transaction”. A poem is created each time a reader transacts with a text, whether this transaction is a first reading or any one of countless rereading of the same text. For Rosenblatt, readers read in one of two ways: efferently or aesthetically. ( Bressler 79).

7. Efferent &Aesthetic Reading When we read for information, we are engaging in efferent reading. During this process, we are interested only in newly gained information. When we read efferently , we are motivated by specific needs to acquire information. When we engage in aesthetic reading, we experience the text. We note its every word, its sounds, its patterns, and so on. When reading aesthetically ,we involve ourselves in an elaborate give-and-take encounter with the text. ( Bressler 79).

8. In order for the transaction between text and reader to occur, our approach to the text must be, in Rosenblatt’s words, aesthetic rather than efferent . When we read in the efferent mode, we focus just on the information contained in the text. Without the aesthetic approach, there could be no transaction between text and reader to analyze. (Tyson 158).

9. “The playwright is nothing without his audience. He is one of the audience who happens to know how to speak” Arthur Miller (1915-2005) Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” (1949) is a play about a travelling salesman who kills himself so that his son will receive his life-insurance money. This is an example of an efferent reading of the text. Willy Loman’s plight is powerfully evoked by the contrast between his small house and the large, orange-colored apartment buildings that surround it. This is an example of an aesthetic reading of the text. (Tyson 158)

10. In “Death of a Salesman” we might say, for example, that the text’s determinate meaning includes the fact that Willy habitually lies to Linda about his success on the job, about how well liked he is, and about how important his role in the company has been. The play’s indeterminacy includes issues such as how much (or how little) of the truth Linda knows about her husband’s career, at what point she realizes the truth (if ever she does), and why she doesn’t let Willy tell her the truth about his shortcomings when he tries to do so. (Tyson 159).

11. What differentiates Rosenblatt’s and all reader-oriented critics from other critical approaches (especially New Criticism) is their purposive shift in emphasis away from the text as the sole determiner of meaning. No longer is there one correct interpretation and no longer is the reader passive. On the contrary, the reader is an active participant along with the text in creating meaning. It is from the literacy experience that meaning evolves. ( Bressler 79-80).

12. Second group of reader-oriented critics follow Rosenblatt’s assumption that the reader is involved in a transactional experience when interpreting a text. Both the text and the reader play somewhat equal parts in the interpretative process. For them, reading is an event that culminates in the creation of the poem. Many adherents in this group – Wolfgang Iser , Hans Robert Jauss , Roman Ingarden – are often associated with phenomenology. ( Bressler 83).

13. Phenomenology Phenomenology is a modern philosophical tendency that emphasizes the perceiver. For phenomenologists, objects can have meaning only if an active consciousness (a perceiver) absorbs or notes their existence. In other words, objects exist if we register them in our consciousness. Rosenblatt’s definition of a poem directly applies this theory. The true poem can exist only in the reader’s consciousness, not on the printed page. When a reader and text transact, the poem and, therefore, meaning are created; they exist only in the consciousness of the reader. ( Bressler 84).

14. Reading and textual analysis now become an aesthetic experience, in which both the reader and the text combine in the consciousness of the reader to create the poem. So, the reader’s imagination must work, fill in the gaps in the text and conjecture about characters’ actions, personality traits, and motives. The ideas and practices of two-reader-oriented critics, Jauss and Iser , serve to illustrate phenomenology’s methodology. ( Bressler 84).

15. Lois Tyson. (2006). Critical Theory Today. A User-Friendly Guide. Reader Response Criticism. Ch 6. P . 169-208 .