Mainly for: Reader-Response Theory, (FOR death and resurection of the author)
Readers and Reading
edited and introduced by Andrew Bennett
p. in U.S by Longman Publishing, New York
1995
0-582-21290-1
Reader-response criticism p3
Best known + influential attempt to describe readers + reading in recent years is called
reader-response criticism or reader-orientated criticism
critics
-Stanley Fish
-Wolfgang Iser
-Norman Holland
-Michael Riffaterre
high point was around 1980 because of 2 important collections of essays.
"The simplest way to approach RRC may be to think about the question of the location of textual meaning."
"The central question for RRC in this respect is: 'Who makes meaning?' or 'Where is meaning made?' p3
Stanley Fish asks - 'Is the reader or the text the source of meaning?'
So the answer to this can be reduced to three major variants.
Norman Holland + David Bleich
-perspective of American Ego psychology
response patter of the individual reader - 'identity theme'
Michael Riffaterre
-structuralist approach
text directs, coerces or compels reading
--It is above all the text itself that controls the production of meaning
Wolfgang Iser
-negotiate between text and reader
"RRC do agree, however, that it is the task of reading theory to decide on the location of authority for interpretation." p4
has come under attack - social, political, historical + economic contexts ... Schweickart, Koestenbaum, tendency of RRC to designate a universal reader seems to ignore differences by women, gay or lesbian readers / other ethnic minorities...
during 1980s + early 1990s reading theory developed in two directions...
"The first direction has been towards the recognition that readers are historically or socially contructed, rather than abstract and eternal essences. This has necessitated a recognition of the politics and history of reading: once it is established that readers are different, that no single identity can be demanded of or imposed on readers, then questions of social, economic, gender and ethnic differences become inescapable in reading theory." p4
now, globalisation, easy to have global opinions on one thing. GOOD quality opinions. MANY opinions... this is given to us by wisdom of the crowd applied to THIS.
The second direction has involved a problematisation of the very concept of 'reading' and the 'reader', a recognition not only that readers are different from one another, but that any individual reader is multiple, and that any reading is determined by difference.
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1 Interaction between Text and Reader* p20
Wolfgang Iser
The implied reader (1974)
The act of reading (1978)
most influential works to emerge from classic RRC of the 1970s
"brief account of his phenomenological theoru of the way in which reading is interactive, occuring between text and reader." p20
"the text is 'actualised' by the reader to become a 'virtual' aesthetic work."
"At the heart of Iser's model of reading is the idea that texts produce uncertainties or gaps in readers' comprehension, and that these gaps spur the reader to produce connections which 'complete' the text. 'Whenever the reader bridges the gaps', Iser declares, 'communication begins.' " p20
This sounds very much like photography and the way things have to be in it.
a text is incomplete without the readers input
I need to incorporate that this can be applied to photography
also remember to state that this is more generalised view of reader-response which seems most applicable to me, I don't really need to strictly apply it to photography by the concept of it to save the author in line with the viewer saves the interpretation of accuracy down to them. REMEMBER to determine accuracy one may need the original person to refer to, accuracy entails two things to compare!!!!
#useful critical overviews of Iser's work
chapter 6, for a consideration of Iser's place in reader-response criticism more generally
"Central to the reading of every literary work is the interaction between its structure and recipient. This is why the phenomenological theory of art has emphatically drawn attention to the fact that the study of a literary work should concern not only the actual text but also, and in equal measure, the actions involved in responding to that text." p20-21
"From this we may conclude that the literary work has two poles, which we might call the artistic and the aesthetic: the artistic pole is the author's text, and the aesthetic is the realization accomplished by the reader." p21
"As the reader passes through the various perspectives offered by the text, and relates the different views and patterns to one another, he sets the work in motion, and so sets himself in motion, too." p21
uses the term virtual a lot...
"its actualisation is clearly the result of an interaction between the two, and so exclusive concentration on either the author's techniques or the reader's psychology will tell us little about the reading process itself." p21
"This is not to deny the vital importance of each of these two poles - it is simply that if one loses sight of the relationship, one loses sight of the virtual work. p21
There is no common code to ensure accurate communication.
one may arise in the process....?
"R. D. Laing writes: 'I may not actually be able to see myself as others see me, but I am constantly supposing them to be seeing me in particular ways, and I am constantly acting in the light of the actual or supposed attitudes, opinions, needs, and so on the other has in respect of me.' 3" p21-22
"Now, the views that others have of me cannot be called 'pure' perception; they are the result of interpretation." p22
"In his book, The Politics of Experience, Laing pursues this line of thought by saying: 'your experience of me is invisible to me and my experience of you is invisible to you.'" p22
he calls it a no-thing
"Contact therefore depends upon our continually filling in a central gap in our experience." p22
difference between reading and all forms of social interaction - face to face
" A text cannot adapt itself to each reader it comes into contact with." p22
"The reader, however, can never learn from the text how accurate or inaccurate are his views of it." p22
"What is missing from the apparently trivial scenes, the gaps arising out of the dialogue" p23
"What is concealed spurs the reader into action, but this action is also controlled by what is revealed; the explicit in its turn is transformed when the implicit has been brought to light." p23
negation
"What is concealed spurs the reader into action, but this action is also controlled by what is revealed; the explicit in its turn is transformed when the implicit has been brought to light." p24
narrative can still be given by photographs in sequence, also, text can accompany photographs which can be interpreted the same way here.
"in order to become fully aware of the implication, we must bear in mind that a narrative text, for instance, is composed of a variety of perspectives, which outline the author's view and also provide access to what the reader is meant to visualise." p25
4main perspectives in narration
narrator
characters
plot
fictitious reader
how blanks function
"Two points need to be emphasised: (1) we have described the structure of the blank in an abstract, somewhat idealised way in order to explain the pivot on which the interaction between text and reader turns; (2) the blank has different structural qualities, which appear to dovetail." p29
now in a position in which to better say what is meant by 'reader participation' in the text
"by Piaget: 'In a word, the subject is there and alive, because the basic quality of each structure is the structuring process itself'13" p30
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2 Reader-Response Criticism* p32
Vincent B. Leitch
YES, main source for dissertation.
historical survey of the ideas, influence and implications of the RRC in the US 1970s 1980s
XXXXXX tend to depoliticize reading by eliding questions of the social and the historical
contrast
feminism of XXXXXX + MArxism of XXXXX
provide alternatives to the essentialising, ahistorical theories of classic RRC
also
'structuralists'
Michael Riffaterre, Gerald Prince, Jonathan Culler, Robert Scholes
would avoid the subjectivity or essentialism of descriptions produced by the RRC, reading is determined not only by textual but also by cultural constraints. The achievement of such theorists allows for theorisation of reading in terms of its connection with deep structures in society.
"It argued against the text-centered criticism of formalism, advocating instead a reader orientated approach." p33
Have a feeling this sounds too advanced for me to take it in properly, I really only require an overview, a generalisation to talk about in my essay.
Simon Johnson
www.thephilosophicalphotographer.co.uk
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