Revisiting Reader Response Theory
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.56062/gtrs.2024.3.7.633Keywords:
Reader response theory, reception theory, reader, writer, text, meaning, interpretation, phenomenology, hermeneutics, analysed, dasien, Hans Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser, Stanley Fish.Abstract
The role of readers in literary studies was not prominently recognized and actualized in the conventional practice. The focus was on the writer both as the creator of literary texts and interpreter of literary texts. The writer was the source of creative writing and its meaning. The reader was totally sidelined and was at the receiving end throughout the Middle Ages. It was not until the first half of the modern period that the reader’s role started getting attention. The reader-oriented criticism gained currency in Europe and America during 1970s. However, it is significant to note that it had its origins in antiquity and the ancient masters had attended upon the role of readers with varying emphasis. The present paper is an attempt to explain the resurgence of interest in the role of readers in modern theoretical parlance and the readers’ prominence in meaning making process. It illustrates the trajectory of readers’ role in literary studies and shows how readers became increasingly important in the consideration of literary texts.
References
Elizabeth Freund. The Return of the Reader. Taylor & Francis, 2013
Jane Tompkins, ed. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1980
Robert C. Holub. Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction. Methuen, 1984
Stanley Fish. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1979
Wolfgang Iser. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1978.
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