Reader response theories

Question 1

The reader becomes the focus of

Answer 1

the interpretive
attention.

Question 2

The conceptual premise of reader response
theory derives from

Answer 2

hermeneutical reasoning
as conceptualised by Gadamer.

Question 3

The text addresses the reader.

Answer 3

Reading is a dialogic process wherein the reader
engages with the text by way of interpretation.

Question 4

The hermeneutic conception of interpretation
posits that

Answer 4

understanding brings forth a certain
truth.

Question 5

Gadamer highlights how interpretation
transforms the

Answer 5

reader’s subjectivity, giving
reader response theorists an idea to elaborate
on.

Question 6

Reader Response theorists see the reader as

Answer 6

a
sense-maker, rather than a sensuous figure.

Question 7

Aesthetics of reception

Answer 7

focuses on the ways in which
literary texts interact with
their recipients and deploy their
potential meanings and the
roles they assign to their
readers.

Question 8

Jauss addresses the ways in which readers
understand texts similarly or differently across

Answer 8

time and culture.

Question 9

Jauss attempts to bridge the gap between

Answer 9

the
aesthetic and historical approaches to
literature.

Question 10

Reader’s relationship with texts has

Answer 10

aesthetic as
well as historical implications.

Question 11

Aesthetic reception is prone

Answer 11

to historical change.

Question 12

Understanding is dependent

Answer 12

on prejudgment. (cf.
Gadamer, Heidegger)

Question 13

Readers need to have foreknowledge,
prejudgment of literature in order to

Answer 13

be able to
appreciate new texts.

Question 14

The horizon of expectations

Answer 14

a mindset that a reader
brings to the text.

Question 15

The horizon of expectations contains

Answer 15

the elements of
the reader’s pre-understanding.

Question 16

Readers’ disposition towards literary texts is
determined by:

Answer 16

1. Familiar norms or the immanent poetics of the
   genre;
2. The implicit relationships to familiar works of the
   literary-historical surroundings;
3. The opposition between fiction and reality,
   between the poetic and the practical function of
   language.

Question 17

Jauss is interested in

Answer 17

the hermeneutic difference
between the present and the past reception of
literature.

Question 18

Jauss reiterates Gadamer’s observation about

Answer 18

reading as a process of question and answer. Reading is a dialogic process. Aesthetic judgment derives from an
intersubjective experience.

Question 19

Iser

Answer 19

Iser revises
some of the ideas of
hermeneutic analysis.

Question 20

Implied reader

Answer 20

is the role
of the reader as inscribed
in the text; any individual
reader must assume this
role in order to realise
the potential offered
by the text.

Question 21

The text is a determination of points of

Answer 21

‘finished
unfinishedness’, i.e. it is formally complete, but
hermeneutically open to reinterpretation.

Question 22

Gaps are

Answer 22

indeterminacies which each reader fills in
differently by means of imagination.

Question 23

Readers are

Answer 23

active
participants in the
process of the actualisation
of the meanings of the text.

Question 24

Literary work is not

Answer 24

‘words on the page’, but the
concretisation of what is merely hinted at in the
text, the interaction between the reader and the
raw material of the text.

Question 25

Empirical readers slip into the role mapped out by

Answer 25

the text, the role Iser calls the implied reader

Question 26

Readers always bring their own...

Answer 26

horizons to the process of reading.

Question 27

Implied reader is generated by

Answer 27

he text as a set of competences in narrative codes, languages, cultural and historical references, hints, winks, and traps.

Question 28

Texts not only hope for a reader they construct, but

Answer 28

also create a specific competence in the reader (cf. hermeneutic analysis expands the reader’s horizon).

Question 29

Umberto Eco

Answer 29

offers a semiotician’s perspective on the aesthetics of reception.

Question 30

Literary texts are created for a

Answer 30

community of readers rather than a single addressee.

Question 31

Model reader

Answer 31

r is an textual construct, a set of reading strategies empirical readers adopt as their reading initiative.

Question 32

Texts can foresee

Answer 32

a model reader entitled to try infinite conjectures.

Question 33

Text’s intention can only be discovered

Answer 33

by way of interpretation.

Question 34

The text’s intention both offers a

Answer 34

reading strategy to the model reader and legitimates his or her interpretation.

Question 35

Stanley Fish

Answer 35

rethinks the New Criticism’s notion of affective fallacy and the reader response approach of the Constance school.

Question 36

readers are not at liberty to choose the way in which they read, but

Answer 36

are predetermined by the interpretive community to which they belong.

Question 37

Fish suggests that there is nothing in the text,

Answer 37

everything is supplied by the reader.

Question 38

Interpretation is the “source” of texts rather

Answer 38

than their consequence.

Question 39

Interpretive community

Answer 39

is conceived as a set of reading practices one tends to adopt as part of one’s appreciation of literary texts.

Question 40

Interpretive communities are made up of

Answer 40

those who share interpretive strategies for constituting the texts’ properties and assigning their intentions.

Question 41

Reader Response theories derive from

Answer 41

the hermeneutic reasoning about reading as a dialogic process.

Question 42

The conceptual focus is placed on the

Answer 42

competences texts demand from their readers and the competences they instill in readers in the course of interpretation

Question 43

For Jauss, understanding of texts is shaped by

Answer 43

our horizons of expectations, which shape the discrepancies in our appreciations of the same texts.

Question 44

The horizon of expectation correlates with

Answer 44

the conventions operative in a received tradition, which explains why avant-garde experiments gain mainstream appreciation rather belatedly.

Question 45

Iser’s notion of the implied reader is conceptually akin to Eco’s notion of the model reader

Answer 45

both denoting the implicit role the empirical reader is expected to perform by way of interpretation.

Question 46

Fish’s reasoning is particularly at odds with Iser’s

Answer 46

in that while Iser grants agency to the reader’s imagination to fill in the gaps in the narrative, Fish attributes interpretative power to the institution of literature, which legitimises the work of interpretive communities.