Reader Oriented Criticism

            In Literary Criticism, Charles Bressler highlights the Reader-Oriented Critic Louise M. Rosenblatt’s notion that a reader may find multiple interpretations for a poem based on the text but also based on the specific reader’s personal interpretations.  Rosenblatt argued that these multiple interpretations are all legitimate.  He also claimed that every time a reader reads a poem the poem is recreated.  I think it is good that literary theory began to give authority to the reader rather than just the poem.  However, I do not fully understand Rosenblatt’s idea that reading is a give-and-take relationship between the text and the reader.  Perhaps this is because I have a different connotation for give-and-take which I consider to be reciprocal.  I don’t see how the reader can give anything to the text, but I may be thinking about it too literally.  After all, a book or text is not a sentient being.

            Reader-Oriented criticism requires an active reader to assign meaning to the text.  Jauss argued that a text cannot have one universal meaning, because as time passes and culture changes reader’s values change as well affecting their interpretations.  Iser argued that a text does not have meaning on its own.  It only has meaning when read by a conscientious reader, and all readers have their own distinct interpretations.  Iser argued that readers fill in “gaps” within a story about the characters and such through expectations and readers expectations adapt as a story progresses.  I wonder if Iser actually tested different readers to compare their different expectations as they read through the same text.