A text doesn't even exist, in a sense, until it

is read by some reader

Reception Theory is a version of Reader Response Literary
Theory

An important concept of RT is that media text – individual

movie or television program

Meaning is created as a result of interaction between the

reader/audience and the text/content.
 If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it
make a sound?
a philosophical question

 Unheard melodies are sweeter than the heard ones.

William wordsworth

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 "Literary theory that focuses on the reader
and his or her experience of a literary work"

 Describes what goes on in the reader’s mind

while reading/viewing

 The construction of the text within the reader

 Text is not the most important component;
the reader is
(the reader creates the text as much as the author does)

 Based on rhetoric, the art of persuasion

◦ The role of the reader cannot be omitted
from our understanding of literature.

◦ Readers do not passively consume the

meaning presented to them by an objective
literary text; rather, they actively make the
meaning they find in literature.
 Reader is necessary third party in the
relationship that constitutes the literary work.

 READER + TEXT = MEANING

Reader

Text Author
…raises theoretical questions about
 whether our responses to a text are the same as
its meanings,
 whether a work can have as many meanings as
we have responses to it, and
 whether some responses are more valid than,
or superior to, others.
 Attention to reading process emerged during
1930s as a reaction against the growing
tendency to reject the reader’s role in creating
meaning

New Criticism focuses on the text, finding all meaning and

value in it.
◦ Stanley Fish

◦ Wayne Booth

◦ Louise Rosenblatt

◦ Wolfgang Iser
Formulated the Transactional Reader Response
Theory in 1978, although the groundwork was
laid much earlier.

According to this theory, there are 2 types of

responses that all readers have to text:

Efferent responses
Aesthetic responses
 The teacher’s role
according to the
Transactional – Reader
Response Theory is to
create a path to facilitate
the students’
exploration of the
curriculum by
mentoring, guiding,
and adapting lessons.
 The student’s role
according to the
Transactional – Reader
Response Theory is to
be an active participant
in making lessons
meaningful, and filling
in the missing pieces of
text with a variety of
responses.
 Transactional-Reader Response Theory outlines the
importance of understanding the natural variability of
readers.

 Every encounter with literature is different for every

person. The meaning, background, and responses to
the text are all drawn from individual experiences.
 text Transaction reader

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 Phenomenological: reader's experience at the
centre of interpretation

 Indeterminacy of text: the “gaps” or the

"Blanks" filled by reader to get the meaning

 Reader as a co-author
 Affective Stylistics

"...meaning in a literary work in not something

to be extracted, as a dentist might pull a
tooth..."

 Interpretation is a communal affair

(every reading results in a new interpretation)

 That Judas perished by hanging himself,

 That Judas perished by hanging himself,

 That Judas perished by hanging himself,

 That Judas perished by hanging himself, is
an example for us all.

 That Judas perished by hanging himself,

shows how conscious he was of the
enormity of his sins.

 That Judas perished by hanging himself,

should give us pause.
 Psychological Reader-Response:

Focus on what readers’ interpretations reveal

about themselves rather than the text (Or
work of art)
 Initial emotional response
 Interpretive
 Analysis
 Questions
 Summary
 Arguing with author (believability of text)
 Intertextuality
 Rethinking one part of text after reading another.
 Readers have expectations about how a character
will behave—expectations formed by cultures
which they live and work

 Expectation of characters behaviour even though

they exist only in the literary transaction

 Reader response reflect their cultural models

 Text-reader and context inseparable;

 Literary response as a construction of text

meaning and reader stances and identities
within larger social-cultural context

 Applying CAGE-KTM

(cast, age gender, ethnicity, knowledge,

Timeframe, Mind or psychology)
 Reader response takes place within Socio-
cultural framework

 Corrective to literary dogmatism

 freedom for everyone's interpretation of a

text

 Based on time, place, culture, etc

i.e. al
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