The chapter opens with a definition of reader-response criticism as a mode of analysis that, as the name implies, focuses on the reader’s responses to a literary text. This often incorporates other modes of critical theory. For instance, a psychoanalytic approach to reader-response criticism would assess the “psychological motives” behind readers’ textual interpretations. Reader-response criticism emerged in reaction to the new critics’ stance that extrinsic criticism is not valuable. 

In contrast, reader-response critics argue that the reader should not be “omitted” from literary analysis and that readers “actively make meaning” as they read (150). This implies that even the same reader will come away with different understandings of the same text when read multiple times because they will have learned from the first reading and/or they may have changed in the intervening time.

“The House Passage”: A Reading Exercise

Tyson proposes a reading exercise to illustrate how readers create meaning of a literary text in practice and how those responses can be analyzed. She directs readers to read a short fiction passage about two boys, Mark and Pete, skipping school and going to Mark’s house. She instructs them to circle the positive and negative details about the house described in the passage from the point of view of a potential homebuyer. It is followed by a table of the house’s positive and negative qualities. 

Next, she directs readers to repeat the exercise, but this time to identify the house’s positive and negative qualities from the point of view of a burglar preparing to rob the house. In comparing the results, it becomes clear that the details take on very different meanings given different lenses. Tall hedges mean privacy for a homebuyer, but to a burglar, they mean a reduced chance of being seen while robbing the house. The point of the exercise is that a written text is “an event that occurs within the reader” (152). The extent to which the text itself plays a role in creating this reader response is debated among theorists.

Transactional Reader-Response Theory

Louise Rosenblatt, a key proponent of transactional reader-response theory, argues that both text and reader are necessary to create meaning. She uses “text” to mean the printed words and “poem” to mean the literary work created by the text and reader together. 

The “transaction” between the reader and text to create the “poem” is a multi-stage process. First, the reader is stimulated to a personal response by the text that is shaped by prior knowledge and experience. As they read, the text is a blueprint that “corrects” the reader’s interpretation when it goes “too far afield of what is written on the page” (153). Sometimes, the reader will re-read portions of the text in light of new knowledge arising from the text. Finally, the “poem” is created through the interaction between the reader and the text. For this process to be successful, the reader must not be “efferent” or only reading for information. Rather, they must read in an “aesthetic mode” that is focused on the subtleties of language and meaning. 

Phenomenologist Wolfgang Iser and his proponents might describe the “determinate meaning” of the text as what the text factually states and the “indeterminate meaning” as the “gaps” or ambiguities in the text. An efferent reading focuses on the determinate meaning of the work, whereas an aesthetic reading focuses on the indeterminate meanings. Iser argues that the text itself guides its own interpretation by the reader through the “interplay” between determinate and indeterminate meanings.

Transactional analysis uses the text as a blueprint against which reader interpretations are measured while allowing for multiple possible interpretations of the same work.

Affective Stylistics

Affective stylistics is a mode of close reading that is attentive to how the style of the work affects the reader on a line-by-line or word-by-word level. However, the text is not objective and autonomous, but rather, “the text consists of the results it produces, and those results occur within the reader” (155). A proponent of this theory, Stanley Fish, views a text’s structure as the assemblage of thoughts provoked by specific elements of the literary work. Tyson reviews Fish’s analysis of the following sentence to explain this method:

That Judas perished by hanging himself, there is no certainty in Scripture: though in one place it seems to affirm it, and by a doubtful word hath given occasion to translate it; yet in another place, in a more punctual description, it maketh it improbable, and seems to overthrow it (155).

Fish argues that this sentence provides very few facts for the reader, but it does “move the reader from uncertainty to certainty” (155). It opens with a definitive statement (“that Judas perished by hanging himself”) but then defies expectations in its second clause. One would expect it to read, “there is no doubt in Scripture,” but instead it reads, “there is no certainty in Scripture” (emphases added). As the reader continues to read the sentence word by word, they are constantly thrown between certainty (e.g., “affirm”) and doubt (e.g., “improbable”). By the end of the sentence, “it” no longer has a clear antecedent, leaving the reader with a feeling of uncertainty. 

A reader-response analysis, therefore, focuses on how the text operates on the reader. In this case, the sentence above creates in the reader a sense that “we cannot be certain of anything” (156). Further, the sentence is not about Judas or Scripture but essentially about the experience of reading itself, as when one reads, they expect to find facts but instead find greater uncertainty and complexity.

Affective stylistics may also draw on the responses of other readers to justify their claims about the function of the work. They may also analyze the theme of a work or images to illustrate how the text “is about the experience of reading” (156). For instance, in Heart of Darkness, Marlow’s uncertainty about Kurtz “mirrors” the reader’s uncertainty about reading the work itself, and this is represented in the image of the Russian-language book that Marlow finds that he cannot read.

Subjective Reader-Response Theory

Subjective reader-response theory as presented by key theorist David Bleich argues that “readers’ responses are the text,” meaning that the reader’s interpretation creates the text and that the critic essentially analyzes the “written responses of readers” (157). Tyson analyzes each of these claims in turn.

Reader-response theorists differentiate between “real objects,” like tables, chairs, and the printed pages of a literary text, and “symbolic objects,” the ideas and feelings in the mind of the reader. Bleich therefore calls reading “symbolization”; it is the process of transforming the real object—the book—into the symbolic world of our mind. When this work is then interpreted, it undergoes “resymbolization,” as it is an analysis of “the text in our mind” (157).

Subjective reader-response methodology is used to teach how members of learning communities individually contribute to collective understanding. Response statements that are experience oriented (focused on the reader’s reactions to the text) are preferable to those that are reader oriented (focused on the reader’s background experiences) or reality oriented (focused on issues in the wider world beyond the text). The response statement should describe what elements of the text created specific reactions. This form of response can be the basis for classroom group discussions.

Psychological Reader-Response Theory

Psychoanalytic critic Normand Holland’s transactive analysis focuses on “what readers’ interpretations [of a literary text] reveal about themselves” (160). Literary texts activate an unconscious fear or desire that is then dealt with through interpreting the text. Holland describes this process as the reader projecting their “identity theme” onto the text. When we read, we are first in “defense mode” (e.g., we get anxiety reading about someone’s bad childhood because it reminds us of our own). Then, we engage in “fantasy mode” to minimize the threat (e.g., we focus on how the character learned self-reliance from their bad childhood). Finally, “transformation mode” abstracts the information from the first two modes to counterbalance the anxiety (e.g., we determine that the character represents the essential resilience of children). This is an example of how The Role of Personal Connections to Literature shapes understanding.

Holland argues that this method can be used to analyze writers as well as readers and that it breaks down barriers between the two parties.

Social Reader-Response Theory

Stanley Fish argues that individual responses to texts are the result of the “interpretive community” of which that individual is a part. A set of common assumptions based on schooling, ideology, etc. guides interpretations. For instance, if you assume that a list of random words is a poem, then you will interpret it as a poem. This understanding can be a useful pedagogical tool when guiding student interpretations of a work.

Defining Readers

Different theorists have different understandings or theories of readers. Some reader-response theorists focus on “readers,” meaning other people like students. Others focus on “the reader,” meaning the critic themselves. Fish refers to the “informed reader,” who has enough background knowledge to read the work like he does. Iser refers to the “implied reader,” or “the reader the text seems to be addressing” (165). These hypothetical readers are examples of how critics theorize the text’s audience and its varying interpretations.

Some Questions Reader-Response Critics Ask About Literary Texts

Tyson provides a series of questions that summarize reader-response approaches to literature, highlighting how the reader’s experience impacts their understanding of the text and how the text shapes that understanding. Topics include the following (166-67):

1. Applying transactional reader-response theory to analyze how the text and reader “create meaning,” with a particular emphasis on indeterminacy

2. Using affective stylistics to complete a “slow-motion” analysis of a short piece of text

3. Using subjective reader-response theory to analyze readers’ expectations of the text and how it impacts their understanding

4. Using psychological reader-response theory to analyze your own interpretations of literary works, such as those expressed through class essays

5. Using social reader-response theory to analyze critical responses to a literary work for how their understanding of the work reflects the culture in which they were produced

Projecting the Reader: A Reader-Response Analysis of The Great Gatsby

In her reader-response analysis of The Great Gatsby, Tyson uses Fish’s “affective stylistics, Iser’s notion of indeterminacy, and Holland’s notion of projection” to argue that the novel creates uncertainty in the reader’s judgement of the character of Jay Gatsby and that this uncertainty in form is reflected in the novel’s theme of “the impossibility of establishing determinate meaning” (167). The essay opens with a passage from Chapter 3 of the book where guests at a party are sharing shocking rumors about Jay Gatsby. 

Tyson argues that Gatsby is the text they are decoding and that, because they want to be shocked, they create speculation about the meaning of the “text” (Gatsby) that conforms to their desires. Likewise, Nick only “reads” Gatsby in a way that conforms with Nick’s tendency to both feel positively and negatively about his friend. The reader’s experience is likewise shaped by Nick’s “pattern of opposing influences” (170), his ambivalent feelings about Gatsby. Tyson supports this claim by providing a list of examples where Nick feels both positively and negatively about Gatsby, thereby creating “indeterminacy.” Tyson then lists other indeterminacies in the text, like “What’s the real story of Nick’s relationship with the young woman he left behind in his hometown?” (174)

Tyson then turns to critical responses to the novel and notes that many of them characterize Jay Gatsby as a romantic hero. She argues that the indeterminacy in Gatsby’s portrayal, and the novel as a whole, invites the reader to use psychological projection to fill in the gaps. Therefore, critics describe Gatsby as a romantic hero because the character appeals to a personal belief the reader may have, leading them to evaluate him positively. She argues that these critics see Gatsby as a representation of an idyllic American past and therefore adopt a reading of the text that valorizes him as a hero.

Finally, Tyson notes the many examples of “unread or unfinished” reading materials (such as Gatsby’s infamous bookshelves of unread books) described in the novel and argues that they show how texts are meaningless without readers (177). Thus, the book invites the “projection” modeled by the characters and actuated by the critics who are necessary for the book to have meaning.

Questions for Further Practice: Reader-Response Approaches to other Literary Works

Tyson provides model questions to guide reader-response literary analysis. These questions explore how reader-response concepts, such as indeterminacy, “slow-motion” analysis, and interpretative communities, can deepen a reader’s understanding of texts. Topics include the following (177-78):

1. Indeterminacy in “A Rose for Emily” and how that contributes to its meaning

2. A “slow-motion” analysis of the poem “Frederick Douglass” by Robert Hayden, with a particular focus on displacement in both form and theme

3. Writing a reflection on a work that you read when you were young and then rereading the work, writing another response, and comparing the two

4. Writing a summary of “The Storm” by Kate Chopin, writing a reflection of your views on infidelity, and then using psychological reader-response theory to assess how your understanding of the text was shaped by your views

5. Analyzing historical critical responses to The Bluest Eye, with a particular focus on their assumptions about sex and race