Also known as 'reader-response' theory, Reception theory can be seen as a make-everyone-feel-good-about-their-own-interpretation school of literary criticism. More profoundly, it's a perspective on reading that insists on its nature as an event. Meaning happens when the reader encounters text; to deem... [more]

Also known as 'reader-response' theory, Reception theory can be seen as a make-everyone-feel-good-about-their-own-interpretation school of literary criticism. More profoundly, it's a perspective on reading that insists on its nature as an event. Meaning happens when the reader encounters text; to deem the occurrence false is, for a Reception theorist, utterly absurd. The theory maintains that a text produces and proliferates its meaning in and through encounters with diverse readers. Subjecting these encounters to a pre-existing set of objective criteria not only limits what a text can do, but also assigns the text a false existence outside its community of readers. Reception theory opposes formalist approaches, which insist on the autonomy of a text distinct from the effects it produces. Instead, it favors a more interactive approach, one that emphasizes readers' creative role in endowing a text with meaning. Reception theory stresses the inexhaustible nature of interpretive possibility. Meaning proliferates as a text is read -- interpretations will differ depending on the context in which they occur. And there's no context-of-all-contexts that legislates over the others. Certain interpretations solidify, win broad acceptance, achieve a kind of permanence, but this is less a function of their objective truth than of their capacity to engage readers at a particular time. Shakespeare, for example, will always be read; his relevance seems eternal. But this relevance differs depending on present perspectives, the interests of the contemporary community. Interest and relevance are, in fact, two central concepts of Reception theory: one must always consider the historical, cultural, and personal disposition of the reader when considering interpretation. In this sense, Reception theory approaches the more radical strains of Hermeneutics. The school has various factions. German critics like Iser and Ingarden take a conservative stance, granting the reader freedom only within a certain set of restrictions and limitations fixed by the text. More radical thinkers, such as Stanley Fish, maintain that no text exists outside the interpretations of its readers. [show less]