Reader response criticism is a literary critical theory. It is promoted and developed by a variety of literary theorists and critics. Depending on the person advancing the concept, the theory may take on any number of nuanced meanings. Generally speaking however, reader response criticism suggests that a text gains meaning by the purposeful act of a reader’s reading and interpreting it. The relationship between reader and text is highly valued; text does not exist without a reader. It is rather like the question of whether a tree falling in a forest makes a sound if no one is around to hear it. A text siting on a shelf does nothing. It does not come alive until reader and text are joined. Reader response theory arose in large measure as a …show more content…
It is based on philosophic grounds. The emergence of reader response theories in the field of literature teaching has shifted the exclusive emphasis on the text, while acknowledge its importance, to an emphasis on the reader. It was Louise Rosenblatt who began the march to a transactional theory of reader response, which emphasizes a mutual interaction between the reader and the text in the process of creating and recreating meaning. Texts do not come into existence alone nor do they acquire their meaning or invoke feelings unless they are read by a reader. Without a reader texts are no more than marks can a …show more content…
He was ignored by its critics or theorists. He was beside the literary curtain. If we go back to the history, we find that all the writers and the critics talked about the reader directly or indirectly. In other terms, if we talked about critics, they have readers in their mind in passive way. It means the concept of passive reader was always presented in the history of literature. Now, we cannot ignore it. Plato is the first and foremost literary critic. He says that, “poetry is a bundle of lies”. (91) It makes people immoral, emotional and sensitive. In this way, Plato talks about immature reader and Plato’s immature reader is replaced by Aristotle’s mature and sensitive reader. Aristotle says that tragedy is the part of human beings which arouse ‘pity and fear’ in audience. Aristotelian’s reader’s means mature reader. Then we discuss Horace who is famous for his concept ‘Decorum’. It means he also has a reader in his mind. He talked about sophisticated
By reading “How to Read Literature like a Professor” and “The Kite Runner”, the reader is aided in his or her ability to understand the true meanings behind the text. One is able to decipher how the act of coming together to eat can mean anything from a simple meal with family, to an uncomfortable situation that leads to anger or stress in an individual character. The reader is able to understand the use of rain or other weather in a novel to transform the mood and tone of scene, or understand the cleansing or destructive qualities that weather may have on the overall plot of the story. The use of illness can be transformed, as it can lead to the reader discovering veiled means behind tuberculosis, cholera, a simple cold, or even cancers such
Meagan Sanders Mrs. Smith AP Literature and Composition September 20, 2017 How to Read Literature like a Professor Thomas Foster wrote a guide to analyzing pieces of literature to lead students in thoroughly searching through texts and documents to find hidden meanings and the reason behind what the author wrote what he did and why he used the techniques he used. Foster used a first-person point of view to help the reader relate better to the topics and his explanation. He changes his tone according to the subject matter he is discussing to change the mood of the text. As well as alluding to multiple classic pieces of literature, he creates an easy systematic guide that benefits students wishing to excel in reading and writing based classes. Foster chooses to use the first person point of view.
Readers should identify the approaches to the text in each reviewer’s assessment
In this article “ Why literature matters” by Dana Gioia explains that American art has changed. It points out the fact that literary knowledge is declining. Some of the changes that were pointed out is that most people no longer read. His main purpose is to encourage people to begin to read again and that will help them improve their intellectual level. In the article Gioia expresses reasoning and includes evidence of the importance of reading.
In Sandra Cisneros “Mericans” she creates a young character named Michelle who faces cultural differences and nonunderstanding, gender roles and culture stereotyping which can be exhibited in the real world. The author introduces Michelle as a foreigner with in her own culture, with this being said throughout the story Michelle seemed to be uninterested in her Grandmothers ideals and the principles of the Mexican heritage. The evidence behind this statement is; throughout the passage Michelle refers to her grandmother as being “awful” (Cisneros 93). I think a big reason for this is the fact that the grandmother has the children wait outside the church doors as she goes and say her daily prayers.
In “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Readers” by Kavitha Rao, she express her opinion on the topic that the current generation is not reading for fun. She mentions several experience she had with other people, that don 't see the benefit in reading for fun. She says that since people aren 't reading more leisure anymore they 're becoming less creative, inarticulate, have poor communication skills and low confidence, which is caused by parents forcing their kids to read, and the education system need to have students memorize textbooks and nothing else. After reading this article I find myself disagreeing with Rao on several points she made, I don’t believe the modern attitude towards reading is causing people to be self absorbed and unimaginative, she also claims that book clubs don 't encourage reading for fun, parents are forcing their children to read boring books which turned them away from reading and that the educational system is to blame for college students for being inarticulate.
Showing the reader positives of reading in a factual way can be very persuasive. He then goes on to use strong and persuasive diction to support his claim, stating “The decline of literary reading foreshadows serious long-term social and economic problems, and it is time to bring literature and the other arts into discussions of public policy.” Using a slight guilt technique can persuade the reader. This strong diction continues to support his claim. And finally he ends his essay saying that the qualities gained from reading are not skills that “society can afford to
The Kite Runner is a book written as fiction yet possibly read as reality; some readers might even question the veracity of the events narrated throughout the story before realizing its categorization as a novel. This comes exclusively due to the story’s evident partial factual basis, even when said facts only reside in the Afghan and American history cited in the book. But how different can readers truly interpret the text? Knowledge of the novel’s internal and external context can help a reader understand more about the book, and hence possibly even find new hidden meaning in passages that were before just fiction; however, the writer’s understanding of his readers might also help him guide said audience towards a specific message. Is the
Question 1: The three examples of figurative language that I am going to analyze are, rhetorical questions, personification, and similes . Rhetorical question: “Here or elsewhere, what did it matter? Die today, or tomorrow, or later.” (Wiesel 98) This example of a Rhetorical question really adds to the text by almost forcing the reader to think to themselves, and actually try to answer the question that is being asked. It involves the reader and therefore can make the story more appealing to them.
This outlook is reflected in national surveys, the number of literary non-readers in the United States is starting to outweigh the number of readers and, this has slowly been proceeding over the past 20 years (Gioia 421). Reading is a fundamental part of life. It’s a major way of expression, imagination, learning and being the best person
World literature has been a fundamental part of understanding our society, it has archived and developed the events and thoughts that made the world in which we live today. Literature is typically linked with philosophy and early thinkers, who questioned who we are, where do we came from and what is our purpose in life. Even though, the study of philosophy has given us the chance to understand more about this topic, I personally think that over the years, it provides more questions than answers, and the more we dig in, the more questionings will show up. Our first reading on Poetics by Aristotle, focuses mainly on Greek tragedy and epic poetry. Tragedies started as religious ceremonies performed at festivals in honor to the god Dionysus, but over time it has changed into a secular.
Introduction Lenses on Reading: An Introduction to Theories and Modelsis an excellent read. The authors bring a lot of useful information to not only the field of education but to the classroom. Throughout the book, the authors provided vignettes to show theoretical models in action which gives the reader a visual of how the theoretical model can be applied. The layout of the chapters was in chronological order which is was also helpful.
A narrative critic’s close reading assumes literary integrity and reads the text holistically. The text is processed consecutively and the parts are related to the whole. The methodology of narrative criticism can be summarized in four steps. First, the form of the text is analysed and categorized according to formal and conventional literary aspects and genres.
New Criticism as a whole emphasizes understanding the text
The times that we live in heavily influence our understanding of people and the literary characters we get to know of. The Reader Response theory revolves around the central idea that the context any reader resides in, influences the reader 's understanding of and the response to characters. This is the case in 'A Doll 's House ' by Henrik Ibsen too, where, Torvald Helmer, the protagonist 's husband evokes different responses by different readers of the play. While a Victorian Era reader will sympathize with the character of Helmer as he holds a his "dignity" above all, even the woman he "loves", the modern reader of the 21st century is outraged by Helmer 's blatantly sexist remarks about a woman 's "duty." The readers ' receptions of Helmer 's character varies greatly due to the different values they believe in and their social context.