Reader-response theory: it it legit?
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I must confess, the initial idea of "reader-response criticism" was both exciting / empowering, and scary / worrisome / a little too plebian for my taste. I mean, at first glance, one would assume that RRC is meant to validate any and all interpretations - that, if you believe the reader's experience contributes to building an overall mythical Meaning, then you can't exactly scorn people for varying interpretations, howsoever crappy they may be. The name implies a politically correct version of criticism, which is antithetical and strange.
But, reading Tyson's excellent outline gave me some good cheer. Bad news, crappy undergraduate writers: it'll never be "anything goes!" in the word of literary analysis. Ha!
Before I sketch out how Tyson diffentiates between the major schools of RRC, I'd like to point out that as a Museum Studies person, these theories are the ones that I'd been unknowingly working within as we discussed exhibit design, labels, and interpretive tools. The enlightened "post-museum," as it is now fashionable to proclaim, values its visitors and understands that Meaning is a shared construction, a fusion of the curatorial voice (authority) and the visitor, whose experience is actively sculpted by their personal experiences, the environment, and their social surroundings. Falk and Dierking, baby! Museum people get very excited about what they generically term "literary theory," which frames the museum as a site for the construction of a narrative. Basically, these are all very positive advances for museological professionals - at least in theory.
Back to books.
So, paying close attention the reading process itself is already familiar to me, thanks to New Criticism; however, the NC believed that a text's importance lay uniquely in the text itself. RCC "maintains that what a text is cannot be separated from what it does", for example, produce a reaction in the reader (Tyson 170). Not surprisingly, RCC gained momentum in the 1970s, so it's still a fairly new domain (sheesh!). Readers aren't passive! And they don't all react the same way! Revolutionary stuff. Scary stuff, perhaps, for museum snobs and ivory towers.
No that anyone argues that written texts can be interpreted variously. But theoriests do disagree as to "how our responses are formed and what role, if any, the text plays in creating them" (172). The how bit tends to organize the various schools of thought within RCC, causing it to be a surprisingly scientific-y theory!
Approach #1: TRANSACTIONAL READER-RESPONSE
Louise Rosenblatt is the big name to know. She claimed that both the text and the reader are important - necessary, actually - in the production of meaning. Texts act as stimuli to which we have personalized reactions; our life experiences, our knowledge, our mood, etcetera, will impact how we interpret a text. But our interpretation doesn't "take over" the text; the text is like a blueprint which guides us.
Rosenblatt also wrote that there is an important difference in how we approach texts: either in an efferent mode, or an aesthetic mode. The efferent mode asks us to "focus just on teh information contained in the text, as if it were a storehouse of facts and ideas" (173). But approaching a text in an aesthetic mode creates a more meaningful transaction between the poem (the literary work) and the reader; in teh aesthetic mode we "experience a personal realtionship t the text that focuses our attention on the emotional subleties of its language and encourages us to make judgements" (173). Determinate meanings are based on the facts of a text, while indeterminate meanings are those bits which are either not clearly explained or which have multiple meanings - all texts have both. The burden is "on us to support our claim that a given textual meaning is determinate or indeterminate" (174).
So, literature is a prestructured object, playing between determinate and indeterminate meanings, and readers project meaning onto the text. Transactional!
#2 AFFECTIVE STYLISTICS
Oi. This would be a "cognitive analysis of the mental processes produced by specific elements in the text" (175). This is a fascinating line of thought which very closely examines the text for its stylistics (how it is written) to show that it isn't necessarily what a text SAYS that gives it meaning, but rather what it DOES to its reader. This seems to account for stylistic choices made by authors when, for example, they write unclearly to echo the decentering of a scene.
#3: SUBJECTIVE READER-RESPONSE THEORY
Otherwise known as the "empower your reader" approach (by me)! Tyson sums it up thus: "there's a big difference between knowing what you like and understanding your taste" (182). For major proponents of SRRT, the appropriate goal of education is to educate students in the examination of taste; literature is a tidy vehicle for that process. Blah blah blah.
#4: PSYCHOLOGICAL READER-RESPONSE THEORY
What readers interpret reveals something about the reader, eh? This is an intrguiding infusion of psychoanalytic concepts into the world of RCC, and apt. It's pretty familiar stuff: "the psychological dimension of our interpretations is not readily apparent to ourselves and others [because] we unconsciouly couch it is aesthetic, intellectual, social, or moral abstractions to relieve the anxiety and guilt our projects arouse in us" (183). For example, a Classics professor might concentrate his study of Greek poetry within the realm of landscapes or athletics, as opposed to the poetry of emotion, or personal experience. This reveals that while the professor is unconciously drawn to and desires the artistic release of art and poetry, he is a complete wanker who fears being overwhelmed by deep emotion and its concurrent intimacy. He frozen soul reconciles this paradox by approaching poetry and poetics through a sterilized lens. As a consequence, his lectures on anything outside of his comfort zone completely suck.
Makes perfect sense to me.
#5: SOCIAL READER-RESPONSE THEORY
This train of thought acknowledges that even when we think we are individuals, interpreting texts within the scope of our original thoughts, we are always influenced by our community. The 'interpretive community' to which we belong usually dominate how we judge those interpretations. Institutions set the framework of norms under whose influence we respond.
These interpretive communities can vary in terms of how aware they are of its sway, and we can of course belong to multiple communities (which also change over time - just like a post-museum!). The point is, "readers come to the text already predisposed to interpet it in a certain way based on whatever interpretative strategies are operating for them at the time they read" (185). A classroom full of English majors will, if asked, find a deeper meaning in Shakespeare's grocery list. This theory doesn't present much of a lens so much as it encourages awareness of our ingrained assumptions, expectations, and institutional values.
OKAY... BUT WHAT THE HELL IS A READER?
Theorists define them variously, but I think it's generally important just to recognize differences between...
- hypothetical readers (a hypothetical ideal who encounters a specific text; sometimes just a way for a critic to refer to themself)
- informed / optimal / educated / ideal readers (a reader who has attained competency necessary to experience the text in terms of itslinguistic and literary completxity)
- implied readers (the reader that the text seems to be addressing, because a reader of Danielle Steel may not be a big fan of Schopenhauer)...
Interesting.
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