DEFINITION OF READER-RESPONSE CRITICISM Reader-response criticism encompasses various approaches to literature that explore and seek to explain the

diversity (and often divergence) of readers' responses to literary works. Louise Rosenblatt is often credited with pioneering the approaches in Literature as Exploration (1938). In her 1969 essay "Towards a Transactional Theory of Reading," she summed up her position as follows: "A poem is what the reader lives through under the guidance of the text and experiences as relevant to the text." Recognizing that many critics would reject this definition, Rosenblatt wrote, "The idea that a poem presupposes a reader actively involved with a text is particularly shocking to those seeking to emphasize the objectivity of their interpretations." Rosenblatt implicitly and generally refers to formalists (the most influential of whom are the New Critics) when she speaks of supposedly objective interpreters shocked by the notion that a "poem" is cooperatively produced by a "reader" and a "text." Formalists spoke of "the poem itself," the "concrete work of art," the "real poem." They had no interest in what a work of literature makes a reader "live through." In fact, in The Verbal Icon (1954), William K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley used the term affective fallacy to define as erroneous the very idea that a readers response is relevant to the meaning of a literary work. Stanley Fish, whose early work is seen by some as marking the true beginning of contemporary reader-response criticism, also took issue with the tenets of formalism. In "Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics" (1970), he argued that any school of criticism that sees a literary work as an object, claiming to describe what it is and never what it does, misconstrues the very essence of literature and reading. Literature exists and signifies when it is read, Fish suggests, and its force is an affective one. Furthermore, reading is a temporal process, not a spatial one as formalists assume when they step back and survey the literary work as if it were an object spread out before them. The German critic Wolfgang Iser has described that process in The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett (1974) and The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response (1976). Iser argues that texts contain gaps (or blanks) that powerfully affect the reader, who must explain them, connect what they separate, and create in his or her mind aspects of a work that arent in the text but are incited by the text. With the redefinition of literature as something that only exists meaningfully in the mind of the reader, and with the redefinition of the literary work as a catalyst of mental events, comes a redefinition of the reader. No longer is the reader the passive recipient of those ideas that an author has planted in a text. "The reader is active," Rosenblatt had insisted. Fish makes the same point in "Literature in the Reader": "Reading is . . . something you do." Iser, in focusing critical interest on the gaps in texts, on the blanks that readers have to fill in, similarly redefines the reader as an active maker of meaning. Other reader-response critics define the reader differently. Wayne Booth uses the phrase the implied reader to mean the reader "created by the work." Iser also uses the term the implied reader but substitutes the educated reader for what Fish calls the intended reader. Since the mid-1970s, reader-response criticism has evolved into a variety of new forms. Subjectivists like David Bleich, Norman Holland, and Robert Crosman have viewed the readers response not as one "guided" by the text but rather as one motivated by deepseated, personal, psychological needs. Holland has suggested that, when we read, we find our own "identity theme" in the text by using "the literary work to symbolize and finally

replicate ourselves. We work out through the text our own characteristic patterns of desire." Even Fish has moved away from reader-response criticism as he had initially helped define it, focusing on "interpretive strategies" held in common by "interpretive communities" such as the one comprised by American college students reading a novel as a class assignment. Fishs shift in focus is in many ways typical of changes that have taken place within the field of reader-response criticisma field that, because of those changes, is increasingly being referred to as reader-oriented criticism. Recent reader-oriented critics, responding to Fishs emphasis on interpretive communities and also to the historically oriented perception theory of Hans Robert Jauss, have studied the way a given reading publics "horizons of expectations" change over time. Many of these contemporary critics view themselves as reader-oriented critics and as practitioners of some other critical approach as well. Certain feminist and gender critics with an interest in reader response have asked whether there is such a thing as "reading like a woman." Reading-oriented new historicists have looked at the way in which racism affects and is affected by reading and, more generally, at the way in which politics can affect reading practices and outcomes. Gay and lesbian critics, such as Wayne Koestenbaum, have argued that sexualities have been similarly constructed within and by social discourses and that there may even be a homosexual way of reading. Adapted from The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms by Ross Murfin and Supryia M. Ray. Copyright 1998 by Bedford Books. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

HistoricalBackground ClassicalRoots : BothPlatoandAristotlewereawareoftheeffectsofworksofliterature.Plato,in fact,worriedthatpoetswouldstiruptheemotionsoftheaudience.Healsobelieved thatart,asacopyofacopy,wasatafurthestremovefrom"truth"andtherefore misledpeople.InhisRepublicheexcludespoetsfromhisidealsociety. Aristotle,thefirstformalist(andfirst"Structuralist"inliterarycriticism,wasalso consciousofthesignificanceofspecificrhetoricaleffectsofworksofart.Inhis discussionoftragicform(foundinthePoetics),hetellsusthattragicplayselicit fromspectatorsthefeelingsofpityandfear.Furthermore,anotherportionofhis descriptiveanalysisoftragicformrefersto"propermagnitude"inplays.This

probablymeantthatdramatistsmustnotoverloadtheaudiencewithcomplicated plotsorexcessinformation.

AsBresslertellsus,bothoftheseancientwritersassumed thattheaudienceispassive:thetextworksonthemindasif themindwereactedupon,muchlikeawaxtabletora mirror.

ReaderResponseCriticisminthe20thCentury: Aswehavelearned,NewCriticismexertedapowerful influenceuponthewaycriticsreadliteratureandteachers taughtliteraturewellintothe1960's.EspeciallyinAmerica andBritain,youwerenottakenseriouslyasareaderorcritic ifyoudidnotespousethetenetsofNewCriticism. InthemidstofthishegemonyofNewCriticism,Louis Rosenblattproposedadifferentmodelforliteraryanalysis. InLiteratureasExploration(1937)sheproposedher transactionaltheory,inwhichshesawreadingasa transactionbetweenreaderandtext.Meaningisas dependentuponthereaderasitisdependentuponthetext. Thereisnouniversal,absoluteinterpretationofapoem; rather,therecanbeseveralprobableinterpretations, dependinginpartuponwhatthereaderbringstothetext. ForRosenblatt,thereaderisnotpassive. Rosenblatt,bytheway,agreedwithNewCritics'emphasis uponclosereading.Readingisatransactioninwhich readers,whilebringingtheirworldofexperiencetoactivate thetext,respectthetextonitsownterms.Sheacknowledged thatsomeinterpretationswerebetterthanothers.

TypesofReaderResponseCritics o Rhetoricalcriticism Analyzestextsintermsofrhetoricalstrategiesembeddedto influencereaders.Thesecritics,forexample,mightseeplot asanarrangementofcertaineffects:movingustofirst questionevents,givinguspartial,teasinganswers,

deliberatelydelayingdiscoveryofinformation,surprisingus withnewinformationorreversalofexpectations,andsoon. Thisapproachassumesthatthetextexertsmorecontrolover theinterpretiveprocessthanthereader. Structuralistapproachestoreaderresponse Describesthecodesreadersacquireandusetoascertain meaning.Sincecodeschangeacrosstime,interpretations vary. Phenomenologists Studieshowthemindprocessestexts.HansRobertJauss,a receptiontheorist,studieshowhorizonsofexpectation changewithtime,therebychangingthewayaudiences interprettexts.WolfgangIser(pronounced"eezer") analyzesthetext'seffectonboththeimpliedreaderandthe actualreader.Iser'simpliedreaderisthereaderimpliedby thetextthehypotheticalreaderpredisposedtoappreciate theeffectsofthetext.Inotherwords,whatsortofreader doesthistextseemtoaddress:howinformedaboutthe nuancesofwords,history,conventions,strategiesofirony, etc.Inexperimental"modernist"texts(likeJoyce'sUlyssesor Woolf'sTotheLighthouse,wemightask,"Whatkindof readerdoesthischallengingtextattempttocreate?"(A questionarhetoricalcriticmightaskaswell,bytheway) Iseralsodiscusseswaysinwhichtextsareconcretizedinthe mind.Hewilldiscusswaysinwhichtextscalluponand alterthereader'sownhorizonsofexpectations.How,in otherwords,doesanovelsetusuptoexpectsomethingonly todeliversomethingelse.Iseralsodiscussesgapsinthetext: placesinwhichthetextexpectsustofillininformationor otherwiseuseourimagination. Fromallofthisitisclearthatwehavecomealongwayfrom Aristotle'sviewoftheaudienceaspassive.ForIser,readers createthetext,fillingingaps,anticipatingwhatistocome, allalongusingtheirownforunderstanding(theirworldof beliefs/values)toprocessthework.Sometimesthetext subvertsthatpreunderstanding,creatingdisturbingeffects; sometimesitconfirmsit.

SubjectiveReaderResponseCriticism Herethetextissubordinatedtotheindividualreader.The subjectbecomestheindividualreaderasherevealshimself intheactofreading.Forexample,imagineareader outragedbyastoryinwhichafatherignoreshischild.The intensityofthereader'sreactionmaylieinhisorher conflictedrelationshipwithhisorherfather. Thiskindofcriticismhasbeenattackedastoorelativistic andoflimitedusefulnessintheclassroom.Defendersofthis approachpointoutthatliteraturemustworkonapersonal, emotionalleveltomoveuspowerfully.StevenMailloux, urgesthatstudentsbeallowedtheirpersonal,powerful reaction,butthenexpecttomakehisresponsesrelevantto aninterpretivecommunity. Assumptions o Meaning=text+reader Methodology o Varieswitheachofthetypeslistedabove.Ingeneral,thereader responsecriticlookstowaysinwhichaliterarytextaffectsthe readerintellectuallyandaffectively.Closereadingisstillan importantactivity;inthiscasethecriticlookscarefullyathowthe textstimulatestheworkofthereader.
o

New Historicism
New Historicism: The historicity of the text and the texttuality of history. The phrase was coined by Stephen Greenblatt around 1980. Other practitioners are J.W. Lever. Jonathan Dollimore. Simple Definition: a method based on the parallel reading of literary and non-literary texts, usually of the same time period. It refuses to privilege literary text. * It is no longer a matter of literature maintaining the foreground and history the background, instead it is a matter of literature and history occupying the same area and

given the same weight. Reading all of the textual traces of the past, fiction or non. * Places the literary text within the frame of a non-literary text. * A historical anecdote is given, relating the text to the time. * Context is replaced by co-text, that is an interrelated non-literary text from the same time period. Greenblatt: Will of the World. Differences between old and new historicism: * Old: hierarchical, with literature being the jewel, and history the background * New: Parallel readings, no more hierarchy. * Old: A historical movement: creates a historical framework in which to place the text * New: a historicist movement. Interested in history as represented and recorded in written documentshistory as text. * The word of the past replaces the world of the past. * The aim is not to represent the past as it really was, but to present a new reality by resituating it. Foucault and New Historicism: * New Historicism is always anti-establishment, on the side of liberal ideas and personal freedoms. * Believe in Michel Foucaults idea of an all-seeingpanopticsurveillance State. * The panoptic state exerts power through discursive practices, circulating ideology through the body-politic. * The State is seen as a monolithic structure and change is nearly impossible. Advantages. * Written in a far more accessible way than post-structuralist theory. * It presents its data and draws its conclusions in a less dense way * Material is often fascinating and distinctive. * New territory.

* Political edge is always sharp, avoids problems of straight Marxist criticism. Barrys example, Montroses essay on Fantasies, reinforces the idea that literature plays off reality and reality plays off literature.

"New Historicism focuses on the way literature expresses-and sometimes disguises-power relations at work in the social context in which the literature was produced, often this involves making connections between a literary work and other kinds of texts. Literature is often shown to negotiate conflicting power interests. New historicism has made its biggest mark on literary studies of the Renaissances and Romantic periods and has revised motions of literature as privileged, apolitical writing. Much new historicism focuses on the marginalization of subjects such as those identified as witches, the insane, heretics, vagabonds, and political prisoners." --Jay Stevenson Posted by lemon8andapefruit at 8:45 AM 4 comments

Cultural Materialism
Cultural Materialism Cultural materialism is a politicized form of historiography. -Graham Holderness Raymond Williams coined the term Cultural Materialism. Jonathan Dollimore and Alan Sinfield made current and defined Cultural materialism as designating a critical method which has four characteristics:

Historical Context: what was happening at the time the text was written. Theoretical Method: Incorporating older methods of theoryStructuralism, Poststructuralism etc. Political Commitment: Incorporating non-conservative and non-Christian frameworkssuch as Feminist and Marxist theory. Textual Analysis: building on theoretical analysis of mainly canonical texts that have become prominent cultural icons.

Culture: What does this term mean in the context of Cultural Materialism? Culture in this sense does not limit itself to high culture but includes all forms of culture like TV and pop music. Materialism: What does this term mean in the context of Cultural Materialism?

Materialism is at odds with idealism. Idealists believe in the transcendent ability of ideas while materialist believe that culture cannot transcend its material trappings. In this way, Cultural Materialism is an offshoot of Marxist criticism. History, to a cultural materialist, is what has happened and what is happening now. In other words, Cultural Materialists not only create criticism of a text by contextualizing it with its own time period, but with successive generations including our own. Cultural Materialism bridges the gap between Marxism and Post-Modernism. Some things that Cultural Materialist might look at when analyzing Shakespeare:

Elizabethan Drama during its own time period The publishing history of Shakespeare through the ages That weird movie version of Romeo and Juliet with Leonardo D. in it The tourism and kitsch surrounding Shakespeare today

Raymond Williams Raymond Williams added to the outlook of Cultural Materialism by employing structures of feeling. These are values that are changing and being formed as we live and react to the material world around us. They challenge dominant forms of ideology and imply that values are organic and non-stagnant. Cultural Materialism embraces change and gives us different (changing) perspectives based on what we chose to suppress or reveal in readings from the past. Shakespeare is one example of how Cultural Materialism can change our point of view, and even our values, in regard to past texts. Many Cultural Materialist have challenged the fetishistic relationship conservative Britain has with Shakespeare.

"Raymond William's term for the theory of culture he develops in the course of a long dialogue with Marxism, and which ascribes a central importance to the role of structures of feeling. Williams is critical of the base/structure model so often used by Marxists to analyze cultural phenomena on the grounds that it makes, for example, the literature dependent, secondary and superstructural, or subsumes it into the wider category of ideology. Cultural Materialism stresses that culture is a constitutive social process which actively creates different ways of life. Similarly, signification or the creation of meaning is viewed as a practical material activity which cannot be consigned to a secondary lever or explained in terms of a primary level of economic activity. Consciousness itself is not a reflection of a basic or more material level of existence, but an active mode of social being. Williams is also critical of the technological determinism of theorists such as Mcluhan who argues that communications media have independent properties that impose themselves automatically ('the medium is the message'). He does not deny that the function of the

media is determined, but insists that its determination is social and always bound up with sociocultural practices." --David Macey

"Britain's reply to new historicism was the rather different creed of cultural materialism, which-appropriately for a society with more vigorous socialist traditions-displayed a political cutting edge largely lacking in its transatlantic counterpart. The phrase cultural materialism, had been coined in the 1980s by Britain's premier socialist critic, Raymond Williams, to describe a form of analysis which examined culture less as a set of isolated artistic monuments then as a material formation, complete with its own modes of production, power-effects, social relation, identifiable audiences, historically conditioned thought forms. It was a way of bringing an unashamedly materialist analysis to bear on that realm of social existence-'culture'-which was thought by conventional criticism to be the very antithesis of the material; and its ambition was less to relate 'culture' to 'society,' in William's own earlier style, than to examine culture as always-already social and material in its roots. It could be seen either as an enrichment or a dilution of classical Marxism: enrichment, because it carried materialism boldly through to the 'spiritual' itself; dilution, because in doing so it blurred the distinction, vital to orthodox Marxism, between the economic and the cultural. The method was, so Williams himself announced, 'compactible' with Marxism, but it took issue with the kind of Marxism which had relegated culture to secondary, 'superstructural' status, and resembled the new historicist in its refusal to enforce such hierarchies. It also paralleled the new historicism on taking on board a whole range of topics-notably, sexuality, feminism, ethnic and post-colonial questions-to which Marxist criticism had traditionally given short shrift. To this extent, cultural materialism formed a kind of bridge between Marxism and postmodernism, radically revising the former while wary of the more modish, uncritical, unhistorical aspects of the latter. This, indeed, might be said to be roughly the stand to which most British left cultural critics nowadays take up." --Terry Eagleton Posted by lemon8andapefruit at 8:45 AM 1 comments

Differences
Differences Between New Historicism and Cultural Materialism

As we have seen and read in Barry, New Historicism and Cultural Materialism have a significant overlap. In fact the main difference is politics. There are three main differences:

1. Cultural Materialists concentrate on the the interventions whereby men and women make their own history, where New Historicists focus on the the power of social and ideological structures which restrain them. A contrast between political optimism and political pessimism. 2. Cultural Materialists view New Historicists as cutting themselves off from effective political positions by their acceptance of a particular version of post-structuralism.

3. New Historicists will situate the literary text in the political situation of its own day, while the Cultural Materialists situate it within that of our own.