Rosenblatt (1995) p. vii-117
Marshall (2000)
Wolk (2010)
I recently encountered reader response theory this past summer in a theory class over in the English department. It was interesting to see the words reader and response together, as I had been brought up mostly in the school of New Criticism in middle school and high school where engaging in the affective fallacy was like breaking the law. The teachers may have asked me to write a personal reaction here and there in journals, but they were mostly concerned with whether or not I gleaned the “one true meaning” and could rehash it on paper. Rosenblatt (1995) discusses that teachers traditionally ask students to demonstrate their understanding of a text through paraphrasing and answering questions regarding the form, plot, characters, and so on. I knew it wouldn’t be until college that I’d encounter more useful lenses and modes of reading and finally get away from the vapid end-of-the-chapter reading questions. But even then there wasn’t much emphasis placed on the significance of the reader and her reactions. Barthes discusses how the death of the author is the birth of the reader, but that is as close as I was able to get as far as academic discourses on readers go. Psychoanalysis, post-structuralism, feminist theory, queer theory, post-colonialism—while all of these lenses brought something important to a reading of a text, it seemed as if every identity was significant except the actual reader’s! It wasn’t until I took that summer theory course that I was finally acquainted with reader response theory. Iser, Jauss, and Rita Felski were incredibly fascinating and I always kept in mind what I could take from these theorists and bring to my own teaching philosophy. However, these theories weren’t as accessible as Rosenblatt’s in regard to application. Rosenblatt takes critical theory and makes it relevant to current pedagogy in the secondary and undergraduate classrooms. She posits that a reader and a text exist in a transaction: “a to-and-fro spiral in which each is continually being affected by what the other has contributed” (p. 26). She makes the distinction between transaction andinteraction, the latter being a term that literary theorists use that describes a more limiting reading process.
Rosenblatt also heavily emphasizes the English teacher’s responsibility to cultivate students’ cultural literacy and development as citizens by acquiring moderate knowledge of the social sciences herself. I’ve always subscribed to the notion that English teachers are more than just reading and writing teachers; they are teachers of the “human condition” insofar that they possess the unique opportunity to expose their students to a variety of human situations. “Is not the substance of literature everything that human beings have thought or felt or created?” (p. 5)—this statement captures my very first thought as I decided to pursue a career in teaching. But Rosenblatt is quick to mention that though literature opens up a world of possibilities in meaning and form thus there is no single, “true” interpretation of a text, reader-response is not a chaotic, pluralistic endeavor. Rosenblatt is not condoning an “anything goes” approach to literature and interpretation. Rather, she describes reader response as a highly meticulous operation that starts out with spontaneity and develops into a “critical awareness” and “a keener and more adequate perception of the potentialities of the text” (p. 73). The English academy and the education academy may be apples and oranges at times, but I strive to acquire some sort of understanding between the two. Suffice to say, Rosenblatt helped guide my understanding of reading and doing theory by applying reader response directly to the English classroom.
I appreciate Marshall (2000) because it delves into the history and research of reader response theory in various traditions of thought. For me, the resounding part of the article was the discussion of the empirical tradition and how text in particular shapes a reader’s response. As a burgeoning educator, I’ve always heard about how imperative it is to get multicultural literature into the classroom and have included this in my teaching philosophy. Marshall’s discussion of the research on the effects of multicultural literature on readers’ beliefs, values, and social attitudes reinforces my understanding of its importance specifically in the lives of adolescent readers.
Wolk (2010) about had me on my feet exclaiming, “Yes!” when he discusses how adhering to the status quo of literacy will not produce life-long readers. Students have come to loathe reading because schools have (inadvertently?) rendered it a chore. Wolk notes that students have learned to play the “school game,” as they read just enough to get by. If we allow students to read just enough to get by, we as teachers produce lazy, irresponsible citizens who “hate reading and see education as irrelevant” (p. 10). Wolk posits that in order to get students to read, they must be granted agency in the selection of reading materials. This seems like such a simple idea—make a variety of books available and students will read—yet schools continue to limit students to one text chosen by the teacher (or whoever is in charge of the curriculum). The counterargument of introducing young adult literature and other student-selected titles into the classroom is that these reading materials aren’t “smart” enough or it’s an attack on the canon and the “classics.” Wolk responds that teachers are responsible for assessing the needs of their students in order to offer them reading materials that are relevant and appropriate for their age and development. I prefer a wide range of books, including those in the canon. However, I think it is important to allow students to choose their own reading materials from time to time, as this practice strengthens their reading skills and fosters intrinsic motivation.
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