13 What Is Reader Response?

Reader response theory may be understood as a reaction to the strict formalism of New Criticism. You’ll recall that we discussed some of New Criticism’s limitations in our previous section, including the problem of finding “one right answer” to literary questions. Also, there’s the obvious objection that what the reader, either actual or implied, brings to a text does matter to how the text can be understood.

Reader response criticism is a literary theory that focuses on the individual reader’s experience and interpretation of a text. It asserts that the meaning of a text is not fixed and objective but rather subjective and dependent on the reader’s interpretation and response to it.

According to this theory, readers bring their own experiences, values, and beliefs to the text, which shape their understanding and response to it. This means that each reader’s interpretation of a text is unique and can vary depending on factors such as their cultural background, personal experiences, and emotional state. We call this subjective reader response.

Reader response theory originated in the 1960s and 1970s as a reaction to the dominant New Criticism approach, which focused on the text itself rather than the reader’s response to it. Proponents of reader response theory argue that by emphasizing the role of the reader in shaping meaning, this approach offers a more democratic and inclusive view of literature.

Reader response theory can be applied to any genre of literature, from poetry to novels to plays. It is often used in conjunction with other approaches to literary analysis, such as feminist or psychological criticism, to explore the ways in which a text can be interpreted and experienced by different readers. When we consider how the implied reader might read a text, we are thinking about reader responses that might be different from our own. Steven Lynn notes in Texts and Contexts: “For people who rejoice in the diversity of experiences and responses and opinions, reader-response criticism will be especially interesting, not only because of our different orientations and abilities, but also because of the different ways that we partition and perceive our experiences” (p. 86).

Prominent practitioners of reader response criticism include Louise Rosenblatt, David Bleich, Stanley Fish, and Wolfgang Iser.

An Excerpt from Reader Response Scholarship

Read the following excerpt from Louise Rosenblatt’s 1978 book, The Reader, the Text, and the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. before proceeding with this chapter. (The entire book can be read at the Internet Archive)

Critics and literary theorists, who have traditionally lavished attention on authors and texts, have only recently begun to consider the reader. A few have reacted to the point of insisting on the predominance of the reader’s personality. Others focus on the readers response—but to the literary work of art still assumed to exist “out there” in the text. What, in fact does the reader respond to? What does he interpret? Such questions lead me in the following pages to discriminate between the reader’s activities in “efferent” and in “aesthetic reading.”

This cardinal distinction generates new light on the multidimensional process of evoking a poem and on the dynamic “mode of existence” of the literary work of art. Analysis of both the openness, and the constraint offered by the text clarifies its complex role in the transaction with the reader. The theoretical foundation is thus laid for dealing with such persistent and controversial problems as validity in interpretation, criteria of evaluation, and the relation between literary criticism and other disciplines….

As early as 1938, I wrote: “There is no such thing as a generic reader or a generic literary work…. The reading of any work of literature is, of necessity, an individual and unique occurrence involving the mind and emotions of a particular reader….”

The transactional approach is listed the challenges and has incorporated the sustenance brought by the intervening years. During World War II, for example, when I found myself associate chief of the Western European Section of the Bureau of Overseas Intelligence (OWI), the problem of eliciting meaning from texts took the form of propaganda analysis and the derivation of economic, social, and political information from the Nazi-dominated media. As a result, I became keenly aware of the differences between “intuitive reading” and such techniques as content analysis; this contrast had repercussions in my later thinking about critical method and critical theory….Ironically, since I was not caught in the pendulum swing disillusionment with the New Critics, the transactional theory expounded here repudiates recent efforts to make the reader all important…. (Rosenblatt ix-xiii)

The long history of the theory of literature, from Plato to the present, records certain well-known shifts of emphasis. In surveying these changes, I find it helpful to visualize a little scene: on a darkened stage I see the figures of the author and the reader, with the book—the text of the poem or play or novel—between them. The spotlight focusses on one of them so brightly that the others fade into practical invisibility. Throughout the centuries, it has become apparent, usually either the book or the author has received major illumination. The reader has tended to remain in shadow, taken for granted, to all intents and purposes invisible. Like Ralph Ellison’s hero, the reader might say, “I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me.” Here or there a theoretician may start to take him seriously, and the spotlight may seem from time to time to hover over him, but actually he has never for long held the center of attention….

As we survey the field of literary theory, then, the reader is often mentioned, but is not given the center of the stage. The reason is simple; the reader is usually cast as a passive recipient, whether for good or ill, of the impact of the work. He is still, in a sense, invisible, even when he is treated as a member of something referred to under such collective rubrics as “the audience” or “the reading public.” Thus readers are viewed mainly en masse, as in studies of Shakespeare’s audience or accounts of the emergence of the middle-class reading public in the eighteenth century, or analysis of categories of fiction, and their respective types of readers in the twentieth century. The individual reader has seldom been acknowledged as carrying on his own special and peculiar activities. There is a great difference between the concept of the reader as a passive “audience” and the kind of visibility that I claim for the reader.

Within the past few years, the spotlight has started to move in the direction of the reader. Sometimes the reaction has been more against the socio-political implications of the New Criticism than against its aesthetic theory. Sometimes the rehabilitation of the reader takes the form of a rather extreme subjectivism or Freudianism. Thus, some preoccupied with the author’s text, have seen the reader as a tabula rasa, receiving the imprint of “the poem.” Others, in reaction, see the text is empty, awaiting the content brought by the reader. Rejecting both of these extremes, the discussion that follows begins with readers encountering a text and proceeds to meet the basic questions that flow from this event. The purpose will be to admit into the limelight the whole scene— author, text, and reader. We shall be especially concerned with the member of the cast his hitherto been neglected—the reader. (Rosenblatt 1-5).

Subjective Reader Response: A Tool to Use with Many Types of Analysis

Subjective reader response puts you—the reader—in the spotlight. This critical approach emphasizes the role of the reader in creating meaning, arguing that meaning is not inherent in the text but is rather constructed by the reader through their own experiences, beliefs, and emotions. In subjective reader response, the reader’s personal interpretation and reaction to a text is just as important as the author’s intention or the formal qualities of the text itself. Subjective reader response is a process of engaging with a literary text in a personal and individual way, allowing your own experiences, emotions, and beliefs to shape your interpretation of the text.

To engage in subjective reader response, you can follow these steps:

1. Read the text: Begin by reading the text closely, paying attention to the language, structure, and themes. This should feel familiar from your experiences with New Criticism.
2. Reflect on your own experiences: Think about how your own experiences and emotions relate to the themes and characters in the text. Consider how the text makes you feel and what thoughts or memories it evokes.
3. Respond to the text: Write down your thoughts and reactions to the text, either in a journal or as annotations in the margins of the text itself. Consider how your interpretation differs from or aligns with traditional interpretations of the text.
4. Consider how your response might differ from others’ responses.  Share your responses with others and engage in discussion and debate about the different interpretations and perspectives that the text can generate.
5. Reflect on the process: Reflect on how your personal experiences and emotions influenced your interpretation of the text and consider how this approach differs from other approaches to literary analysis.

Overall, subjective reader response is a highly personal and subjective approach to literary analysis that emphasizes the importance of individual experience and perspective in the process of interpreting and analyzing literature. We will continue to use this tool as we interact with texts throughout the semester. From now on, as you read a text, consider your own response to that text. What role do you as a reader play in the creation of the text’s meaning?

Receptive Reader Response: The Implied Reader

The implied reader is a term used in reader response criticism to refer to the hypothetical reader that a literary text addresses and assumes. This implied reader is not an actual person, but rather a constructed persona created by the text itself. The implied reader is the reader that the text expects and anticipates, and this reader is shaped by the text’s style, tone, language, and themes. The implied reader is not necessarily the same as the actual reader who reads the text, but instead represents the ideal reader who will respond to the text in the way that the author intended. The concept of the implied reader emphasizes the importance of the reader in the process of literary interpretation and analysis, and it highlights the ways in which texts shape and influence the expectations and responses of their readers.

When practicing receptive reader response, the reader tries to put aside their preconceptions and expectations and to enter into a state of empathetic engagement with the text. The receptive reader is attuned to the language, tone, and style of the text and tries to understand the text on its own terms, rather than imposing their own perspective or interpretation onto it. Receptive reader response emphasizes the importance of the reader’s emotional and affective response to the text, as well as their cognitive and intellectual engagement. This approach to reading acknowledges the complexity and diversity of responses that a single text can generate and emphasizes the importance of individual subjectivity and interpretation in the process of literary analysis.

Some forms of receptive response to texts consider the responses of individual demographic groups. For example, see Catherine Broadwell’s poem “Dear Phantom Children” in “Practicing Reader Response.” How might Millennials read this poem differently than Boomers or Generation Z? Would women read this poem differently from men? What about a religious person compared with a nonreligious person? Each of these are examples of specific receptive readers. A scholar might consider how a particular group would respond to the text and also examine whether that group’s response would be different from the text’s implied reader response.

Applying Subjective and Receptive Reader Response Techniques to Literature

As Louise Rosenblatt noted above, putting the spotlight on the reader does not necessarily mean that anything goes in terms of our approach to texts. As with New Criticism, we still need evidence from the text to support our argument, but with subjective reader response, we will also use evidence from how the text affects us to consider its meaning. With receptive reader response, we’ll keep our own reactions in mind, but we will also consider ways that our personal reading of the text might differ from the text’s expected reader. This requires you to come up with some sort of implied reader. For  whom was this text written? What would that person expect or anticipate from the text? Start with a close reading of the text, just like we practiced in our previous section. But this time, in addition to looking at the poem’s formal elements, pay attention to your reaction to the text.

Here are some questions to consider as you analyze the poem using subjective reader response:

1. How does the poem’s vivid and imaginative language impact your emotional response to the comet described in the poem? Do the descriptions evoke feelings of awe, wonder, or fear? How does your emotional response influence your interpretation of the poem’s themes?
2. The poem seems to explore the idea of perspective and the contrast between the vastness of the universe and the insignificance of humanity. How does the speaker’s perspective on the comet change throughout the poem? How does your own perspective as a reader affect your understanding of the poem’s message about the relationship between humanity and the cosmos?
3. The poem mentions the concept of “vast intelligence” and the idea of experiencing “wonders seen.” How do these notions of intelligence and wonder connect with your personal beliefs or experiences? Do they resonate with your own sense of curiosity and exploration, or do they challenge your perspective in any way?
4. The poem references historical figures like Fremont and alludes to exploration and discovery. How do these references to real-world events and individuals influence your interpretation of the poem’s themes? Do they make the poem more relatable or provide a historical context for the speaker’s thoughts?
5. The poem combines elements of both admiration and potential dread regarding the comet’s significance. How does this duality in the speaker’s attitude toward the comet resonate with your own complex emotions when encountering the unknown or the extraordinary? How does your personal background and cultural context shape your response to the poem’s portrayal of this celestial event?

Note: Make sure to support your analysis with specific textual evidence from the poem to support your response. Use line numbers to refer to specific parts of the text.

After completing your subjective reader response, you’ll want to come up with a thesis statement that you can support with the evidence you’ve found.

With receptive reader response, we will want to think about the audience for this poem when it was published in 1853. Would they have expected a poem like this from a Native American poet? How would the audience have thought about the comet of 1853? Consider how two different audiences–Cherokee Nation members and American settlers of European descent–might read this poem in different ways. Do both audiences have the same expected response to the poem?

Here are some receptive reader response questions to consider:

1. How might the poem have been received by Indigenous communities or individuals who were familiar with the cultural and spiritual significance of celestial events in their own traditions? How would their prior beliefs and experiences have influenced their reading of the poem?
2. Considering the historical context of the poem’s publication (late 19th or early 20th century), how might readers from various backgrounds have perceived the poem’s references to exploration and figures like Fremont? Would readers with an interest in or firsthand experience of westward expansion and frontier exploration have a different perspective on these references?
3. Given the poem’s references to intelligence and wonders seen, how might readers from diverse intellectual and educational backgrounds of that era have responded to the poem? Would scholars, scientists, and those with a more formal education have engaged with it differently than individuals with limited access to formal education?
4. How might religious communities and clergy members from the time period have interpreted the poem’s references to religious imagery and the potential connection between the comet and divine forces? Would different religious denominations have varying interpretations or responses to the poem?
5. Considering the historical and sociopolitical context of the poem’s era, how might readers who were influenced by ideas of American exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny have perceived the poem’s exploration themes? Would they have viewed it as a celebration of American exploration and expansion or as a critique of these ideas?

Limitations of Reader Response Criticism

The most obvious criticism leveled at reader response criticism is its complete opposition to the goals of New Criticism. If we center the reader, does this mean that any interpretation of a text is a correct one? Literary scholars such as Rosenblatt and Iser strive to overcome this criticism by emphasizing that rigor is still required in analyzing texts. We don’t completely abandon the tools of New Criticism when we do reader response. Instead, we augment these interpretations by understanding that a text’s meaning is shared, a joint creation of both the author and the reader.

In some cases, the reader’s interpretation may overshadow other aspects of a literary work, such as its formal qualities, language, structure, and historical significance. This may result in a narrow analysis that neglects important aspects of the text. When you do your own reader response, start with a close reading, and continue to notice the formal elements that support your reading. It’s also important to identify and consider the role of personal bias when approaching a text.

In general, while reader response theory offers valuable insights into the role of the reader in interpreting literature, its subjectivity and emphasis on individual responses can limit its applicability and objectivity in certain analytical contexts. Researchers and critics often combine reader response insights with other critical approaches to provide a more comprehensive understanding of literary texts.  We tend to see more receptive than subjective reader response publications from scholars.

Further Reading

• Harding, Jennifer R. “Reader Response Criticism and Stylistics.” The Routledge Handbook of Stylistics. Routledge, 2023. 69-86.
• Harkin, Patricia. “The Reception of Reader-Response Theory.” College Composition and Communication, vol. 56, no. 3, 2005, pp. 410–25. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/30037873. Accessed 6 Sept. 2023.
• Regis, Edward. “Literature by the Reader: The” Affective” Theory of Stanley Fish.” College English 38.3 (1976): 263-280.
• Rosenblatt, Louise M. “What facts does this poem teach you?.” Language Arts 57.4 (1980): 386-394.
• Rosenblatt, Louise M. Writing and Reading: The Transactional Theory. No. 416. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1988.
• Schmid, Wolf. “Implied Reader”. Handbook of Narratology, edited by Peter Hühn, Jan Christoph Meister, John Pier and Wolf Schmid, Berlin, München, Boston: De Gruyter, 2014, pp. 301-309. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110316469.301
• Tompkins, Jane P. (ed.). Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-structuralism. Johns Hopkins University Press. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980.