READER AND
THE TEXT HAVE EQUAL ROLE IN THE CREATION OF THE MEANING OF A TEXT-A
RESTRUCTURING OF READER RESPONSE THEORY
Reader
response theory that came into prominence in the late 1960s gave prominence to
the reader than the text itself. It defies the formalist view of the reader as
a passive consumer of literary works. “Reader response criticism does not designate
any one critical theory, but rather a focus on the process of reading a
literary text that shared by many of the critical modes; American and European,
which have come into prominence since the 1960s.’’ (Abrams, 255). Reader-response criticism can be connected to post-structuralism’s
emphasis on the role of the reader in actively constructing texts rather than
passively consuming them. Unlike text-based approaches such as New Criticism,
which are grounded upon some objective meaning already present in the work
being examined, reader-response criticism argues that a text has no meaning
before a reader experiences—reads—it. “Reader response critics turn from the
traditional conception that a text embodies an achieved set of meanings, and
focus instead on the on-going mental operations and responses of readers as
their eyes follow a text on the page before them. In the more drastic forms of
such criticism, matters that had been considered by critics to be features of
the literary work itself (including narrator, plot, characters, style and
structure, as well as meanings) are dissolved into an evolving process,
consisting primarily of diverse expectations, and the violations, deferments,
satisfactions, and restructurings of expectations, in the flow of a reader’s
experience. (Abrams, 255)
While recognizing this
approach as a radical and advanced one this writer has the strong view that
reader alone is not the creator of the meaning for a text. As Julian Wolfreys rightly pointed out in
Critical Keywords in Literary and Cultural Theory, “At the same time, however,
the responsibility of reading is such that one cannot simply read as one likes,
as has been stated already; one has to be attentive to the ways in which the
text is articulated, the ways in which it appears to articulate itself and the
ways in which it appears to be silent on matters”. The German critic Wolfgang Iser also holds a similar
view that the literary text, as a product of the writer’s intentional acts, in
part controls the reader’s response. To illustrate this point more clearly,
this writer would like to bring the example of a poem by W H Auden ‘the Unknown
Citizen’. The inner currents of this particular poem cannot be understood by
the mere intensive and passionate reading of the poem by a reader. The
biographical and bibliographical features of the author and the text have a
greater role in convincing the meaning. Only a reader with a substantial
understanding of the Marxist leanings of the poet can get into the heart of the
poem and rightly answer to his non-conformist calls. So in this example not the
attempts of the reader alone that counts but the text and the author and his
back ground details also have considerable significance in producing meaning in
the minds of the reader. There is a scope for a possible question here: Is it
not possible reading a text without a proper understanding of the author after
all there is no determinate or correct meaning for a text?. To quote Harold
Bloom All “reading is ….misreading; the only difference is that between a “strong”
misreading and a “weak” misreading. But even for a misreading, understanding of
the text and its background details is important otherwise it will be sheer
misunderstanding and misconstruing of the text.
There are some reader response
theorists like Wolfgang Iser who assume a bi-active model of reading: the
literary work controls the part of the response and the reader controls part. This
is a mediocre approach in which the reader’s role is elevated to the position
of an active participant in the intellectual process of reading and
understanding a text rather than a passive consumer of what is seen in the
print. This approach also gives due share to the text that helps the reader
arrive at a proper understanding of the same. As the reader cannot have
existence without a text, the text also should be given equal share as it is
mentioned above a text cannot be fully grasped or read with the endeavour of
the reader alone.
Another
point to be noted here is that reader-response theory fails to account for the
text being able to widen the reader's understanding. While readers can and do
put their own ideas and experiences into a work, they are at the same time
gaining new understanding through the text. This is something that is generally
overlooked in reader-response theory. To elaborate a little on this idea, the
expansion of the reader’s understanding by the text also contributes to the
creation of the meaning by him or her. While reading a particular text say a
poem it significantly assists the reader to understand and expand his or her
understanding on so many ideas given in the poem. This will definitely
influence the extraction of the meaning of the text.
To
conclude this essay, Reader- response theory through it’s over emphasis on
readers seeks to belittle the place of the text in the creation of meaning. While
the formalist idea of the reader as a passive consumer of the text cannot be encouraged
and at the same time the independent existence of the reader is an impractical
idea. The mutual dependence of the two can produce more meaning in the
understanding of the texts as a whole.
