Reader-Response Theory : Hans-Robert Jauss

Our cohort is nearing the end of its secondary education and therefore it is important that we reflect on the ways in which it has shaped our attitudes, values and beliefs. For example, over the past five years, we have read, analysed and evaluated various literary works such as novels, plays, poems and films in our English studies. These texts have expressed various ideologies, explored interesting themes and introduced us to fascinating characters. These elements have left a lasting impression on our attitudes, values and beliefs. In addition to this, English literary texts have provided us with historical knowledge as well as a thorough understanding of the role that aesthetic devices

The context of the plot found in “The School” presents the readers with the timeless question of the meaning of life. However, this question does not seem to present itself immediately to the reader. In order to appreciate Barthelme’s work in this piece, it is crucial that one utilizes the New Criticism’s approach to reading. New Criticism was first developed in the 20th century and it makes reading and interpreting literature a systematic activity. New Criticism as an analytical tool helps the readers to understand and gain insight into all forms of the written works through sheer understanding and by reading closely. This means that our focus

There will always be philosophical interpretations that will create universal truths for many generations to come. In addition, these literary works enriches the audiences’ understanding of these texts as supremely important cultural and historical documents, for audiences who embrace their universal truths. Both generational audiences’ spiritual interpretations seemed to have, collectively, developed a text of extraordinary literary works that are overflowing with philosophical and truth-seeking richness.

New historicism is premised upon an ideological attempt to wed the practice of history and literary criticism. In this type of textual analysis, the literary work is juxtaposed with historical events (characteristic of the time period in which the work was produced) in an effort to understand the implications within the text. This line of inquiry serves to recover a "historical consciousness" which may be utilized in the rendering of literary theory. "Poems and novels came to be seen in isolation, as urnlike objects of precious beauty. The new historicists, whatever their differences and however defined, want us to see that even the most unlike poems are caught in a web of historical conditions,

In the process of writing, regardless of the form it takes, thesis or narrative for example, the purpose of the piece has several lenses that shape how the reader perceives the material. Of the less important lenses that shape the piece, mood, word choice, and rhetoric are only a few. These elements of the work, while minimal in a relative sense, accomplish the same as other, more important components, they influence how the reader perceives the material, how it is understood. If one is to effectively convey the message of the piece, one must first look at how the any reader perceives any text. This idea of how the reader perceives is a culmination of all the devices employed by the author. The idea is for the author to craft an aggregate

In order to evaluate texts using Intertextuality, it is important to define it as a form of critical literary analysis. Charles Bazerman of the University of California at Santa Barbara writes: “We create our texts out of the sea of former texts that surround us, the seas of language we live in. And we understand the texts of others within that same sea…the relation each text has to the texts surrounding it, we call intertextuality” (83). While there are several definitions of intertextuality, Bazerman’s covers the most ground. In this broad sense, intertextuality refers but is not limited to the following components of which written works are comprised: borrowed culture, borrowed genre and theme, and more specifically, borrowed text within

Written by Jeffrey Eaton, an Open Letters editor, this source is reliable because the magazine speciality is to critique many works of art and literature. Rather than merely summarizing the main events of the memoir, Eaton actually expresses his dislike about it by providing

In John Berger’s essay “Ways of Seeing,” he shares his view on how he feels art is seen. Mr. Berger explores how the views of people are original and how art is seen very differently. By comparing certain photographs, he goes on to let his Audience, which is represented as the academic, witness for themselves how art may come across as something specific and it can mean something completely different depending on who is studying the art. The author goes into details of why images were first used, how we used to analyze art vs how we do today, and the rarity of arts. He is able to effectively pass on his message by using the strategies of Rhetoric, which include Logos, Pathos, and Ethos.

There are different forms and examples of exemplary and classic literature which have been deemed as significant works that are highly esteemed worldwide. These examples of literature would awe the world with how much literary skill they entailed when they were composed and written: attention to details as to formation of characters, the most crafty of plots, the most eloquent speeches and lines, the most astounding of twists of scenes, and most of all, the most universal and meaningful of themes. The theme of any literary work is what makes it great as it should be able to encompass the immense diversity of the world and as it would be able to transcend the boundaries of religion, age, race, gender, etc. Two examples of this great and

As the era of literature slowly declines, the expert critiques and praise for literature are lost. Previously, novels were bursting at the seams with metaphors, symbolism, and themes. In current times, “novels” are simply short stories that have been elaborated on with basic plot elements that attempt to make the story more interesting. Instead of having expert critical analysis written about them, they will, most likely, never see that, as recent novels have nothing to analyze. Even books are beginning to collect dust, hidden away and forgotten, attributing to the rise of companies such as Spark Notes. An author deserves to have his work praised, no matter how meager and the masses should have the right to embrace it or to reject it. As

Reader-response theory identifies the reader as an affective agent who imparts real exist-ence and life to the work, completing its meaning through interpretation. Reader- response criti-cism argues that literature should be viewed as art in which each reader creates his or her own-most likely unique, text-related performance. I am using Wolfgang Iser and Stanley Fish’s takes on Reader Response for my study.

the whole novel: “the linguistic pattern of choices realizes a primitive pattern of cognition, which in turn is the key to the tragic vision of the novel.”(Leech & Short, 2001: 32) Halliday being the widely acknowledged precursor of functional stylistics, the eminent German linguist-critic Leo Spitzer (1887-1960), is likewise father of literary stylistics. In his insistence that the smallest detail of language can unlock the “soul” of a literary work, he maintains the task of stylistics is to provide a hard-and-fast technology of analysis: I would maintain that to formulate observation by means of words is not to cause the artistic beauty to evaporate in vain intellectualities; rather, it makes for a widening and deepening of the aesthetic taste. It is only a frivolous love that cannot survive intellectual definition; great love prospers with understanding. (Leech & Short, 2001: 2) A question which is often asked in this connection is “At which end do we start, the aesthetic or the linguistic?” The image used by Spitzer of the “philological circle”, the circle of understanding, however, seems to suggest there is no logical staring point. Spitzer argues that the task of Linguistic-literary explanation proceeded by the movement to and fro from linguistic details to the

Any literary work is unique. It is created by the author in accordance with his vision and is permeated with his idea of the world. The reader’s interpretation is also highly individual and depends to a great extent on his knowledge and personal experience. That’s why one cannot lay down a fixed “model” for a piece of critical appreciation. Nevertheless, one can give information and suggestions that may prove helpful.

It is when the artist begins to add nuances and harmonies to the melody that the work becomes inaccessible to the unlearned ear, thus isolating a portion of the audience. When works of art are created to express the universality of humankind they are more beneficial to it. As an example, this view is dissimilar to the view if Dante, who believed that the language of a work should be elevated. Tolstoy argues the more details that are given in the work the more opportunities for disconnection from its message the audience has (391).

Fish’s Reader Response Criticism is composed of two interdependent ideas: first, that the meaning of texts is shaped by the reading experience itself, and second, that these meanings cannot be judged to be correct or incorrect, but merely belonging to one “interpretive community” or another. The first idea may be identified as the executive aspect of Reader Response Criticism because it analyzes the act of reading, while the second idea is the epistemological aspect of the theory because it circumscribes the knowledge we can acquire about a text to the merely relative. Studied independently, each aspect of Reader Response Theory offers by itself strong arguments countervailing the formalist stance of the New Critics. But as we will see,