Reader Response Theory

Reader response theory focuses on the reader' response to the literary text with the various approaches and seek the diversity of the readers to the literary work. It gives full freedom to interpret the text. This theory believes that meaning of the text is affected by the factor like knowledge, experience, mood and the purpose of the reading.

This theory is against the new criticism. New criticisms believes on the role of the readers in finding the meaning of the text and also believes on the timeless meaning of text is contained in the text alone. And this meaning does not change along with the reader’s response.

In the reader response theory, responses of the text impact by ones knowledge, emotions purpose of reading. And the knowledge, understanding is differ in each person and it impact by the society, family, biologically changes, culture, the way ones grow up. Different readers have different personality. They have their own social background and identity.

Community, language, culture, tradition, can directly impact the person's social background and their identity. People of different identity, social background and tradition may have different  perspective  and opinion. This variation can raised the disagreement & debate on literary work and different readers have their own opinion.

A readers reads, feels, realizes & interprets the text. Before a reader reads the text, the text is almost dead and it exists only after when it is read. While writing the text, writer gives only its shape and size but it is the reader who gives a life. They have full freedom regarding the interpretation. 

Interpreting text gets affected by various factors. A single reader can interpret same text in different ways, in this different situation of mind and life time. The interpretation of same text will be different at the age of 16 and in the age of 30. And also different as per their emotion and the purpose of reading.

This theory was developed by Norman Holland. He believes that the readers motives strongly influences how they read. And focuses on what reader’s interpretation reveal about themselves.  He strongly focuses on the psychological response readers. He believes on reacting the literary text with the same psychological response we brings to events in our daily lives. The interpretation can  reveal the psychology of the readers. They interpreted using their past experience and engagement through the their subconscious.  Event the literary text reveal the writer state of mind. For example: Mirror by Sylvia Path. She  suicide 3 days after the writing of mirror. Poem " Mirror" can easily reveal the psychological state of the poet. During the period of writing the mirror, she was in stressful period. She use different simile and metaphor to compare with her feeling like a terrible fish - constitute a simile.