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Reader response theory is a school of literary theory which focuses on the reader and readers
experience during the process of interpreting a text in contrast to other theories which focus on the
text, author, content or form of the text.
Some of the prominent critics in this school of though include Norman Holland, Stanley
Fish, Wolfgang Iser, Hans-Robert Jauss, & Roland Barthes.
Their common belief is that the reader is an active participant who gives existence to the work of
literature by reading it. A piece of literature cannot exist if there is no one to read it.er It 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. New Criticism had emphasized 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 New Critics.
New Critics Believed that the readers interpretation is not reliable because a single piece of
literature may have different effect on every reader. Reader Response theory is in direct opposition
to the views forwarded by New Critics. The main concept of Reader Response theory is that each
text can have as many interpretations as many readers are there. The text is incomplete without a
reader. A text comes into existence only because of the reader. The Authors intentions are
misleading to judge the worth of a text.
A critic named LOIS TYSON has categorized these approaches into FIVE approaches. Each of
these approaches has a different view about the role of Reader in the interpretation of the text. Let
us first name all of them.
Transactional Reader Response Theory (Louise Rosenblatt, & Wolfgang Iser)
Affective Stylistics (Stanley Fish(