Literary Criticism
Reader-response
&
Deconstructionists
What is Literary Criticism?
Literary criticism is the
interpretation, analysis, and judgment
of a work of literature. Good literary
criticism leaves its reader with a
deeper understanding of the text,
while great literary criticism gives its
reader a deeper understanding of the
world.
What is its Purpose?
The purpose of literary criticism
is to deeply engage with a work
of literature in order to interpret
its meaning, broaden its reader’s
understanding, and mark the
work’s position in cultural history.
Literary Criticism
(Approaches)
Re
st
ni
a
de
tio
r-
c
ru
Re
st
sp
on
o
c
ns
De
e
Reader-Response
• An approach to literary criticism and
analysis that focuses on how readers are
actively engaged in the creation of
meaning in a text.
• The key idea of Reader Response
Criticism is that readers create meaning
rather than find it in a text. Works of
literature are always incomplete without a
reader to put in their half of the work to
create meaning.
Key Ideas of Reader-
response Criticism
Reader response criticism is all
about changing our perceptions
of the text, the reader and the
creation of meaning. Meaning is
created in the interaction
between reader and text.
The Reader and The Text
The Reader
Reader Response Criticism focuses on the reader's psychological
experience of reading a text, and how the reader creates meaning from
what the text has given them as they read.
While this approach sees readers as creating their own, unique
meanings, that is not to say that they can come up with any random
interpretation; interpretations always need to have textual support.
The Text
Ordinarily, when we use the term 'text', we are referring to a physical or
digital copy of a work of literature.
Reader Response Criticism argues that the text is a performance; an
event; an interactive process. Reader Response critics also focus on the
importance of the reading experience.
The Reader
THE IMPLIED READER
The term 'implied reader' was coined by the critic
Wolfgang Iser.
The implied reader is who the author has in mind
when they are writing the text, who they expect to
react to, pick up on, interpret and experience
aspects of the text in a certain way.
The Reader
EXAMPLE:
Samuel Richardson's Pamela; or Virtue
Rewarded (1740) is about a young woman who is
rewarded for keeping her "virtue" by eventually
marrying the man who robbed her of her
innocence by assaulting and kidnapping her.
This text's implied reader is someone who
believes that innocence and "virtue" are good
values and who wants to take a moral message
from this text.
The Reader
THE RESISTING READER
The literary critic Judith Fetterley found the
concept of the implied reader problematic and
came up with the concept of a 'resisting reader',
who refuses to fulfill the role of the implied reader
- who refuses to read the text how it was
"supposed to be read".
Fetterley argues that it's important to resist a
text's biases and use the text to come up with
meanings that resist these biased interpretations
that the text invites.
The Reader
EXAMPLE:
If we take the example of Pamela from the
latter example, Samuel Richardson's identity as a
man and the fact that he was writing in a socio-
historical context where women were unequal to
men means that his ideologies and biases are
built into the novel.
A reader may read Pamela through a feminist
lens and resist the idea that it is virtuous to marry
an abusive rake.
The Reader
THE INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITIES
Stanley E. Fish came up with the idea of
interpretive communities to differentiate between
different groups of 'actual' readers. Fish argues
that individual reader responses must be seen as
part of the bigger picture - in the context of the
wider interpretive community that they belong to.
The Reader
Interpretive Communities is a way of
grouping readers that share historical and cultural
contexts, which shapes the way they read and
interpret texts.
Fish's theory is that all meaning is dependent
on the different interpretive strategies that
different interpretive communities use. There is no
objectively correct interpretation of a text because
all interpretations are the product of different
cultures.
The Text
• Ordinarily, when we use the term 'text', we are
referring to a physical or digital copy of a work
of literature.
• Reader Response Criticism argues that the text
is a performance; an event; an interactive
process.
• Reader Response critics also focus on the
importance of the reading experience.
The Text as a Performance,
Event, and Interaction
• Some Reader Response Critics think that the
literary text can actually be viewed as a
performing art, with different readers creating
different performances of texts.
• Reader Response Criticism also invites us to
look at the text as an event, rather than a
lifeless object. The text is not sheets of words
bound together, the text needs you to read it for
it to be a text.
• Therefore, the text is an interactive event. The
text is alive in the interaction between the
reader and the words on the page.
The Text as an Experience
Stanley E. Fish thinks that the readers'
experience of movement through a text is an
important factor in the creation of meaning. As we
move onwards through a text, we fill in the blanks
and form expectations.
The Text as an Experience
Reader Response critics focus on different
aspects of the reader experience. Such as:
[Link] the text tries to structure a specific
experience,
[Link] extent to which readers' experiences match
the intended experience,
[Link] the ways in which readers' experiences
differ from the intended experience.
The Text as an Experience
EXAMPLE:
'Paradise Lost' (1663)
Stanley E. Fish wrote a whole book on the
experience of reading John Milton's Paradise Lost
, which tells the story of Adam and Eve. He
argues that the reading experience is part of the
poem's meaning. To Fish, the reading experience
mirrors the fall of Adam and Eve into sin.
The Text as an Experience
EXAMPLE:
Jacob's Room (1922)
Virginia Woolf's Jacob's Room is about an
unnamed narrator trying to chase Jacob and
understand him. The reader also feels desperate
to understand Jacob, and, like the narrator, the
reader feels distanced from him and unable to
know him. The chase-like reading experience
mirrors the narrator's chase.
KEY THEORIST OF READER-RESPONSE
CRITICISM
Hans Robert Jauss (1921-1997)
The work of Hans Robert Jauss takes a reader response approach that
considers how society and time period influence readers' interpretations of
texts. Based on the culture and time period the reader belongs to, they will
have a certain kind of 'horizon of expectations'.
Wolfgang Iser (1926-2007)
Wolfgang Iser worked alongside Hans Robert Jauss. Iser came up with the
concept of the 'implied reader' and placed importance on the reading
experience of reading a written work for the first time, and then as a 'whole'.
Louise Rosenblatt (1904-2005)
Louise Rosenblatt is a highly influential critic who saw reading as a
transaction between reader and text, where both are equally important.
KEY THEORIST OF READER-RESPONSE
CRITICISM
Stanley E. Fish (1938)
The context in which readers read texts is important to Stanley E. Fish. Fish
is interested in the impact that the interpretive community to which a
reader belongs influences the meanings they garner from a text. A second
key focus of Fish is how readers experience texts as they progress through
them, from beginning to end.
Norman Holland (1927-2017)
Norman Holland focuses on how readers' 'identity themes' impact their
readings of texts. He believes that readers' life experiences and
psychologies (the impact of childhood, unresolved issues, etc.) affect how
they read.
David Bleich (1940-Present)
David Bleich puts forward a radical reader response theory, known as
Subjective Reader Response Criticism. Bleich argued that reader
responses are the text. There is no text beyond the meanings that the
readers come up with.
Types of Reader-response
Approaches
Reader Response criticism can be divided into the
different priorities of different theorists:
[Link]-reader response theory by Stanley E. Fish
[Link] reader response theory is the approach
taken by Louise Rosenblatt and Wolfgang Iser.
[Link] stylistics is Stanley E. Fish's Reader
Response theory.
[Link] Reader Response Criticism is employed
by Norman Holland.
[Link] Reader Response Criticism (David Bleich).
Types of Reader-response Approaches
Transactional Reader-response Theory
Transactional reader-response theory, led by Louise
Rosenblatt and supported by Wolfgang Iser, involves a
transaction between the text's inferred meaning and the
individual interpretation by the reader influenced by their
personal emotions and knowledge.
Affective Stylistics
Affective stylistics, established by Fish, believe that a text can
only come into existence as it is read; therefore, a text cannot
have meaning independent of the reader.
Types of Reader-response Approaches
Subjective Reader-response Theory
Subjective reader-response theory, associated with
David Bleich, looks entirely to the reader's response for literary
meaning as individual written responses to a text are then
compared to other individual interpretations to find continuity of
meaning.
Psychological Reader-response Theory
Psychological reader-response theory, employed by Norman
Holland, believes that a reader's motives heavily affect how they
read, and subsequently use this reading to analyze the
psychological response of the reader.
Types of Reader-response Approaches
Social Reader-response Theory
Social reader-response theory is Stanley Fish's extension of
his earlier work, stating that any individual interpretation of a text
is created in an interpretive community of minds consisting of
participants who share a specific reading and interpretation
strategy. In all interpretive communities, readers are predisposed
to a particular form of interpretation as a consequence of
strategies used at the time of reading.
Deconstructionism
• The fundamental logic of deconstruction is
that no text carries meanings or messages
that are beyond interpretation.
• Deconstruction is sometimes also referred
to as deconstructionism. The term
deconstructionism is used in academic
circles in a slightly disparaging manner to
refer to Derrida's theory.
Deconstructionism
• Texts must be read many times to be able
to get the real meaning of a text.
• The texts can have multiple meanings.
• Readers can have their own
interpretations.
• Real meaning conceals in texts.
• Texts can be interpreted many times.
• Decoding of texts can be a difficult task to
do.
Pioneer:
Deconstructionism began
in the 1960s Jacques
Derrida who took the
ideas of Structuralism to
their extreme.
Derrida:
Deconstruction seems to center
around the idea that language
and meaning are often
inadequate in trying to convey
the message or idea a
communicator is trying to
express.
MAIN IDEAS IN DECONSTRUCTIONISM
• Language is a collection of signs; meaning is
transient, arbitrary & uncertain
• Concepts are contained in their opposites
• Texts are full of contradictions and lack
unity/coherence
• There can be no final interpretation of the text
• We live in a universe of radical uncertainty
MAIN IDEAS IN DECONSTRUCTIONISM
• Deconstructionists look for the ways the
elements in literature contradict each other.
• Interpretations are sometimes bizarre and
contradictory
However, to deconstruct is
not to destroy, and
deconstruction is achieved in
two steps:
1. A Reversal Phase
2. A Neutralization Phase
A Reversal Phase
Since the pair was hierarchically
ranked, we must first extinguish the
power struggle. During this first
phase, then, writing must dominate
speech, other must prevail over self,
absence over presence, perception
over understanding, and so on.
A Neutralization Phase
The term favoured during the first
phase must be uprooted from binary
logic, binary opposition. In this way,
we leave behind all of the previous
significations anchored in dualistic
thinking. This phase gives rise to
androgyny, super-speech, and
arche-writing. The deconstructed
term thus becomes undecidable.
PHASES OF DECONSTRUCTION
FIRST PHASE SECOND PHASE
• Reverse the hierarchies so that the • The previously devalued
repressed could dominate. (i.e. Writing term now has an
is more valued than speech, so now opportunity to have a
speech is valued over writing) hierarchy of its own.
• Argue to support the reversal with
terms like “in” or “within” (i.e. Speech is
in writing. Writing is within speech)
How is it Used in Literary Analysis?
• Used as a tool in narrative analysis
• Starts with a very careful reading that looks for
inconsistency and contradictions in the text.
• The results often uncovering of what is difficult to
make sense of a deeply complex foundation.
• This is one of the many criticism of
Deconstruction, that is nihilistic and unproductive
because it leads to uncertainty.
Sample Text
Snow
By: Frederick Seidel
Snow is what is does.
It falls and it stays, and it goes.
It melts and it is here somewhere.
We all will get there.
Sample Text
Six Lines for Louise Bogan
By: Michael Collier
All that has tamed me I have learned to
love
And lost that wilderness that was once
beloved
All that was loved I’ve learned to tame
And lost the beloved that once was wild
All that is wild is tamed by love –
And the beloved (wildness) that once was
loved
Thank You
For Your Attention
