#reader-response theory

[omegaphilosophia]

Theories of the Philosophy of Literature

The philosophy of literature encompasses various theories that explore the nature, purpose, and significance of literature. Here are some prominent theories in this field:

Mimetic Theory: This theory, associated with Aristotle, suggests that literature imitates or reflects aspects of the real world. It focuses on the representation of human actions and characters.

Expressive Theory: This perspective emphasizes the expression of the author's emotions, thoughts, and experiences through literature. The work is seen as a medium for the author's self-expression.

Aesthetic Theory: Aesthetic theories, such as those by Immanuel Kant, focus on the intrinsic beauty and form of literature. They explore how literature provides aesthetic experiences and engages the imagination.

Reader-Response Theory: This theory considers the role of the reader in interpreting and giving meaning to a literary work. It suggests that meaning is not solely derived from the author's intentions but is co-created by the reader.

Structuralism and Semiotics: These theories, associated with figures like Roland Barthes, analyze the underlying structures and signs in literature. They explore how language and symbols create meaning.

Deconstruction: Developed by Jacques Derrida, deconstruction challenges fixed meanings in literature. It emphasizes the instability of language and the presence of multiple interpretations.

Feminist Literary Criticism: This approach examines literature through the lens of gender and challenges patriarchal norms. It explores how literature reflects and reinforces societal attitudes toward women.

Postcolonial Theory: Postcolonial literary criticism examines works in the context of colonialism and its aftermath. It explores how literature addresses issues of power, identity, and cultural representation.

Psychoanalytic Literary Criticism: Drawing from Freudian and Jungian theories, this approach explores the psychological dimensions of characters and narratives in literature. It delves into unconscious motivations and symbolism.

Ethical Criticism: Ethical theories in literature examine the moral implications and ethical choices presented in literary works. It considers how literature engages with ethical questions and influences readers' moral perspectives.

Cultural Criticism: Cultural theories analyze literature in the context of cultural practices, beliefs, and values. They explore how literature reflects and shapes cultural identities.

Narrative Theory: Narrative theorists examine the structure and function of narratives in literature. They explore how stories are constructed and how they contribute to our understanding of the world.

These theories offer diverse perspectives for interpreting and understanding the complexities of literature.

[w-o-o-l-f]

That is, all of us, as we read, use the literary work to symbolize and finally to replicate ourselves. We work out through the text our own characteristic patterns of desire and adaptation. We interact with the work, making it part of our own psychic economy and making ourselves part of the literary work—as we interpret it.

Norman N. Holland

[anffin]

Fue un beso... ¿o no?

Ya ha pasado bastante tiempo desde que se ha discutido la escena donde Victor corre hacia Yuuri:

Y la pregunta que perduró fue si en realidad fue un beso o un abrazo. Así que daré mi explicación usando la teoría de la recepción ( reader-response theory) descrita por Wolfgang Iser, aplicado a un producto no literario.

En esta teoría se describe que hay un grado de indeterminación en las que se encuentran las “perspectivas esquematizadas” en donde se reconoce una posible situación. Es decir, a lo largo de los capítulos los espectadores tienen incertidumbre sobre cómo se desarrollará la relación que tienen Victor y Yuuri tanto en el plano sentimental como en sus papeles de coach y pupilo respectivamente, esto sólo hace que el espectador imagine situaciones que podrán ocurrir pero no tiene certeza de que en realidad será así. 

Así, mientras van pasando los capítulos se van cumpliendo o no estas situaciones imaginarias, en caso de no ser así, las perspectivas se van abriendo, esto es, se crean nuevas situaciones.

A partir de lo visto en el desarrollo, tanto de trama como de personajes, de la serie, lo que uno podría esperar en el capítulo 7 era un beso, pero dado que no se puede confirmar esta teoría se abrieron dos perspectivas: para algunos fue un beso, para otros fue sólo un abrazo.

Y sí, ambas posturas son válidas, sin embargo para mi es mejor tener una tercera perspectiva: fue un beso y un abrazo. 

Ahora, según Iser esta indeterminación -incertidumbre- llega a ser algo positivo. ¿Por qué? Porque activa la representación del lector para darle una intención al texto, quien al mismo tiempo abandona las inseguridades propias y de esta forma llega a adentrarse a otras perspectivas pues “Cuanta más determinación pierden los textos, tanto más comprometido estará el lector en la coproducción de su posible intención. Si la indeterminación rebasa ciertos límites de tolerancia, el lector se sentirá fatigado en una medida no conocida hasta entonces”

Nuevamente aplicando lo anteriormente escrito a Yuri On Ice implica que espectador se atreve a explorar otras formas de ver la serie, tiene espectativas que quiere sean cumplidas,cuando no se cumplen, crea unas nuevas, es por eso que YOI sigue siendo tan interesante: los fans no están satisfechos y quieren ver más, por eso siguen esperando con tantas ansias la película: ICE ADOLESCENCE.

[hufflepirate]

Communal Reading

I’ve been thinking about reading lately, as I’m wont to do, and I had a new (or at least new-to-me) thought the other day that I actually find kind of comforting.

Reader-response Theory suggests that readers create the meaning of a text. How much comes from the reader and how much from the work are matters of debate among proponents of the theory, but that’s not really important.

What’s important is the idea that every time you read something, you’re creating the meaning of what you read.  Everyone has a different experience of reading the work, and every time you reread, you have a slightly different experience.  Even though the book/article/story doesn’t change, the way you perceive it does, and it creates a new meaning - or even a new text - with each new reading.  You make that meaning based on your own understandings and experiences of the world, and since your understandings and experiences are unique, so is your meaning/text.

One of the ways this often gets explained is “every decoding is a new encoding.”  Every time you go from the letters/symbols on the page to a meaning, you’re decoding the words, but you’re also encoding the meaning.

Because this is a fairly recent model of thinking about reading, we tend to think of this process as alienating.  We think about it as being stranded in your own new encoding you can’t really quite articulate to someone else.  You’re having two different experiences, even if you’re reading the same thing, and we tend to think of those experiences as inevitably separate and unconnectable.

And maybe that’s a logical extension, if you believe the full meaning comes from the reader, which some people do.

But I believe that it’s a collaborative effort between text and reader.

And here’s the part where it gets comforting.

There are other people in the text with you.  As you read, you’re making meaning.  But you’re making meaning where an author made it before you. You’re making meaning where the author made meaning many, many times as they read and re-read and re-read their work.  You’re making meaning where the editor made it.  You’re making meaning where an editor, and a copy editor, and a graphic designer and a cover artist made meaning.  If you’re reading something older, you’re making meaning where a typesetter made meaning, or a scribe, or both.  Sometimes you’re making meaning with a translator.  You’re never reading alone.  There were people there before you and they’re shaping your experience, too.  And they’re doing it because they want it to be meaningful to you.  Reading, no matter what you’re reading, is chock-full of friendly ghosts who love you and want to help you learn or grow or change or laugh or think or any of the other things we expect books to make us do.

Even if you can’t ever have exactly the experience any of those people did, they’re still in there, fundamentally shaping your understanding in lots of ways, some big, some small.  If you’re looking at your own work, there are multiple layers of you there.  There’s you who you were when you wrote the first draft and you who you were for the next draft, and you the way you are now.

You never read alone.  Reading is never a purely alienated experience. 

Several of the things I love most are things that bring that reality to the front.

I love reading from medieval manuscripts, not only because they look cool, but because the physical realities of handwriting make the scribe present.  You can tell when a scribe got tired because they’d start using more abbreviations, and where they started a new day, because they’d go back to full words again.  They make mistakes and mix up letters and have to scratch things out and rewrite them.

I love reading from my friends’ copies of their books, copies they’ve written on and put their thoughts in.  They usually write them to shape the text for their future selves, but it works that way for me, too.

I also love reading fanfiction, because it recognizes its own nature as a shared space.  The unspoken communities that exist between the words on the page and the meaning the reader creates from the words start to become speaking communities. They shape their readings more publicly, more directly, and much more dramatically.

Fanfiction also understands, implicitly, that the reader shapes meaning and that they do so based on their previous thoughts and experiences.  Fanfiction assumes you know the source text, but it also assumes you have your own headcanons and you’ve read other fics.  It goes out of its way to bridge the gaps between canon and whatever it’s doing with canon.  It makes a point of referencing and using common fanfic tropes from the community.  It often assumes the reader is comfortable with fandom-specific ideas and conventions and enjoys them.

But it also assumes that not every reader will like its reading.  It assumes and accepts the possibility that not every reading appeals to every person.  It strives to share its reading of the original with people who want that reading, without exerting undue pressure to read the original text in a set and specific way, or to read it the same way every time.

Fanfiction takes every decoding as a new encoding and then radicalizes that encoding and offers it up for future layers of decoding and encoding.  It assumes that process and inserts itself in the layers of the process, creating something new that grows outward in its own direction.

So that’s pretty cool.

[projectransparency]

projecTransparency: art censorship & other annoyances

so, there's a lot of whinging about and WELCOME TO THE EMOTIONAL LIFE OF AN ARTIST as well as just the general annoyances that exist when you're an artist and commission information (sorta).

also, talk of the death of the author--or artist--and reader-response theory.

intro & outré music by me

_________

*tentacle-made studios and projecTransparency’s Patreon

*remember that shirts and things are available over on tentacle-made studios’ redbubble.

*and, that tentacle-made studios has commission page!

tentacle-made studios everywhere:

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'trie's studio blog

'trie's online portfolio (i.e., flickr)

'trie and projecTransparency on Youtube

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[whammy5]

"When, for instance, we say that a literary work is good or bad, we are making a value judgement. But when we are asked to substantiate that judgement, we have recourse to criteria that are not values in themselves, but simply denote features  of the work under discussion. We may even compare these features with those of other works, but in differentiating between them we are merely extending the range of our criteria, which still does not constitute a value. The comparisons and differences only serve to condition the value judgement and cannot be equated with it. If, for instance, we praise a novel because its characters are realistic, we are endowing a verifiable criterion with a subjective assessment, whose claim to validity lies at best in a consensus. Objective evidence for subjective preferences does not make a value judgement itself objective, but merely objectifies the preferences. This process brings to light those predilections that govern us. These can then be seen as an expression of personal norms - i.e. not objective value judgement - and in being exposed they open up an intersubjective means of access to our value judgement."

-Wolfgang Iser, The Act of Reading

Yeah, I'm making a little effort to look into reader-response theory of literary criticism on a sort of indirect recommendation from stormingtheivory since it was mentioned once that I apparently had some views about criticism that was similar to it. Enjoying Iser's book so far, and I plan on digging into some of John Dewey's aesthetics because I've enjoyed his other stuff so far and it seems to be in a similar vein in that aesthetics isn't some objective measure independent within the work but an act involving the person viewing the work.

...obviously more to that and I'm sure there are differences, but should still be interesting nonetheless to see any similarities.

The paragraph that Iser writes after the one I quoted brought up an interesting thought to my mind though. In this next paragraph he discussed C.S. Lewis vs F.R. Leavis's views on the work Paradise Lost, quoting C.S. Lewis as saying "It is not that he and I see different things when we look at Paradise Lost. He sees and hates the very same that I see and love."

The reason I considered that interesting was it got me thinking about the episode "Magical Mystery Cure", and the divisiveness of the episode being a musical. I recall a lot of people disliking it because the songs basically compressed a lot of the action into a few short minutes while there were others, like myself, who liked the songs...because it compressed a lot of action into a few short minutes XD.

So for example, let's take "What My Cutie Mark is Telling Me." We both probably wanted the same thing such, as, say, to get a real sense of the confusion and mayhem this cutie mark mixup was having on the group. The difference being then, I think, is that those who hated the song hated it because they wanted to see individualized scenes played out. Meanwhile, I thought the song was fine because I would have found those scenes repetitive, with the song getting the point and emotions across in a much shorter and more compact method.

Not sure if that's exactly what Iser meant, but it's what I thought of at least *shrug*.