Readers in Texts

PMLA ◽  
1981 ◽  
Vol 96 (5) ◽  
pp. 848-863 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Daniel Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Good Deal ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Implied Reader ◽  
Reading Behavior ◽  
Reader Response Theory ◽  
Implied Author ◽  
American Reader

The failure to distinguish between Iser's “implied” reader (analogous to Booth's implied author and referring to the reading behavior a text demands of us) and the “characterized” reader (referred to directly or indirectly in the text) has promoted a good deal of critical confusion. Although the work of Wolff, Iser, Ong, Link, and Prince, among others, is crucial to our understanding of how fictional readers function in texts, it generates certain misleading conceptual categories. In part this confusion is due to a gap between continental and American reader-response theory. The “implied reader” is not a philosopher's stone that will objectify criticism, but it can be a useful concept to the newer communicationoriented theories of criticism.

scholarly journals Female Readers as Literary Critics: Reading Experiences of Kano Market Romance Fiction

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-45
Author(s):  
Haruna Alkasim Kiyawa
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Reader Response Theory ◽  
Romance Novels ◽  
Romance Fiction ◽  
Romance Genre ◽  
Traditional Marriage

This paper aims to explore the female readers reading experiences, views and feelings of Hausa romance novels found in most of the northern part of Nigeria. This article also examines some criticism and accusations against the readership and content of the Hausa romance genre. The study applied the Transactional Reader-Response Theory of Rosenblatt’s (1978) as guide by selecting 7 female readers within the age ranges between 22-26 years from 2 book clubs to participate in the study. The findings revealed that all the readers individually were able to reveal their varied responses, beliefs, and experiences on the value of the romance novels which challenged the assertion made by the literary critics and traditional society that the books have no relevance in their life activities which supported their arguments and personal interpretive reading stance towards the Hausa romance genre. The finding yielded four themes were emerging: (a) promoting literacy development; (b) resistance to the traditional marriage system in society; (d) enlightening females on social inequality. These findings provided empirical support for the application of the Transactional Reader-Response Theory of Rosenblatt (1978) outside classroom contexts to understand the role of African romance novels towards female social transformation.  

Hermeneutics and Postmodernism: Can We Have a Radical Reader-Response Theory? Part II

1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul R. Noble
Keyword(s):  
Reader Response ◽  
Thomas Kuhn ◽  
Careful Study ◽  
Response Theory ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Reader Response Theory

The flaws in Fish's hermeneutics that were diagnosed in Part I (it is now argued) are consequences of his underlying epistemology. This is a version of anti-foundationalism which claims that facts are the product of interpretation; but a careful study of how this issue is handled by N. R. Hanson and Thomas Kuhn shows that Fish's epistemology is fundamentally unsound. An alternative account of the fact-interpretation relationship is then proposed, and the outline of an objectivist, readerindependent hermeneutics are sketched. This is further developed by showing how a common argument against objectivism (based on the historical situatedness of reason and knowledge) may be refuted.

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