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Reader-response theory recognises the reader as an active agent who imparts real existence to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the readers role in re-creating literary works isignored. New Criticism had emphasised that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the authority or intention of the author, nor to the psychology of the reader, was allowed in the discussions of orthodox New Critics. The New Critics position assumed an objective, fixed text that could be studied apart from any human being, and this assumption persisted even into postmodern criticism.David Bleich had begun in the 1960s collecting statements by influencing students of their feelings and associations. He used these to theorize about the reading process and to refocus the classroom teaching of literature. He claimed that his classes generated knowledge, that is, knowledge of how particular persons recreate texts.Michael Steig and Walter Slatoff have, like Bleich, shown that every students highly personal responses can provide the basis for critical analyses in the classroom. Jeffrey Berman has encouraged students responding to texts to write anonymously and share with their classmates writings in response to literary works about sensitive subjects like drugs, suicidal thoughts, death in the family, parental abuse and the like. A kind of catharsis bordering on therapy results. In general, American reader-response critics have focused on individual readers responses. American journals like Reader, Reading Research Quarterly, and others publish articles applying reader-response theory to the teaching of literature.In 1967, Stanley Fish published Surprised by Sin, the first study of a large literary work (Paradise Lost) that focused on its readers experience. Since 1976, however, he has turned to real differences among real readers. He explores the reading tactics endorsed by different critical schools, by the literary professoriate, and by the legal profession, introducing the idea of interpretive communities that share particular modes of reading. In 1968, Norman Holland drew on psychoanalytic psychology in The Dynamics of Literary Response to model the literary work. He explored Freuds idea about introjection, involving the incorporation of attributes, attitudes or qualities of an absent idea or person of high significance, such as an absent parent or a recently deceased relative, into oneself. According to Hollands findings, each reader introjects a fantasy in the text, then modifies it with this and otherdefense mechanisms into an interpretation. In 1973, however, having recorded responses from real readers, Holland found variations too great to fit this model in which responses are mostly alike but show minor individual variations.Holland then developed a second model based on his case studies 5 Readers Reading. An individual has (in the brain) a core identity theme. This core gives that individual a certain style of being--and reading. Each reader uses the physical literary work plus invariable codes (such as the shapes of letters) plus variable canons (different interpretive communities, for example) plus an individual style of reading to build a response both like and unlike other readers responses.Reuven Tsur in Israel has developed, in great detail, experimental models for the expressivity of poetic rhythms, of metaphor, and of word-sound in poetry. Richard Gerrig in the U.S. has experimented with the readers state of mind during and after a literary experience. He has shown how readers put aside ordinary knowledge and values while they read, treating, for example, criminals as heroes. His controlled studies have also investigated how readers accept, while reading, improbable or fantastic things (Coleridges willing suspension of disbelief), but discard them after they have finished.Two notable researchers are Dolf Zillmann and Peter Vorderer, both working in the field of communications and media psychology. Both have theorized and tested ideas about what produces emotions such as suspense, curiosity, surprise in readers, the necessary factors involved, and the role the reader plays. Jenefer Robinson, a researcher in emotion, has recently blended her studies on emotion with its role in literature, music, and art.Wolfgang Iser exemplifies the German tendency to theorize the reader and so posit a uniform response. For him, a literary work is not an object in itself but an effect to be explained. But he asserts this response is controlled by the text. For the real reader, he substitutes an implied reader, who is the reader a given literary work requires. In his model, the text controls. The readers activities are confined within limits set by the literary work. Iser describes the process of first reading, the subsequent development of the text into a whole, and how the dialogue between the reader and text takes place.Another important German reader-response critic was Hans-Robert Jauss, who defined literature as a dialectic process of production and reception. For Jauss, readers have a certain mental set, a horizon of expectations (Erwartungshorizont), from which perspective each reader, at any given time in history, reads. Reader-response criticism establishes these horizons of expectation by reading literary works of the period in question.Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience. Traditional, text-oriented critics often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic subjectivism, allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want. They accuse reader-response critics of saying the text doesnt exist. By contrast, text-oriented critics assume that one can understand a text while remaining immune to ones own culture, status, personality, and so on, and hence objectively.To reader-response critics, however, reading is always both subjective and objective, and their question is not which but how. Some reader-response critics (uniformists) assume a bi-active model of reading: the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls part. Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls the whole transaction (individualists). In such a reader-active model, readers and audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading (shared by many others) as well as their personal issues and values.Another objection to reader-response criticism is that it fails to account for the text being able to expand the readers understanding. While readers can and do put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally overlooked in reader-response criticism.Reader-response criticism relates to psychology, both experimental psychology for those attempting to find principles of response, and psychoanalytic psychology for those studying individual responses. Post-behaviorist psychologists of reading and of perception support the idea that it is the reader who makes meaning. Increasingly,cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, neuroscience, and neuropsychoanalysis have given reader-response critics powerful and detailed models for the aesthetic process.Q. Based on information in the passage, which of the following statements cannot be inferred?a)Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.b)One can sort reader-response theorists into three groups: those who focus upon the individual readers experience (individualists); those who conduct psychological experiments on a defined set of readers (experimenters); and those who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers (uniformists).c)The most fundamental difference among reader- response critics is between those who regard individual differences among readers responses as important and those who try to get around them.d)Some argue that artworks are now purposely being fabricated which lack meaning but rather the artworks are fabricated only to generate a reader response.e)Iser returns the reader-response theory to a study of the text by defining readers in terms of the text.Correct answer is option 'D'. 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the CAT exam syllabus. Information about Reader-response theory recognises the reader as an active agent who imparts real existence to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the readers role in re-creating literary works isignored. New Criticism had emphasised that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the authority or intention of the author, nor to the psychology of the reader, was allowed in the discussions of orthodox New Critics. The New Critics position assumed an objective, fixed text that could be studied apart from any human being, and this assumption persisted even into postmodern criticism.David Bleich had begun in the 1960s collecting statements by influencing students of their feelings and associations. He used these to theorize about the reading process and to refocus the classroom teaching of literature. He claimed that his classes generated knowledge, that is, knowledge of how particular persons recreate texts.Michael Steig and Walter Slatoff have, like Bleich, shown that every students highly personal responses can provide the basis for critical analyses in the classroom. Jeffrey Berman has encouraged students responding to texts to write anonymously and share with their classmates writings in response to literary works about sensitive subjects like drugs, suicidal thoughts, death in the family, parental abuse and the like. A kind of catharsis bordering on therapy results. In general, American reader-response critics have focused on individual readers responses. American journals like Reader, Reading Research Quarterly, and others publish articles applying reader-response theory to the teaching of literature.In 1967, Stanley Fish published Surprised by Sin, the first study of a large literary work (Paradise Lost) that focused on its readers experience. Since 1976, however, he has turned to real differences among real readers. He explores the reading tactics endorsed by different critical schools, by the literary professoriate, and by the legal profession, introducing the idea of interpretive communities that share particular modes of reading. In 1968, Norman Holland drew on psychoanalytic psychology in The Dynamics of Literary Response to model the literary work. He explored Freuds idea about introjection, involving the incorporation of attributes, attitudes or qualities of an absent idea or person of high significance, such as an absent parent or a recently deceased relative, into oneself. According to Hollands findings, each reader introjects a fantasy in the text, then modifies it with this and otherdefense mechanisms into an interpretation. In 1973, however, having recorded responses from real readers, Holland found variations too great to fit this model in which responses are mostly alike but show minor individual variations.Holland then developed a second model based on his case studies 5 Readers Reading. An individual has (in the brain) a core identity theme. This core gives that individual a certain style of being--and reading. Each reader uses the physical literary work plus invariable codes (such as the shapes of letters) plus variable canons (different interpretive communities, for example) plus an individual style of reading to build a response both like and unlike other readers responses.Reuven Tsur in Israel has developed, in great detail, experimental models for the expressivity of poetic rhythms, of metaphor, and of word-sound in poetry. Richard Gerrig in the U.S. has experimented with the readers state of mind during and after a literary experience. He has shown how readers put aside ordinary knowledge and values while they read, treating, for example, criminals as heroes. His controlled studies have also investigated how readers accept, while reading, improbable or fantastic things (Coleridges willing suspension of disbelief), but discard them after they have finished.Two notable researchers are Dolf Zillmann and Peter Vorderer, both working in the field of communications and media psychology. Both have theorized and tested ideas about what produces emotions such as suspense, curiosity, surprise in readers, the necessary factors involved, and the role the reader plays. Jenefer Robinson, a researcher in emotion, has recently blended her studies on emotion with its role in literature, music, and art.Wolfgang Iser exemplifies the German tendency to theorize the reader and so posit a uniform response. For him, a literary work is not an object in itself but an effect to be explained. But he asserts this response is controlled by the text. For the real reader, he substitutes an implied reader, who is the reader a given literary work requires. In his model, the text controls. The readers activities are confined within limits set by the literary work. Iser describes the process of first reading, the subsequent development of the text into a whole, and how the dialogue between the reader and text takes place.Another important German reader-response critic was Hans-Robert Jauss, who defined literature as a dialectic process of production and reception. For Jauss, readers have a certain mental set, a horizon of expectations (Erwartungshorizont), from which perspective each reader, at any given time in history, reads. Reader-response criticism establishes these horizons of expectation by reading literary works of the period in question.Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience. Traditional, text-oriented critics often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic subjectivism, allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want. They accuse reader-response critics of saying the text doesnt exist. By contrast, text-oriented critics assume that one can understand a text while remaining immune to ones own culture, status, personality, and so on, and hence objectively.To reader-response critics, however, reading is always both subjective and objective, and their question is not which but how. Some reader-response critics (uniformists) assume a bi-active model of reading: the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls part. Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls the whole transaction (individualists). In such a reader-active model, readers and audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading (shared by many others) as well as their personal issues and values.Another objection to reader-response criticism is that it fails to account for the text being able to expand the readers understanding. While readers can and do put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally overlooked in reader-response criticism.Reader-response criticism relates to psychology, both experimental psychology for those attempting to find principles of response, and psychoanalytic psychology for those studying individual responses. Post-behaviorist psychologists of reading and of perception support the idea that it is the reader who makes meaning. Increasingly,cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, neuroscience, and neuropsychoanalysis have given reader-response critics powerful and detailed models for the aesthetic process.Q. Based on information in the passage, which of the following statements cannot be inferred?a)Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.b)One can sort reader-response theorists into three groups: those who focus upon the individual readers experience (individualists); those who conduct psychological experiments on a defined set of readers (experimenters); and those who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers (uniformists).c)The most fundamental difference among reader- response critics is between those who regard individual differences among readers responses as important and those who try to get around them.d)Some argue that artworks are now purposely being fabricated which lack meaning but rather the artworks are fabricated only to generate a reader response.e)Iser returns the reader-response theory to a study of the text by defining readers in terms of the text.Correct answer is option 'D'. 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Find important definitions, questions, meanings, examples, exercises and tests below for Reader-response theory recognises the reader as an active agent who imparts real existence to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the readers role in re-creating literary works isignored. New Criticism had emphasised that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the authority or intention of the author, nor to the psychology of the reader, was allowed in the discussions of orthodox New Critics. The New Critics position assumed an objective, fixed text that could be studied apart from any human being, and this assumption persisted even into postmodern criticism.David Bleich had begun in the 1960s collecting statements by influencing students of their feelings and associations. He used these to theorize about the reading process and to refocus the classroom teaching of literature. He claimed that his classes generated knowledge, that is, knowledge of how particular persons recreate texts.Michael Steig and Walter Slatoff have, like Bleich, shown that every students highly personal responses can provide the basis for critical analyses in the classroom. Jeffrey Berman has encouraged students responding to texts to write anonymously and share with their classmates writings in response to literary works about sensitive subjects like drugs, suicidal thoughts, death in the family, parental abuse and the like. A kind of catharsis bordering on therapy results. In general, American reader-response critics have focused on individual readers responses. American journals like Reader, Reading Research Quarterly, and others publish articles applying reader-response theory to the teaching of literature.In 1967, Stanley Fish published Surprised by Sin, the first study of a large literary work (Paradise Lost) that focused on its readers experience. Since 1976, however, he has turned to real differences among real readers. He explores the reading tactics endorsed by different critical schools, by the literary professoriate, and by the legal profession, introducing the idea of interpretive communities that share particular modes of reading. In 1968, Norman Holland drew on psychoanalytic psychology in The Dynamics of Literary Response to model the literary work. He explored Freuds idea about introjection, involving the incorporation of attributes, attitudes or qualities of an absent idea or person of high significance, such as an absent parent or a recently deceased relative, into oneself. According to Hollands findings, each reader introjects a fantasy in the text, then modifies it with this and otherdefense mechanisms into an interpretation. In 1973, however, having recorded responses from real readers, Holland found variations too great to fit this model in which responses are mostly alike but show minor individual variations.Holland then developed a second model based on his case studies 5 Readers Reading. An individual has (in the brain) a core identity theme. This core gives that individual a certain style of being--and reading. Each reader uses the physical literary work plus invariable codes (such as the shapes of letters) plus variable canons (different interpretive communities, for example) plus an individual style of reading to build a response both like and unlike other readers responses.Reuven Tsur in Israel has developed, in great detail, experimental models for the expressivity of poetic rhythms, of metaphor, and of word-sound in poetry. Richard Gerrig in the U.S. has experimented with the readers state of mind during and after a literary experience. He has shown how readers put aside ordinary knowledge and values while they read, treating, for example, criminals as heroes. His controlled studies have also investigated how readers accept, while reading, improbable or fantastic things (Coleridges willing suspension of disbelief), but discard them after they have finished.Two notable researchers are Dolf Zillmann and Peter Vorderer, both working in the field of communications and media psychology. Both have theorized and tested ideas about what produces emotions such as suspense, curiosity, surprise in readers, the necessary factors involved, and the role the reader plays. Jenefer Robinson, a researcher in emotion, has recently blended her studies on emotion with its role in literature, music, and art.Wolfgang Iser exemplifies the German tendency to theorize the reader and so posit a uniform response. For him, a literary work is not an object in itself but an effect to be explained. But he asserts this response is controlled by the text. For the real reader, he substitutes an implied reader, who is the reader a given literary work requires. In his model, the text controls. The readers activities are confined within limits set by the literary work. Iser describes the process of first reading, the subsequent development of the text into a whole, and how the dialogue between the reader and text takes place.Another important German reader-response critic was Hans-Robert Jauss, who defined literature as a dialectic process of production and reception. For Jauss, readers have a certain mental set, a horizon of expectations (Erwartungshorizont), from which perspective each reader, at any given time in history, reads. Reader-response criticism establishes these horizons of expectation by reading literary works of the period in question.Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience. Traditional, text-oriented critics often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic subjectivism, allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want. They accuse reader-response critics of saying the text doesnt exist. By contrast, text-oriented critics assume that one can understand a text while remaining immune to ones own culture, status, personality, and so on, and hence objectively.To reader-response critics, however, reading is always both subjective and objective, and their question is not which but how. Some reader-response critics (uniformists) assume a bi-active model of reading: the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls part. Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls the whole transaction (individualists). In such a reader-active model, readers and audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading (shared by many others) as well as their personal issues and values.Another objection to reader-response criticism is that it fails to account for the text being able to expand the readers understanding. While readers can and do put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally overlooked in reader-response criticism.Reader-response criticism relates to psychology, both experimental psychology for those attempting to find principles of response, and psychoanalytic psychology for those studying individual responses. Post-behaviorist psychologists of reading and of perception support the idea that it is the reader who makes meaning. Increasingly,cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, neuroscience, and neuropsychoanalysis have given reader-response critics powerful and detailed models for the aesthetic process.Q. Based on information in the passage, which of the following statements cannot be inferred?a)Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.b)One can sort reader-response theorists into three groups: those who focus upon the individual readers experience (individualists); those who conduct psychological experiments on a defined set of readers (experimenters); and those who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers (uniformists).c)The most fundamental difference among reader- response critics is between those who regard individual differences among readers responses as important and those who try to get around them.d)Some argue that artworks are now purposely being fabricated which lack meaning but rather the artworks are fabricated only to generate a reader response.e)Iser returns the reader-response theory to a study of the text by defining readers in terms of the text.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer?.
Solutions for Reader-response theory recognises the reader as an active agent who imparts real existence to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the readers role in re-creating literary works isignored. New Criticism had emphasised that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the authority or intention of the author, nor to the psychology of the reader, was allowed in the discussions of orthodox New Critics. The New Critics position assumed an objective, fixed text that could be studied apart from any human being, and this assumption persisted even into postmodern criticism.David Bleich had begun in the 1960s collecting statements by influencing students of their feelings and associations. He used these to theorize about the reading process and to refocus the classroom teaching of literature. He claimed that his classes generated knowledge, that is, knowledge of how particular persons recreate texts.Michael Steig and Walter Slatoff have, like Bleich, shown that every students highly personal responses can provide the basis for critical analyses in the classroom. Jeffrey Berman has encouraged students responding to texts to write anonymously and share with their classmates writings in response to literary works about sensitive subjects like drugs, suicidal thoughts, death in the family, parental abuse and the like. A kind of catharsis bordering on therapy results. In general, American reader-response critics have focused on individual readers responses. American journals like Reader, Reading Research Quarterly, and others publish articles applying reader-response theory to the teaching of literature.In 1967, Stanley Fish published Surprised by Sin, the first study of a large literary work (Paradise Lost) that focused on its readers experience. Since 1976, however, he has turned to real differences among real readers. He explores the reading tactics endorsed by different critical schools, by the literary professoriate, and by the legal profession, introducing the idea of interpretive communities that share particular modes of reading. In 1968, Norman Holland drew on psychoanalytic psychology in The Dynamics of Literary Response to model the literary work. He explored Freuds idea about introjection, involving the incorporation of attributes, attitudes or qualities of an absent idea or person of high significance, such as an absent parent or a recently deceased relative, into oneself. According to Hollands findings, each reader introjects a fantasy in the text, then modifies it with this and otherdefense mechanisms into an interpretation. In 1973, however, having recorded responses from real readers, Holland found variations too great to fit this model in which responses are mostly alike but show minor individual variations.Holland then developed a second model based on his case studies 5 Readers Reading. An individual has (in the brain) a core identity theme. This core gives that individual a certain style of being--and reading. Each reader uses the physical literary work plus invariable codes (such as the shapes of letters) plus variable canons (different interpretive communities, for example) plus an individual style of reading to build a response both like and unlike other readers responses.Reuven Tsur in Israel has developed, in great detail, experimental models for the expressivity of poetic rhythms, of metaphor, and of word-sound in poetry. Richard Gerrig in the U.S. has experimented with the readers state of mind during and after a literary experience. He has shown how readers put aside ordinary knowledge and values while they read, treating, for example, criminals as heroes. His controlled studies have also investigated how readers accept, while reading, improbable or fantastic things (Coleridges willing suspension of disbelief), but discard them after they have finished.Two notable researchers are Dolf Zillmann and Peter Vorderer, both working in the field of communications and media psychology. Both have theorized and tested ideas about what produces emotions such as suspense, curiosity, surprise in readers, the necessary factors involved, and the role the reader plays. Jenefer Robinson, a researcher in emotion, has recently blended her studies on emotion with its role in literature, music, and art.Wolfgang Iser exemplifies the German tendency to theorize the reader and so posit a uniform response. For him, a literary work is not an object in itself but an effect to be explained. But he asserts this response is controlled by the text. For the real reader, he substitutes an implied reader, who is the reader a given literary work requires. In his model, the text controls. The readers activities are confined within limits set by the literary work. Iser describes the process of first reading, the subsequent development of the text into a whole, and how the dialogue between the reader and text takes place.Another important German reader-response critic was Hans-Robert Jauss, who defined literature as a dialectic process of production and reception. For Jauss, readers have a certain mental set, a horizon of expectations (Erwartungshorizont), from which perspective each reader, at any given time in history, reads. Reader-response criticism establishes these horizons of expectation by reading literary works of the period in question.Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience. Traditional, text-oriented critics often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic subjectivism, allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want. They accuse reader-response critics of saying the text doesnt exist. By contrast, text-oriented critics assume that one can understand a text while remaining immune to ones own culture, status, personality, and so on, and hence objectively.To reader-response critics, however, reading is always both subjective and objective, and their question is not which but how. Some reader-response critics (uniformists) assume a bi-active model of reading: the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls part. Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls the whole transaction (individualists). In such a reader-active model, readers and audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading (shared by many others) as well as their personal issues and values.Another objection to reader-response criticism is that it fails to account for the text being able to expand the readers understanding. While readers can and do put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally overlooked in reader-response criticism.Reader-response criticism relates to psychology, both experimental psychology for those attempting to find principles of response, and psychoanalytic psychology for those studying individual responses. Post-behaviorist psychologists of reading and of perception support the idea that it is the reader who makes meaning. Increasingly,cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, neuroscience, and neuropsychoanalysis have given reader-response critics powerful and detailed models for the aesthetic process.Q. Based on information in the passage, which of the following statements cannot be inferred?a)Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.b)One can sort reader-response theorists into three groups: those who focus upon the individual readers experience (individualists); those who conduct psychological experiments on a defined set of readers (experimenters); and those who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers (uniformists).c)The most fundamental difference among reader- response critics is between those who regard individual differences among readers responses as important and those who try to get around them.d)Some argue that artworks are now purposely being fabricated which lack meaning but rather the artworks are fabricated only to generate a reader response.e)Iser returns the reader-response theory to a study of the text by defining readers in terms of the text.Correct answer is option 'D'. 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Here you can find the meaning of Reader-response theory recognises the reader as an active agent who imparts real existence to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the readers role in re-creating literary works isignored. New Criticism had emphasised that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the authority or intention of the author, nor to the psychology of the reader, was allowed in the discussions of orthodox New Critics. The New Critics position assumed an objective, fixed text that could be studied apart from any human being, and this assumption persisted even into postmodern criticism.David Bleich had begun in the 1960s collecting statements by influencing students of their feelings and associations. He used these to theorize about the reading process and to refocus the classroom teaching of literature. He claimed that his classes generated knowledge, that is, knowledge of how particular persons recreate texts.Michael Steig and Walter Slatoff have, like Bleich, shown that every students highly personal responses can provide the basis for critical analyses in the classroom. Jeffrey Berman has encouraged students responding to texts to write anonymously and share with their classmates writings in response to literary works about sensitive subjects like drugs, suicidal thoughts, death in the family, parental abuse and the like. A kind of catharsis bordering on therapy results. In general, American reader-response critics have focused on individual readers responses. American journals like Reader, Reading Research Quarterly, and others publish articles applying reader-response theory to the teaching of literature.In 1967, Stanley Fish published Surprised by Sin, the first study of a large literary work (Paradise Lost) that focused on its readers experience. Since 1976, however, he has turned to real differences among real readers. He explores the reading tactics endorsed by different critical schools, by the literary professoriate, and by the legal profession, introducing the idea of interpretive communities that share particular modes of reading. In 1968, Norman Holland drew on psychoanalytic psychology in The Dynamics of Literary Response to model the literary work. He explored Freuds idea about introjection, involving the incorporation of attributes, attitudes or qualities of an absent idea or person of high significance, such as an absent parent or a recently deceased relative, into oneself. According to Hollands findings, each reader introjects a fantasy in the text, then modifies it with this and otherdefense mechanisms into an interpretation. In 1973, however, having recorded responses from real readers, Holland found variations too great to fit this model in which responses are mostly alike but show minor individual variations.Holland then developed a second model based on his case studies 5 Readers Reading. An individual has (in the brain) a core identity theme. This core gives that individual a certain style of being--and reading. Each reader uses the physical literary work plus invariable codes (such as the shapes of letters) plus variable canons (different interpretive communities, for example) plus an individual style of reading to build a response both like and unlike other readers responses.Reuven Tsur in Israel has developed, in great detail, experimental models for the expressivity of poetic rhythms, of metaphor, and of word-sound in poetry. Richard Gerrig in the U.S. has experimented with the readers state of mind during and after a literary experience. He has shown how readers put aside ordinary knowledge and values while they read, treating, for example, criminals as heroes. His controlled studies have also investigated how readers accept, while reading, improbable or fantastic things (Coleridges willing suspension of disbelief), but discard them after they have finished.Two notable researchers are Dolf Zillmann and Peter Vorderer, both working in the field of communications and media psychology. Both have theorized and tested ideas about what produces emotions such as suspense, curiosity, surprise in readers, the necessary factors involved, and the role the reader plays. Jenefer Robinson, a researcher in emotion, has recently blended her studies on emotion with its role in literature, music, and art.Wolfgang Iser exemplifies the German tendency to theorize the reader and so posit a uniform response. For him, a literary work is not an object in itself but an effect to be explained. But he asserts this response is controlled by the text. For the real reader, he substitutes an implied reader, who is the reader a given literary work requires. In his model, the text controls. The readers activities are confined within limits set by the literary work. Iser describes the process of first reading, the subsequent development of the text into a whole, and how the dialogue between the reader and text takes place.Another important German reader-response critic was Hans-Robert Jauss, who defined literature as a dialectic process of production and reception. For Jauss, readers have a certain mental set, a horizon of expectations (Erwartungshorizont), from which perspective each reader, at any given time in history, reads. Reader-response criticism establishes these horizons of expectation by reading literary works of the period in question.Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience. Traditional, text-oriented critics often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic subjectivism, allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want. They accuse reader-response critics of saying the text doesnt exist. By contrast, text-oriented critics assume that one can understand a text while remaining immune to ones own culture, status, personality, and so on, and hence objectively.To reader-response critics, however, reading is always both subjective and objective, and their question is not which but how. Some reader-response critics (uniformists) assume a bi-active model of reading: the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls part. Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls the whole transaction (individualists). In such a reader-active model, readers and audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading (shared by many others) as well as their personal issues and values.Another objection to reader-response criticism is that it fails to account for the text being able to expand the readers understanding. While readers can and do put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally overlooked in reader-response criticism.Reader-response criticism relates to psychology, both experimental psychology for those attempting to find principles of response, and psychoanalytic psychology for those studying individual responses. Post-behaviorist psychologists of reading and of perception support the idea that it is the reader who makes meaning. Increasingly,cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, neuroscience, and neuropsychoanalysis have given reader-response critics powerful and detailed models for the aesthetic process.Q. Based on information in the passage, which of the following statements cannot be inferred?a)Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.b)One can sort reader-response theorists into three groups: those who focus upon the individual readers experience (individualists); those who conduct psychological experiments on a defined set of readers (experimenters); and those who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers (uniformists).c)The most fundamental difference among reader- response critics is between those who regard individual differences among readers responses as important and those who try to get around them.d)Some argue that artworks are now purposely being fabricated which lack meaning but rather the artworks are fabricated only to generate a reader response.e)Iser returns the reader-response theory to a study of the text by defining readers in terms of the text.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer? defined & explained in the simplest way possible. Besides giving the explanation of
Reader-response theory recognises the reader as an active agent who imparts real existence to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the readers role in re-creating literary works isignored. New Criticism had emphasised that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the authority or intention of the author, nor to the psychology of the reader, was allowed in the discussions of orthodox New Critics. The New Critics position assumed an objective, fixed text that could be studied apart from any human being, and this assumption persisted even into postmodern criticism.David Bleich had begun in the 1960s collecting statements by influencing students of their feelings and associations. He used these to theorize about the reading process and to refocus the classroom teaching of literature. He claimed that his classes generated knowledge, that is, knowledge of how particular persons recreate texts.Michael Steig and Walter Slatoff have, like Bleich, shown that every students highly personal responses can provide the basis for critical analyses in the classroom. Jeffrey Berman has encouraged students responding to texts to write anonymously and share with their classmates writings in response to literary works about sensitive subjects like drugs, suicidal thoughts, death in the family, parental abuse and the like. A kind of catharsis bordering on therapy results. In general, American reader-response critics have focused on individual readers responses. American journals like Reader, Reading Research Quarterly, and others publish articles applying reader-response theory to the teaching of literature.In 1967, Stanley Fish published Surprised by Sin, the first study of a large literary work (Paradise Lost) that focused on its readers experience. Since 1976, however, he has turned to real differences among real readers. He explores the reading tactics endorsed by different critical schools, by the literary professoriate, and by the legal profession, introducing the idea of interpretive communities that share particular modes of reading. In 1968, Norman Holland drew on psychoanalytic psychology in The Dynamics of Literary Response to model the literary work. He explored Freuds idea about introjection, involving the incorporation of attributes, attitudes or qualities of an absent idea or person of high significance, such as an absent parent or a recently deceased relative, into oneself. According to Hollands findings, each reader introjects a fantasy in the text, then modifies it with this and otherdefense mechanisms into an interpretation. In 1973, however, having recorded responses from real readers, Holland found variations too great to fit this model in which responses are mostly alike but show minor individual variations.Holland then developed a second model based on his case studies 5 Readers Reading. An individual has (in the brain) a core identity theme. This core gives that individual a certain style of being--and reading. Each reader uses the physical literary work plus invariable codes (such as the shapes of letters) plus variable canons (different interpretive communities, for example) plus an individual style of reading to build a response both like and unlike other readers responses.Reuven Tsur in Israel has developed, in great detail, experimental models for the expressivity of poetic rhythms, of metaphor, and of word-sound in poetry. Richard Gerrig in the U.S. has experimented with the readers state of mind during and after a literary experience. He has shown how readers put aside ordinary knowledge and values while they read, treating, for example, criminals as heroes. His controlled studies have also investigated how readers accept, while reading, improbable or fantastic things (Coleridges willing suspension of disbelief), but discard them after they have finished.Two notable researchers are Dolf Zillmann and Peter Vorderer, both working in the field of communications and media psychology. Both have theorized and tested ideas about what produces emotions such as suspense, curiosity, surprise in readers, the necessary factors involved, and the role the reader plays. Jenefer Robinson, a researcher in emotion, has recently blended her studies on emotion with its role in literature, music, and art.Wolfgang Iser exemplifies the German tendency to theorize the reader and so posit a uniform response. For him, a literary work is not an object in itself but an effect to be explained. But he asserts this response is controlled by the text. For the real reader, he substitutes an implied reader, who is the reader a given literary work requires. In his model, the text controls. The readers activities are confined within limits set by the literary work. Iser describes the process of first reading, the subsequent development of the text into a whole, and how the dialogue between the reader and text takes place.Another important German reader-response critic was Hans-Robert Jauss, who defined literature as a dialectic process of production and reception. For Jauss, readers have a certain mental set, a horizon of expectations (Erwartungshorizont), from which perspective each reader, at any given time in history, reads. Reader-response criticism establishes these horizons of expectation by reading literary works of the period in question.Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience. Traditional, text-oriented critics often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic subjectivism, allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want. They accuse reader-response critics of saying the text doesnt exist. By contrast, text-oriented critics assume that one can understand a text while remaining immune to ones own culture, status, personality, and so on, and hence objectively.To reader-response critics, however, reading is always both subjective and objective, and their question is not which but how. Some reader-response critics (uniformists) assume a bi-active model of reading: the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls part. Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls the whole transaction (individualists). In such a reader-active model, readers and audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading (shared by many others) as well as their personal issues and values.Another objection to reader-response criticism is that it fails to account for the text being able to expand the readers understanding. While readers can and do put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally overlooked in reader-response criticism.Reader-response criticism relates to psychology, both experimental psychology for those attempting to find principles of response, and psychoanalytic psychology for those studying individual responses. Post-behaviorist psychologists of reading and of perception support the idea that it is the reader who makes meaning. Increasingly,cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, neuroscience, and neuropsychoanalysis have given reader-response critics powerful and detailed models for the aesthetic process.Q. Based on information in the passage, which of the following statements cannot be inferred?a)Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.b)One can sort reader-response theorists into three groups: those who focus upon the individual readers experience (individualists); those who conduct psychological experiments on a defined set of readers (experimenters); and those who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers (uniformists).c)The most fundamental difference among reader- response critics is between those who regard individual differences among readers responses as important and those who try to get around them.d)Some argue that artworks are now purposely being fabricated which lack meaning but rather the artworks are fabricated only to generate a reader response.e)Iser returns the reader-response theory to a study of the text by defining readers in terms of the text.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer?, a detailed solution for Reader-response theory recognises the reader as an active agent who imparts real existence to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the readers role in re-creating literary works isignored. New Criticism had emphasised that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the authority or intention of the author, nor to the psychology of the reader, was allowed in the discussions of orthodox New Critics. The New Critics position assumed an objective, fixed text that could be studied apart from any human being, and this assumption persisted even into postmodern criticism.David Bleich had begun in the 1960s collecting statements by influencing students of their feelings and associations. He used these to theorize about the reading process and to refocus the classroom teaching of literature. He claimed that his classes generated knowledge, that is, knowledge of how particular persons recreate texts.Michael Steig and Walter Slatoff have, like Bleich, shown that every students highly personal responses can provide the basis for critical analyses in the classroom. Jeffrey Berman has encouraged students responding to texts to write anonymously and share with their classmates writings in response to literary works about sensitive subjects like drugs, suicidal thoughts, death in the family, parental abuse and the like. A kind of catharsis bordering on therapy results. In general, American reader-response critics have focused on individual readers responses. American journals like Reader, Reading Research Quarterly, and others publish articles applying reader-response theory to the teaching of literature.In 1967, Stanley Fish published Surprised by Sin, the first study of a large literary work (Paradise Lost) that focused on its readers experience. Since 1976, however, he has turned to real differences among real readers. He explores the reading tactics endorsed by different critical schools, by the literary professoriate, and by the legal profession, introducing the idea of interpretive communities that share particular modes of reading. In 1968, Norman Holland drew on psychoanalytic psychology in The Dynamics of Literary Response to model the literary work. He explored Freuds idea about introjection, involving the incorporation of attributes, attitudes or qualities of an absent idea or person of high significance, such as an absent parent or a recently deceased relative, into oneself. According to Hollands findings, each reader introjects a fantasy in the text, then modifies it with this and otherdefense mechanisms into an interpretation. In 1973, however, having recorded responses from real readers, Holland found variations too great to fit this model in which responses are mostly alike but show minor individual variations.Holland then developed a second model based on his case studies 5 Readers Reading. An individual has (in the brain) a core identity theme. This core gives that individual a certain style of being--and reading. Each reader uses the physical literary work plus invariable codes (such as the shapes of letters) plus variable canons (different interpretive communities, for example) plus an individual style of reading to build a response both like and unlike other readers responses.Reuven Tsur in Israel has developed, in great detail, experimental models for the expressivity of poetic rhythms, of metaphor, and of word-sound in poetry. Richard Gerrig in the U.S. has experimented with the readers state of mind during and after a literary experience. He has shown how readers put aside ordinary knowledge and values while they read, treating, for example, criminals as heroes. His controlled studies have also investigated how readers accept, while reading, improbable or fantastic things (Coleridges willing suspension of disbelief), but discard them after they have finished.Two notable researchers are Dolf Zillmann and Peter Vorderer, both working in the field of communications and media psychology. Both have theorized and tested ideas about what produces emotions such as suspense, curiosity, surprise in readers, the necessary factors involved, and the role the reader plays. Jenefer Robinson, a researcher in emotion, has recently blended her studies on emotion with its role in literature, music, and art.Wolfgang Iser exemplifies the German tendency to theorize the reader and so posit a uniform response. For him, a literary work is not an object in itself but an effect to be explained. But he asserts this response is controlled by the text. For the real reader, he substitutes an implied reader, who is the reader a given literary work requires. In his model, the text controls. The readers activities are confined within limits set by the literary work. Iser describes the process of first reading, the subsequent development of the text into a whole, and how the dialogue between the reader and text takes place.Another important German reader-response critic was Hans-Robert Jauss, who defined literature as a dialectic process of production and reception. For Jauss, readers have a certain mental set, a horizon of expectations (Erwartungshorizont), from which perspective each reader, at any given time in history, reads. Reader-response criticism establishes these horizons of expectation by reading literary works of the period in question.Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience. Traditional, text-oriented critics often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic subjectivism, allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want. They accuse reader-response critics of saying the text doesnt exist. By contrast, text-oriented critics assume that one can understand a text while remaining immune to ones own culture, status, personality, and so on, and hence objectively.To reader-response critics, however, reading is always both subjective and objective, and their question is not which but how. Some reader-response critics (uniformists) assume a bi-active model of reading: the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls part. Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls the whole transaction (individualists). In such a reader-active model, readers and audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading (shared by many others) as well as their personal issues and values.Another objection to reader-response criticism is that it fails to account for the text being able to expand the readers understanding. While readers can and do put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally overlooked in reader-response criticism.Reader-response criticism relates to psychology, both experimental psychology for those attempting to find principles of response, and psychoanalytic psychology for those studying individual responses. Post-behaviorist psychologists of reading and of perception support the idea that it is the reader who makes meaning. Increasingly,cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, neuroscience, and neuropsychoanalysis have given reader-response critics powerful and detailed models for the aesthetic process.Q. Based on information in the passage, which of the following statements cannot be inferred?a)Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.b)One can sort reader-response theorists into three groups: those who focus upon the individual readers experience (individualists); those who conduct psychological experiments on a defined set of readers (experimenters); and those who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers (uniformists).c)The most fundamental difference among reader- response critics is between those who regard individual differences among readers responses as important and those who try to get around them.d)Some argue that artworks are now purposely being fabricated which lack meaning but rather the artworks are fabricated only to generate a reader response.e)Iser returns the reader-response theory to a study of the text by defining readers in terms of the text.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer? has been provided alongside types of Reader-response theory recognises the reader as an active agent who imparts real existence to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the readers role in re-creating literary works isignored. New Criticism had emphasised that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the authority or intention of the author, nor to the psychology of the reader, was allowed in the discussions of orthodox New Critics. The New Critics position assumed an objective, fixed text that could be studied apart from any human being, and this assumption persisted even into postmodern criticism.David Bleich had begun in the 1960s collecting statements by influencing students of their feelings and associations. He used these to theorize about the reading process and to refocus the classroom teaching of literature. He claimed that his classes generated knowledge, that is, knowledge of how particular persons recreate texts.Michael Steig and Walter Slatoff have, like Bleich, shown that every students highly personal responses can provide the basis for critical analyses in the classroom. Jeffrey Berman has encouraged students responding to texts to write anonymously and share with their classmates writings in response to literary works about sensitive subjects like drugs, suicidal thoughts, death in the family, parental abuse and the like. A kind of catharsis bordering on therapy results. In general, American reader-response critics have focused on individual readers responses. American journals like Reader, Reading Research Quarterly, and others publish articles applying reader-response theory to the teaching of literature.In 1967, Stanley Fish published Surprised by Sin, the first study of a large literary work (Paradise Lost) that focused on its readers experience. Since 1976, however, he has turned to real differences among real readers. He explores the reading tactics endorsed by different critical schools, by the literary professoriate, and by the legal profession, introducing the idea of interpretive communities that share particular modes of reading. In 1968, Norman Holland drew on psychoanalytic psychology in The Dynamics of Literary Response to model the literary work. He explored Freuds idea about introjection, involving the incorporation of attributes, attitudes or qualities of an absent idea or person of high significance, such as an absent parent or a recently deceased relative, into oneself. According to Hollands findings, each reader introjects a fantasy in the text, then modifies it with this and otherdefense mechanisms into an interpretation. In 1973, however, having recorded responses from real readers, Holland found variations too great to fit this model in which responses are mostly alike but show minor individual variations.Holland then developed a second model based on his case studies 5 Readers Reading. An individual has (in the brain) a core identity theme. This core gives that individual a certain style of being--and reading. Each reader uses the physical literary work plus invariable codes (such as the shapes of letters) plus variable canons (different interpretive communities, for example) plus an individual style of reading to build a response both like and unlike other readers responses.Reuven Tsur in Israel has developed, in great detail, experimental models for the expressivity of poetic rhythms, of metaphor, and of word-sound in poetry. Richard Gerrig in the U.S. has experimented with the readers state of mind during and after a literary experience. He has shown how readers put aside ordinary knowledge and values while they read, treating, for example, criminals as heroes. His controlled studies have also investigated how readers accept, while reading, improbable or fantastic things (Coleridges willing suspension of disbelief), but discard them after they have finished.Two notable researchers are Dolf Zillmann and Peter Vorderer, both working in the field of communications and media psychology. Both have theorized and tested ideas about what produces emotions such as suspense, curiosity, surprise in readers, the necessary factors involved, and the role the reader plays. Jenefer Robinson, a researcher in emotion, has recently blended her studies on emotion with its role in literature, music, and art.Wolfgang Iser exemplifies the German tendency to theorize the reader and so posit a uniform response. For him, a literary work is not an object in itself but an effect to be explained. But he asserts this response is controlled by the text. For the real reader, he substitutes an implied reader, who is the reader a given literary work requires. In his model, the text controls. The readers activities are confined within limits set by the literary work. Iser describes the process of first reading, the subsequent development of the text into a whole, and how the dialogue between the reader and text takes place.Another important German reader-response critic was Hans-Robert Jauss, who defined literature as a dialectic process of production and reception. For Jauss, readers have a certain mental set, a horizon of expectations (Erwartungshorizont), from which perspective each reader, at any given time in history, reads. Reader-response criticism establishes these horizons of expectation by reading literary works of the period in question.Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience. Traditional, text-oriented critics often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic subjectivism, allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want. They accuse reader-response critics of saying the text doesnt exist. By contrast, text-oriented critics assume that one can understand a text while remaining immune to ones own culture, status, personality, and so on, and hence objectively.To reader-response critics, however, reading is always both subjective and objective, and their question is not which but how. Some reader-response critics (uniformists) assume a bi-active model of reading: the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls part. Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls the whole transaction (individualists). In such a reader-active model, readers and audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading (shared by many others) as well as their personal issues and values.Another objection to reader-response criticism is that it fails to account for the text being able to expand the readers understanding. While readers can and do put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally overlooked in reader-response criticism.Reader-response criticism relates to psychology, both experimental psychology for those attempting to find principles of response, and psychoanalytic psychology for those studying individual responses. Post-behaviorist psychologists of reading and of perception support the idea that it is the reader who makes meaning. Increasingly,cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, neuroscience, and neuropsychoanalysis have given reader-response critics powerful and detailed models for the aesthetic process.Q. Based on information in the passage, which of the following statements cannot be inferred?a)Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.b)One can sort reader-response theorists into three groups: those who focus upon the individual readers experience (individualists); those who conduct psychological experiments on a defined set of readers (experimenters); and those who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers (uniformists).c)The most fundamental difference among reader- response critics is between those who regard individual differences among readers responses as important and those who try to get around them.d)Some argue that artworks are now purposely being fabricated which lack meaning but rather the artworks are fabricated only to generate a reader response.e)Iser returns the reader-response theory to a study of the text by defining readers in terms of the text.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer? theory, EduRev gives you an
ample number of questions to practice Reader-response theory recognises the reader as an active agent who imparts real existence to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance. It stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the readers role in re-creating literary works isignored. New Criticism had emphasised that only that which is within a text is part of the meaning of a text. No appeal to the authority or intention of the author, nor to the psychology of the reader, was allowed in the discussions of orthodox New Critics. The New Critics position assumed an objective, fixed text that could be studied apart from any human being, and this assumption persisted even into postmodern criticism.David Bleich had begun in the 1960s collecting statements by influencing students of their feelings and associations. He used these to theorize about the reading process and to refocus the classroom teaching of literature. He claimed that his classes generated knowledge, that is, knowledge of how particular persons recreate texts.Michael Steig and Walter Slatoff have, like Bleich, shown that every students highly personal responses can provide the basis for critical analyses in the classroom. Jeffrey Berman has encouraged students responding to texts to write anonymously and share with their classmates writings in response to literary works about sensitive subjects like drugs, suicidal thoughts, death in the family, parental abuse and the like. A kind of catharsis bordering on therapy results. In general, American reader-response critics have focused on individual readers responses. American journals like Reader, Reading Research Quarterly, and others publish articles applying reader-response theory to the teaching of literature.In 1967, Stanley Fish published Surprised by Sin, the first study of a large literary work (Paradise Lost) that focused on its readers experience. Since 1976, however, he has turned to real differences among real readers. He explores the reading tactics endorsed by different critical schools, by the literary professoriate, and by the legal profession, introducing the idea of interpretive communities that share particular modes of reading. In 1968, Norman Holland drew on psychoanalytic psychology in The Dynamics of Literary Response to model the literary work. He explored Freuds idea about introjection, involving the incorporation of attributes, attitudes or qualities of an absent idea or person of high significance, such as an absent parent or a recently deceased relative, into oneself. According to Hollands findings, each reader introjects a fantasy in the text, then modifies it with this and otherdefense mechanisms into an interpretation. In 1973, however, having recorded responses from real readers, Holland found variations too great to fit this model in which responses are mostly alike but show minor individual variations.Holland then developed a second model based on his case studies 5 Readers Reading. An individual has (in the brain) a core identity theme. This core gives that individual a certain style of being--and reading. Each reader uses the physical literary work plus invariable codes (such as the shapes of letters) plus variable canons (different interpretive communities, for example) plus an individual style of reading to build a response both like and unlike other readers responses.Reuven Tsur in Israel has developed, in great detail, experimental models for the expressivity of poetic rhythms, of metaphor, and of word-sound in poetry. Richard Gerrig in the U.S. has experimented with the readers state of mind during and after a literary experience. He has shown how readers put aside ordinary knowledge and values while they read, treating, for example, criminals as heroes. His controlled studies have also investigated how readers accept, while reading, improbable or fantastic things (Coleridges willing suspension of disbelief), but discard them after they have finished.Two notable researchers are Dolf Zillmann and Peter Vorderer, both working in the field of communications and media psychology. Both have theorized and tested ideas about what produces emotions such as suspense, curiosity, surprise in readers, the necessary factors involved, and the role the reader plays. Jenefer Robinson, a researcher in emotion, has recently blended her studies on emotion with its role in literature, music, and art.Wolfgang Iser exemplifies the German tendency to theorize the reader and so posit a uniform response. For him, a literary work is not an object in itself but an effect to be explained. But he asserts this response is controlled by the text. For the real reader, he substitutes an implied reader, who is the reader a given literary work requires. In his model, the text controls. The readers activities are confined within limits set by the literary work. Iser describes the process of first reading, the subsequent development of the text into a whole, and how the dialogue between the reader and text takes place.Another important German reader-response critic was Hans-Robert Jauss, who defined literature as a dialectic process of production and reception. For Jauss, readers have a certain mental set, a horizon of expectations (Erwartungshorizont), from which perspective each reader, at any given time in history, reads. Reader-response criticism establishes these horizons of expectation by reading literary works of the period in question.Reader-response critics hold that, to understand the literary experience or the meaning of a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create that meaning and experience. Traditional, text-oriented critics often think of reader-response criticism as an anarchic subjectivism, allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want. They accuse reader-response critics of saying the text doesnt exist. By contrast, text-oriented critics assume that one can understand a text while remaining immune to ones own culture, status, personality, and so on, and hence objectively.To reader-response critics, however, reading is always both subjective and objective, and their question is not which but how. Some reader-response critics (uniformists) assume a bi-active model of reading: the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls part. Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls the whole transaction (individualists). In such a reader-active model, readers and audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading (shared by many others) as well as their personal issues and values.Another objection to reader-response criticism is that it fails to account for the text being able to expand the readers understanding. While readers can and do put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally overlooked in reader-response criticism.Reader-response criticism relates to psychology, both experimental psychology for those attempting to find principles of response, and psychoanalytic psychology for those studying individual responses. Post-behaviorist psychologists of reading and of perception support the idea that it is the reader who makes meaning. Increasingly,cognitive psychology, psycholinguistics, neuroscience, and neuropsychoanalysis have given reader-response critics powerful and detailed models for the aesthetic process.Q. Based on information in the passage, which of the following statements cannot be inferred?a)Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader and his or her experience of a literary work, in contrast to other schools and theories that focus attention primarily on the author or the content and form of the work.b)One can sort reader-response theorists into three groups: those who focus upon the individual readers experience (individualists); those who conduct psychological experiments on a defined set of readers (experimenters); and those who assume a fairly uniform response by all readers (uniformists).c)The most fundamental difference among reader- response critics is between those who regard individual differences among readers responses as important and those who try to get around them.d)Some argue that artworks are now purposely being fabricated which lack meaning but rather the artworks are fabricated only to generate a reader response.e)Iser returns the reader-response theory to a study of the text by defining readers in terms of the text.Correct answer is option 'D'. Can you explain this answer? tests, examples and also practice CAT tests.