Louise Rosenblatt is a literary critic who developed the Reader Response Theory (RRT) in the 1930s. RRT emphasizes the role of the reader in interpreting a text, arguing that every reader brings their own experiences, biases, and emotions to a text, which affects their understanding and interpretation of it.
Key Ideas of Rosenblatt's Reader Response Theory
According to Reader Response Theory, there are two stages of reading: the efferent stage and the aesthetic stage. During the efferent stage, the reader is focused on gaining information from the text. During the aesthetic stage, the reader is focused on the experience of reading the text.
Reader Response Theory also emphasizes the importance of the transaction between the reader and the text. According to Rosenblatt, the reader is not a passive recipient of meaning, but an active participant in the creation of meaning. The meaning of a text is not fixed, but is created through the interaction between the reader and the text.
Comparison with Stanley Fish
Stanley Fish is another literary critic who has written extensively on the role of the reader in interpreting a text. While Fish shares some similarities with Rosenblatt's RRT, there are also some important differences.
One of the main differences between Fish and Rosenblatt is their view of the text. While Rosenblatt emphasizes the importance of the reader's experience of the text, Fish sees the text as a self-contained system of meaning. According to Fish, the meaning of a text is not created through the interaction between the reader and the text, but is inherent in the text itself.
Another difference between Fish and Rosenblatt is their view of the reader. While Rosenblatt sees the reader as an active participant in the creation of meaning, Fish sees the reader as a member of a interpretive community. According to Fish, the meaning of a text is not created by individual readers, but by the interpretive community to which they belong.
Despite these differences, both Rosenblatt and Fish have contributed valuable insights into the role of the reader in interpreting a text. Through their work, we have gained a deeper understanding of the complex and dynamic relationship between the reader and the text.
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