Answer to Question #215377 in English for nash

Question

The purpose of studying theories is to help you gain deeper insight into and understanding of various ideas that theorists hold, the debates and discourses involved in reading, as well as how behaviour and motivation are interrelated and influence the reading process. With this in mind, provide a critical analysis of the effectiveness of the reader-response theory.

Answer 1

Reader response stresses the importance of the reader's role in interpreting texts. Rejecting the idea that there is a single, fixed meaning inherent in every literary work, this theory holds that the individual creates his or her own meaning through a "transaction" with the text based on personal associations.

At its most basic level, reader-response criticism considers readers' reactions to literature as vital to interpreting the meaning of the text. However, reader-response criticism can take a number of different approaches. A critic deploying reader-response theory can use a psychoanalytic lens, a feminist lens, or even a structuralist lens. What these different lenses have in common when using a reader-response approach is they maintain "...that what a text is cannot be separated from what it does"