As an author as well as a teacher and examiner, I wanted to put my writing to the test. In this article, four readers respond to the opening paragraphs of my novels Held Up (2012) and The Crack (2014) while I, the writer, shout encouragement from the sidelines. This practical exercise is designed to prompt you to explore different critical approaches as well as the close reading of prose texts.
Reader-response theory is a literary-critical approach that emphasises the reader’s role in actively constructing meaning from a text. It changes the focus from the author’s intentions or the text’s inherent structure to the individual reader’s personal experience and active interpretation. This theory suggests that meaning is not exclusively contained within the text, but is rather created through the dynamic interaction between the reader and the text. This approach to critical engagement with a text grew out of disenchantment with new criticism, which demands a more exclusive focus on the words on the page.
Your organisation does not have access to this article.
Sign up today to give your students the edge they need to achieve their best grades with subject expertise
Subscribe
