Reader-Oriented Theories

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Reader-Oriented Theories

• Søren Hattesen Balle
• e-mail shb_at_hum.aau.dk
• http//www.hum.aau.dk/shb/

Room 53
Thursday 10.15-12.00
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Reasons for its emergence

• A reaction against the dominance in universities
  of Formalism/New Criticism
• New literary forms more directly including the
  reader
• Postmodern literature
• Self-reflexive writing
• Mass media
• Focus on manipulation and production
• Focus on listeners and viewers

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Continued

• Phenomenology
• The science of phenomena (vs. the science of
  being)
• Consciousness is always of something (E. Husserl)
• Hermeneutics
• The science of interpretation
• The hermeneutic circle (H.G. Gadamer)

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General characteristics

• Reader-oriented theories are quite different, but
  they all agree that
• The text is not a structure of meaning in itself
• The meaning of a text is the production/creatio
  n of the reader
• There is no right reading
• with reading there is no face-to-face-situati
  on. A text cannot adapt itself to each reader it
  comes into contact with. The reader can
  never learn from the text how accurate or
  inaccurate are his views of it (W. Iser, 1980)

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Continued

• What shapes the readers response?
• Wolfgang Iser
• Reading involves an interaction between elements
  of the text and the act of reading itself
• The text is a potential structure actualised by
  the reader
• The text has blanks/gaps, which the reader must
  complete
• Do not study either the text or the reader in
  isolation, but look at how the reader completes
  the text

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Continued

• This Is Just to Say
• I have eaten
• the plums
• that were in
• the icebox
• and which
• you were probably
• saving
• for breakfast
• Forgive me
• they were delicious
• so sweet
• and so cold (William Carlos Williams, 1934)

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Continued

• Stanley Fish
• Any individual reader is necessarily part of a
  community of readers.
• the individual readers response is determined by
  the conventions of reading that he has been
  educated into within a certain socio-historical
  context

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Continued

• Norman Holland / David Bleich
• The reader reacts according to his own personal
  identity his identity theme, that is, his
  personal psychic dispositions, the individual
  character of his desires, needs, experiences,
  resistances, etc.
• Interpretation is a function of identity (N.
  Holland) subjective criticism

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Study questions

• D.H. Lawrence, from The Virgin and the Gipsy
  (1930)
• Read the first 10 lines What blanks or gaps
  does the reader have to fill in?
• How can you characterize the vicars wife? On
  what do you base your characterization?
• How would you segment the beginning of the text
  (first five paragraphs) according to the
  different perspectives ('speeches') present in
  the text?
• How would you describe the implied reader? Look
  up the term in your glossary or, for example,
  here
• http//www.oxfordreference.com/views/GLOBAL.html
• http//www.press.jhu.edu/edu/hopkins_guide_to_lite
  rary_theory/

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Continued

• How would you describe the interpretive
  community you belong to? Is that important for
  your reading of the text?
• What would make your reading a personal
  reading? Can you think of any problem in
  relation to such a reading?
• There is no such thing as an 'ideal reader' (cf.
  Jonathan Culler), however the reader of The
  Virgin and the Gipsy has to have certain
  competences in order to extend possibilities of
  interpretation. Which competences can you think
  of? How would you describe the interpretative
  community you belong to?
• Do you think that mens and womens responses to
  the text would be different? What exactly are you
  responding to if you are responding according to
  gender?