Reader Response Theory and the Restrictive Nature of Freedom
During the mid twentieth century, the literary community witnessed the descent of the New Criticism and the emergence of the reader response movement. The reader response movement sharply contrasts the theories of New Criticism in that it focuses on the importance of the reader in the creation of the literary experience. Like New Critics, reader response theorists do not entirely agree on all issues and, consequently, different branches of the movement form. The phenomenological approach represents the notion that the author and reader collaborate to produce the literary work. Phenomenologists credit the reader with having a performative role in the literary experience. Authors such as Jean-Paul Sartre, Wolfgang Iser, and Hans Robert Jauss are associated with the phenomenological approach to literature. Because the reader response movement is built on the foundation that the audience is an essential part of the literary process, phenomenologists tend to show a great deal of respect for the reader. In fact, a major underlying theme of this movement is the idea that the reader should be granted freedom to interpret a literary work in any way he/she likes. Jean-Paul Sartre, in his essay entitled "Why Write?", describes this
Of the three aforementioned authors, Sartre is the most adamant in addressing the pertinence of freedom in the literary experience. Sartre claims, "the book does not serve my freedom; it requires it" (627). Freedom is "required" of the reader. How does the author or text cater to this requirement? Sartre describes many way in which this is accomplished. He states that, although the text is laid out by the author, the words on paper have no relevance until the reader creates meaning for them: "from the very beginning, the meaning is no longer contained in the words, since it is he (the reader), on the contrary, who allows the signification of each of them to be understood; and the literary object, though realized 'through' language, is never given 'in' language" (626). Sartre provides the reader with the freedom to interpret the language of the text in many different ways. He defends this freedom by supporting the premise that a word which may evoke a certain meaning or feeling in one individual, may trigger a completely varied response in another. Iser illustrates a similar idea in his essay with a fitting analogy: "Two people gazing at the night sky may both be looking at the same collection of stars, but one will see the image of a plough, and the other will make out a dipper" (960). The nature of the semantics of our language would indicate that this phenomenon is feasible to a certain extent. This semantic freedom can only be taken so far, though. One could not easily argue for the interpretation of the word "black" as meaning the color that is known as "white". In this respect, the reader can never attain total freedom. Although Jauss does not openly address the issue of reader freedom in his essay, he provides hints about his position on the matter. The overriding theory of Jauss' "Literary History
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Approximate Word count = 1235
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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