Reader- response Criticism

June 28, 2017 | Autor: Bless Failago | Categoria: Literary Criticism
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Philippine Normal University
The National Center for Teacher Education
Mindanao
Prosperidad, Agusan del Sur





Literary Theory and Criticism
Written Account
(Reader- response Theory)
Submitted to:
Prof. Concepcion G. Belza
Course Instructor

Submitted by:
Lourdie Bless Failago
Joshua Ojel
Cecille Ellen Ocampo
Hans Robert Jauss

was a German academic, notable for his work in reception theory and medieval and modern French literature
 born in Göppingen, Württemberg, Germany, and died on 1 March 1997 in Constance, Germany. His family came from a long line of teachers
his religious background was pietism
in 1944, he was able to begin his studies and complete his first semester in occupied Prague
in November 1948 at Heidelberg, the twenty-seven-year-old Jauss, after postwar imprisonment, began studies in Romance Philology,Philosophy, History and Germanistik
 Martin Heidegger and Hans Georg Gadamer were the teachers at that time who made an impact on his thought
in year, 1954 he made study trips to Paris and Perugia
in 1980, Jauss became a member of the Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften
was honoured by the Italian Accademia dei Lincei


An Overview: Reader-response Theory

focuses on the reader (or "audience") and their 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
recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts "real existence" to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation
argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates their own, possibly unique, text-related performance
stands in total opposition to the theories of formalism and the New Criticism, in which the reader's role in re-creating literary works is ignored

Jauss' Horizons of Expectations

gave a historical dimension to reader- oriented criticism
tries to achieve a compromise between Russian Formalism and social theories
wanted to question the old canon of German literature
uses the term 'horizon of expectations' to describe the criteria readers use to judge literary texts in any given period
ordinary writing and reading will work within such a horizon
for example, if we consider the English Augustan period, we might say that Pope's poetry was judged according to criteria which were based upon values of clarity, naturalness and stylistic decorum
during the second half of the eighteenth century, commentators began to question whether Pope was a poet at all and to suggest that he has a clever versifier who put prose into rhyming couplets and lacked of true poetry
leapfrogging the nineteenth century, we can say that modern readings of Pope work within a changed horizon of expectations: we now often value his poems for their wit, complexity, moral insight and renewal of literary tradition
the original horizon of expectations only tells us how the work was valued and interpreted when it appeared, but does not establish its meaning finally
in Jauss's view, it would be equally wrong to say that a work is universal: ' A literary work is not an object which stands by itself and which offers the same face to each reader in each period. It is not a monument which reveals its timeless essence in a monologue.'
Whose authority are we to accept? That of the first reader? The combined opinion of readers overtime? Or the aesthetic judgment of the present?
Jauss' answers to these questions derive from the philosophical 'hermeneutics' Hans- Georg Gadamer
Gadamer argues that all interpretations of past literature arise from a dialogue between past and present
our present perspective always involves a relationship to the past, but at the same time the past can only be grasped through the limited perspective of the present
Jauss recognizes that a writer may directly affront the prevailing expectations of his or her day

Wolfgang Iser

Wolfgang Iser was born in Marienberg, Germany. His parents were Paul and Else (Steinbach) Iser. He studied literature in the universities of Leipzig and Tübingen before receiving his PhD in English at Heidelberg with a dissertation on the world view of Henry Fielding (1950). A year later, Iser was appointed as an instructor at Heidelberg and in 1952 as an assistant lecturer at the University of Glasgow. There, Iser began to explore contemporary philosophy and literature, which deepened his interest in inter-cultural exchange. He subsequently lectured in many other parts of the world, including Asia and Israel. He was married to Lore Iser.

Iser is known for his reader-response criticism in literary theory. This theory began to evolve in 1967, while he was working in the University of Konstanz, which he helped to found in the 1960s. Together with Hans Robert Jauss, he is considered to be the founder of the Constance School of reception aesthetics. In his approach to reader-response theory, 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. In his study of Shakespeare's histories, in particular Richard II, Iser interprets Richard's continually changing legal policy as expression of the desire for self-assertion. Here he follows Hans Blumenberg, and attempts to apply his theory of modernity to Shakespeare. In this theory of modernity is self-assertion, which responds to the destruction of scholastic rationalism in the nominalist revolution (with William of Ockham).

For Iser, meaning is not an object to be found within a text, but is an event of construction that occurs somewhere between the text and the reader. Specifically, a reader comes to the text, which is a fixed world, but meaning is realized through the act of reading and how a reader connects the structures of the text to his/her own experience. To illustrate this, Iser uses the example of constellations: "The impressions that arise as a result of this process will vary from individual to individual, but only within the limits imposed by the written as opposed to the unwritten text. In the same way, two people gazing at the night sky may both be looking at the same collection of stars, but one will see the image of a plough, and the other will make out a dipper. The 'stars' in a literary text are fixed; the lines that join them are variable." A literary work, which for Iser is created when a reader and a text "converge, consists of two "poles": the artistic (the object, the text created by the author) and the aesthetic (the realization accomplished by the reader). Both of these poles contribute to the two central points of Iser's theory: the concept of "implied reader" and narrative "gaps."

When an author is composing a text, s/he has a particular reader in mind, which is in part represented in the text. This reader is not identical to a real, flesh-and-blood reader, but is "a textual structure anticipating the presence of a recipient without necessarily defining him…the concept of the implied reader designates a network of response-inviting structures, which impel the reader to grasp the text." Iser separates the concept of implied reader into two "interrelated aspects: the reader's role as a textual structure, and the reader's role as a structured act."

The textual structure refers to the reader's point-of-view as found within the text. This standpoint is multifaceted, because the narrator, the characters, the plot, and the fictitious reader all offer sides of it.[7] Further, the reader's role as a textual structure is defined by the "vantage point by which he joins [these perspectives], and the meeting place they converge.] All, as component parts, operate together to shape the reader's role as found within the text.

The reader's role as a structured act refers to how a reader fulfills the textual structures by causing them to converge within his/her imagination. In other words, the textual structures are connected and come to life when a reader takes part in the reading process. This does not mean that the "real" reader simply accepts this role, but rather he/she exists in tension between his/her own historical reality and experience, and the acceptance of his/her role as reader. "The concept of the implied reader as an expression of the role offered by the text is in no way an abstraction derived from a real reader, but is rather the conditioning force behind a particular kind of tension produced by the real reader when he accepts the role."[10] The differences between the real reader, and the role of the fictitious reader, produce a tension that allows for different connections and readings.

For Iser, a literary work is composed of both written and unwritten portions of a text. As a reader begins the reading process, the sentences that make up a work not only inform the reader of the literary movement, but produce certain expectations within the mind of the reader. However, these expectations are rarely fulfilled, as a text is "full of unexpected twists and turns, and frustrations of expectations…Thus whenever the flow is interrupted and we are led off in unexpected directions, the opportunity is given to us to bring into play our own faculty for establishing connections—for filling in the gaps left by the text itself." These gaps are the unwritten portion of the text that calls for the reader's participation. Different readers will decide to fill in the various gaps in different ways, allowing for inexhaustible realizations of the text within its provided interpretive limits. As the reader reflects on what s/he has read previously in the text, or if s/he rereads the text, new light is shed on the happenings within the narrative as "certain aspects of the text will assume a significance we did not attach to them on a first reading, while others will recede into the background."

Thus, the structure of a text brings about expectations, which are interrupted by
surprising unfulfillment, producing gaps, which require filling by the reader to create a coherent flow of the text. These gaps then, in turn, cause the reader to reread prior events in the text in light of those gap fillings. However, these gaps cannot be filled arbitrarily, but through interpretive limits given in the text by an author. Iser finds this experience to be the breakdown of the subject-object division, in that "text and reader no longer confront each other as object and subject, but instead the 'division' takes place within the reader himself." In the act of reading, a text becomes a living subject within the reader.

STANLEY FISH: THE READER'S EXPERIENCE

Stanley Fish, the American critic of seventeenth century English Literature, developed a reader-oriented perspective called an 'affective stylistics'
He concentrates on the adjustments of expectation to be made by readers as they pass along the text, but considers this at the immediately local level of the sentence.
His attention is directed to the developing responses of the reader in relation to the words of sentences as they succeed one another in time.
The following sentence by Walter Pater receives an especially sensitive analysis by Fish:

"This at least of flame-like, our life has, that it is but the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner or later in their ways."
He points out that by interrupting 'concurrence of forces' with 'renewed from moment to moment' Pater prevents the reader from establishing a definite or stable image in the mind. Each stage in the sentences forces the reader to make adjustment in the expectation and interpretation.
The idea of 'the concurrence' is disrupted by parting but then 'sooner or later' leaves the 'parting' temporally uncertain.
The reader's expectation of meaning is thus continuously adjusted: the meaning is the total movement of reading.

Jonathan Culler has lent general support to Fish's aims, but has criticized him for failing to give us proper theoretical formulation of his reader criticism.
Fish believes that his readings of sentences simply follow the natural practice of informed readers. In his view a reader is someone who possesses a 'linguistic competence', has internalized the syntactic and semantic knowledge required for reading. The 'informed reader' of the literary texts has also acquired a specifically 'literary competence' (knowledge of literary conventions).
Culler makes two trenchant criticisms of Fish's position:
He fails to theorize the convention of reading: that is, he fails to ask the question 'What conventions do readers follow when they read?'
His claim to read sentences word by word in a temporal sequence is misleading: there is no reason to believe that readers actually do take sentences in such as piecemeal and gradual way.
Elizabeth Freund said by treating his own reading experience as itself an act of interpretation he is ignoring the gap between experience and the understanding of the experience
What Fish gives is not a definitive account of the nature of reading but Fish's understanding of his own reading experience
In Is There a Text in This Class? (1980) Fish acknowledge that his earlier work treated his own experience of reading as the norm, and goes on to justify this position by introducing the ideas of 'interpretative communities'
If we accept the category of interpretative communities, we no longer need to choose between asking questions about the text or about the reader; the whole problem of subject and object diasappears.


















Sample Analysis

"The Things They Carried"

"The Things They Carried," by Tim O'Brien at first seemed to be just another war story. As I started reading I thought I was not going to have any interest at all in the story; however after I got into the story I found myself more interested than I thought I was going to be. This story is an excellent depiction of war itself. It is very realistic and easy to relate to even without any personal experience with war. The title itself paves the way for the entire story, it could not be any better for the story then it is. The entire story is about "the things they carried," and the author does choose to go into great detail about the things that they did carry.
While I was reading the story one question that kept running through my mind was in regard to the depth of information about the physical weights of the soldiers' items. Why would O'Brien go into this much depth about how much every individual item weighs? One thought on this that came to mind was that perhaps it is not as much about the physical weight as much as it is about the overall psychological experience. War is very stressful and can very easily become more then one can handle. I think that Tim O'Brien does a very good job at throwing in all of that information about how much this weighs and who has to carry that to almost overwhelm the reader. When he "overwhelms" the reader he makes it much easier for the reader to see the story from the frame of mind that a soldier would see it. The author also breaks in to the detailed list disrupting the flow of the items by informing the reader of the deaths of soldiers. He talks about them in giving us personal information about the soldiers and then all of the sudden another one is dead. This also helps the reader get a clear representation of war because in war it is very dangerous and you never know what is going to come your way.
Another question did catch my attention. Are these items really all that the soldiers carry or is there more? While I was reading I noticed that the author did leave hints in the story about the more deep variety of the things that they carried. He used phrases such as "They shared the weight of memory. They took up what others could no longer bear," "They were afraid of dying but they were even more afraid to show it," and "They carried all the emotional baggage of men who might die." This suggests that the actual items that the soldiers carry are essentially unimportant, even though they take up a large portion of the story. What is important however is what these soldiers are actually carrying with them. What the soldiers are carrying around with them is the devastating psychological affects of war. I think one good question for the class is do you think that Tim O'Brien effectively portrays the psychological affects of war? Also I want to add in one quote that I think is very important to think about to understand the story. "Men killed, and died, because they were embarrassed not to. It was what had brought them to the war in the first place, nothing positive, no dreams of glory or honor, just to avoid the blush of dishonor."











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