Reader-Response

Question 1

What does Wayne Booth say that the author’s writing tries to do?

Answer 1

The author’s writing tries to ‘mould the reader into the kind of person suited to appreciate’ their work - however, he reader also has (and judges by) their pre-existing values.

Question 2

What does Wayne Booth suggest that the reader has?

Answer 2

Two selves - the self in the real world, and the self as a reader.
ALthough reader can induce suspension of their everyday values (in lieu of htose in the text), but their pre-existing values limit how far this suspension is possible

Question 3

What does Wayne Booth suggest that the auhtor has?

Answer 3

Two selves - the physical author, and the implied author/”second self” (the voice in the text)

Question 4

What does Wayne Booth insist about ‘aesthetic distance’

Answer 4

‘Aesthetic distance’ is never distance from everything - writing imposes ‘controls over the reader’s invovelment and detachment along various lines of interest’ - the ‘distance’ from one ‘axis’ creates proximity to another

Question 5

What does Walker Gibson suggest that we evaluate books based upon?

Answer 5

Our own value judgmeent s- a bad book is thus one whose “mock reader” is “ a person we refuse to become”

Question 6

what does I.A Richards say is the reader’s role?

Answer 6

Due to the “constructive, hazardous, free creative process” of reading, readers construct literary meaning
thus “the process of understanding….is itself the poem”