reader-response

Waters doesn't seem to realize how close his notion of studying "how human beings respond to art" is to Stanley Fish's version of reader-response criticism -- which posits that what counts in the literary experience occurs "in the reader" -- while at the same time he identifies Fish as one of those pied pipers leading academic criticism astray.

Literary Study 2009

You might think that, given my assent to John Dewey's conception of art and literature as modes of experience -- which in one of its subsequent reformulations became Stanley Fish's version of "reader-response" theory -- I might find the notion that I could properly use art "to come to some understanding for myself" entirely acceptable, even an immediate consequence of Dewey's own philosophy of art.

Principles of Literary Criticism 2010

I know this is a sore spot with a lot of readers these days (thank you again, reader-response theory), and a lot of writers trip all over themselves trying to keep readers happy.

"So, you can make me cum. That doesn't make you Jesus." greygirlbeast 2009

I am especially confused by those who claim to be fond of reader-response theory, but have disdain for unreliable narrators, since unreliable narrators force the reader to play a more active role in interpreting and shaping the narrative.

Strange moon, strange land, strange man. greygirlbeast 2009

In their weakest moments, the New Critics were guilty of this as well, and in my opinion it was a discomfort with this tendency that led to New Critical formalism being supplanted by "harder" kinds of hermeneutics, reader-response theory being among the first.

Literary Study 2009

We might well challenge reader-response criticism as focusing on the amount that a reader "puts into" a text to the detriment of what they "get out of" it.

Archive 2008-09-01 Hal Duncan 2008

With reader-response criticism as field in its own right, the manipulative operations of narrative are clearly of more concern than that unfashionable form of critique focusing on the artwork as the expression of an artist.

Notes on Strange Fiction: Narrative's Function (2) Hal Duncan 2008

We might well challenge reader-response criticism as focusing on the amount that a reader "puts into" a text to the detriment of what they "get out of" it.

Notes on Strange Fiction: Narrative's Function (2) Hal Duncan 2008

In a sense, if one approaches Shahn's series from the perspective of reader-response theory, the tragedy of the fire (in the Hickman series) and the Holocaust (in "Allegory") are all the more terrifying and devastating because the features of the victims are abstracted.

Menachem Wecker: Exhibit Finds Holocaust Reference in Art of 1947 Chicago Homicide Case 2010

With reader-response criticism as field in its own right, the manipulative operations of narrative are clearly of more concern than that unfashionable form of critique focusing on the artwork as the expression of an artist.

Archive 2008-09-01 Hal Duncan 2008