25 Reader Response Theory; Wimsatt and Beardsley, Fallacies

Ms. Pragya Sen Gupta

Reader –Response Theory 

Reader-Response Theory came as a contradictory theory to New Criticism and Formalism. The Formalist School, of which New Criticism later developed, emphasized on the form and structure of a particular text. New Critics considered that a text’s structure and meaning are closely connected and therefore, they excluded contexts, intention, and subjective response from being the model of their analysis. However, the Reader response critics believed that the meaning of a text is not entirely within the text but also depends on how the reader or audience perceives it. Here, the reader chooses his or her own ways of reading a text and interpreting it accordingly. Even though this theory evolved in 1960s and 1970s, we can find its traces in the works of critics like I.A. Richards, Rosenblatt and C.S. Lewis. Rosenblatt, in his preface to The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work, writes, “…a text, once it leaves its author’s hands, is simply paper and ink until a reader evokes from it a literary work– sometimes, even, a literary work of art.” (Rosenblatt) Thus, the reader is the creator of meanings, or in other words, the reader weaves the meaning out of a text by engaging himself or herself through his or her unique performance with the text. The author’s intention is not given any preference here. On the contrary, the text and the reader are not separated unlike what happens in objective reading of a text. This enables in derivation of multiple meanings since each reader responds to a text and analyses it with his or her own experience. At this juncture, Reader-Response critics find their common ground with Post-structuralism. According to Lois Tyson, there are two fundamental dogmas shared by reader response theorists. First is that “the role of the reader cannot be omitted from our understanding of literature and 2) that readers do not passively consume the meaning presented to them by an objective literary text; rather they actively make the meaning they find in literature”. (Tyson). The multiplicity of meanings are not only produced by subjective readings of different readers but also from the same reader who is reading the text in different occasions. Therefore, a text surpasses from being an object or a physical entity. Rather, it becomes a product of the processing of meaning that the reader attains with his or her own understandings. This response of the reader becomes basic ingredient in creating the text. Even though the intimations of reader’s subjective attitude towards a text has been recognized by critics like I.A Richards, Rosenblatt and C.S. Lewis, the major works of Reader- Response Theory can be ascribed to those of Norman Holland, Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser, Hans-Robert Jauss, David Bleich and the later works of Roland Barthes.

Tyson divides reader-response theory into five categories which have been mentioned and discussed below:

Transactional Reader-Response Theory: This theory is develops from the works of Louise Rosenblatt and later on, upheld by Wolfgang Iser, too. It “analyzes the transaction between text and reader” (Tyson). According to Rosenblatt, a text offers both openness and limitations. The analysis of these openness and limitations elucidates the multifaceted role a text has in terms of transaction with the reader. The text, in a way, guides the interpretations made by the reader at various stages of reading it. In Iser’s words

“The poles of text and reader, together with the interaction that occurs between them, form the ground-plan on which a theory of literary communication may be built”

(Iser).

Apart from the stimulus of spontaneous responses emerged by moods or feelings, the transactional reader response theory also considers the accumulated knowledge of the reader. Rosenblatt differentiates between the “efferent’ and “aesthetic’ reading and gives more importance to the latter. The efferent reading promotes the determinant meanings of a text. On the other hand, aesthetic readings of a text upholds determinacy and indeterminacy. Iser, on the other hand conceives the idea that even though a text tries to guide the responses of a reader, there are potential “gaps” within each literary text which a reader can pervade according to his or her imaginative capability. He distinguishes between “implied reader” and “actual reader”. The former responds to a text as per the text expects while the latter brings his own private experiences while responding towards it.

Affective Stylistics: According to this theory, a text’s existence is depended on its readers. The theory was recognized by Stanley Fish. Fish contradicts with the idea that the meaning of a text is within it and raises the concept of meaning being present within the reader. Emphasis is given more on the time with which the reader arrives at any meaning of the text rather than the space in which the text exists. In this process, meaning is attained with a long duration of time, and it varies with how the text affects its reader in his or her process of reading. This theory also negates the possibility of a certain meaning at the end of reading a text. Rather, it focuses on the experience of reading and the thematic development of the text is supported by this experience.

Subjective Reader-Response Theory: Established by David Bleich, this particular theory draws attention to written responses by the readers to a particular text unlike both transactional reader- response theory and affective stylistics which engage in “analysis of textual cues” (Tyson). According to Bleich, the texts are made by the responses of readers and that their interpretations give meanings to the texts. Bleich differentiates between “real objects” and “symbolic objects” by calling the physical presence of a text real (as in the text printed in paper) and the conceptual development after reading a text is symbolic. Therefore, according to him, the interpretation of a text is not the analysis of printed page but rather the analysis of what the reader has perceived in his or her mind. Thus what happens in the process is ‘resymbolization’ of readers’ experiences.

Bleich promoted the idea that knowledge is subjective and accumulated by readers’ own understandings and situational demands. But through his experiments, he also fostered that this knowledge is comparative in nature so that there is a possibility of establishing a continuity in meaning-making.

Psychological Reader-Response Theory: A reader is not independent of his or her own motives towards reading a text, and Norman Holland holds this as the basis of this theory to claim that  the interpretations and responses made by a reader expresses about his or her own psychology. The readers’ attitudes towards texts are not very different from their regular psychological traits or behavior. In his preface to The Dynamics of Literary Response, Holland states, “literature is an experience and, further, an experience not discontinuous with other experiences.” (Holland) Therefore, any text which may not pertain to that, the readers find their own interpretations towards it so that their psychological equilibrium is not or least affected. The ‘identity theme’, as described by Holland, is a planned way of balancing between the “psychological conflicts and coping strategies”. According to Tyson, there are three stages of interpretation process suggested by Holland. In the first stage, the text brings a kind of barrier or shield in the minds of the reader. Second is the fantasy stage where the reader tries to calm down those defenses by finding a suitable way of interpretation which will not create any disturbance in the equilibrium. Finally, in the last transformative stage, an abstract interpretation is brought out which attends to the intellectual interpretation of the text with the anticipation that by doing so emotional responses will be shunned out. Another critic of psychological reader-response theory was Harold Bloom who applied Freud’s concept of “defense mechanisms” in order to resist the “influence” of the poet or author.

Social Reader-Response Theory: Social Reader-Response Theory emerged with the later works of Stanley Fish. Here, Fish has tried to take the subjective response to a text from an individual to a community. This community, which Fish calls the ‘interpretive community’, is one that comprises of individuals who have common interpretive strategies. These common strategies are essentially products of various sorts of established assumptions that readers employ while reading a text. Even though the readers can belong to different interpretive communities at the same or different times, their interpretation of a text at a given point of time is guided by the assumptions functioning on them at the time of their reading. This implies that a reader may interpret a text differently at two different time if the strategies operating on him or her is varying. Fish validated this by an experiment with his students where he wrote names of few linguists in one class and in the next class told his students that they were from a seventeenth century religious poem. What he argues is, the mere strategy of changing the referral point of view made his students interpret the text as a poem which rejoices God’s benevolence. From this, Fish concluded that a reader’s interpretive strategies are the causes of every literary assessment he or she does. However, Fish also claims that the interpretive strategies are not infinite and “interpretations will always be controlled by the relatively limited repertoire of interpretive strategies available at any given point in history.”

Lastly, Reader-Response Theory is not a single theory or a single way of looking at a text. It talks about multiple approaches by which a reader can analyse a text without being influenced by the authorial subjugation. Even though the reader-response critics have considered various bases to read a text, they still agree that a reader’s own disposition and creativity allows him or her to assign meaning to the text. Therefore, the ways of reading can never be appropriated.

Wimsatt and Beardsley, Fallacies 

Fallacy is a wrong conviction that builds its space by holding on to incorrect arguments. According to Oxford English Dictionary, the term originates from the later half of fifteenth century, “in the sense ‘deception, guile’; gradually superseding Middle English fallace”. The word has its roots in Latin “fallacia” or “fallax”/ “fallacy” meaning ‘deceiving’. Thus in literary criticism, fallacy refers to a deceptive way of understanding or analyzing a text which may lead the reader to an erroneous reading of the text. W.K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley belonged to the school of New Criticism and their essays “The Intentional Fallacy” and “The Affective Fallacy” abandon the ideas of both author’s intentions and reader’s subjective reactions to a literary text as effective ways of analysis. Both intention and affection are false in nature when it comes to judge a piece of literary work based on them.

Intentional Fallacy 

In this essay, “The Intentional Fallacy”, Wimsatt and Beardsley critiqued the concept of analyzing a work by making assumptions on the intent of the author. In the beginning of the essay, they begin with five propositions. Firstly, the remark of Professor Stoll that the words of a poem come out of a head and not a hat, is not adequate because poet’s intellect being the reason of a poem does not necessarily mean that the poet’s intention has to be the criterion. Secondly, a critic can never find an answer of poet’s actual intention because either the poem will itself adequately explain what the poet intends or otherwise, the critic has to rely on sources outside the text. Thirdly, poetry does not need to be interpreted by the means of intention because they are different from practical messages. According to them, whatever a poetry implies to is “relevant”. Even though the meaning of a poem is personal, the views and approaches towards the poem should be attributed to the “dramatic speaker”. Lastly, the author’s true intention can never be achieved by him in the poem because it is always very abstract.

Wimsatt and Beardsley suggests that a poem belongs neither to the poet nor to the critic. Once the author has finished composing it, he is left with no control over its meaning. The poem then becomes a possession of the public who understand them by the means of language. Thus, the knowledge constructed by the poem becomes objective knowledge. Therefore, even if the author had his own intentions behind writing a poem, they become irrelevant because the objective text itself contains the meaning, structure and significance of it. They disagree with Richard’s idea of poem being a “class of experience” which the poet has contemplated and that a poet can also be a reader. Even though Prof. Lewis and Tillyard had tried to portray the fallacy involved in considering the author’s intention being center of literary criticism, yet it was not sufficient. According to Tillyard, a poem can be a parallel approach by which a poet’s psychology is determined. However, it may arise the risk of misperception between “personal and poetic studies”, and even the personal writings can be falsely considered as poetic.

There are two types of evidences that Wimsatt and Beardsley mention in the essay: internal and external. But there are paradoxes of internal being public and external being idiosyncratic. The internal evidences consist of grammatical structure of a poem and “habitual knowledge of the language”. In the words of Abrams, what they tried to do was to affirm that

“…an author’s intended aims and meanings in writing a literary work—whether these are asserted by the author or merely inferred from our knowledge of the author’s life and opinions—are irrelevant to the literary critic, because the meaning, structure, and value of a text are inherent within the finished, freestanding, and public work of literature itself.”

(Abrams)

The external evidences usually comprise of information regarding the conditions or reasons for the poet to write a poem. There is a third kind of evidence, according to them, which basically tells about the personality of the poet and these evidences often mingle with one another. The internal evidence is the most consistent and reachable for the readers since it needs a close reading of the semantics and syntax of the text. At the same time, these internal evidences, i.e, language, syntax, semantics, are available to everyone because they are part of the public knowledge. Therefore, not only an individual reader but a collective public understands the poem from same internal evidences. The second type of evidences, i.e, external evidences are not much accessible to the public. The third kind of evidences, i.e, biographical evidences enable the readers to understand how potentially a poet can utilize the words, the language. To illustrate this, they use the example of Donne’s ‘A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning’ in which Donne has used the language of astronomy which may indicate his interests towards the development of science during the time of Renaissance. However, Donne’s personal or biographical traits like this do not change the public knowledge that the poem’s language offers.

Lastly, the concept of allusion is addressed by Wimsatt and Beardsley where they express that when a reader tries to refer to a particular image, he or she also in a way tries to find out the author’s intention, particularly in those texts where author’s notes are also present along with the text.

“…notes tend to seem to justify themselves as external indexes to the author’s intention, yet they ought to be judged like any other parts of a composition (verbal arrangement special to a particular context), and when so judged their reality as parts of the poem, or their imaginative integration with the rest of the poem, may come into question.”

( Wimsatt and Beardsley)

These notes can be misleading as they can make the readers go outside the main text and attempt to understand the intention of the author. In a nutshell, a critic’s analysis of a text needs to be based on the text itself and nothing else.

Affective Fallacy 

The next essay, ‘The Affective Fallacy’, was written by Wimsatt and Beardsley subsequently to establish the concept that even a reader’s emotional or personal responses towards interpreting a text is misleading. As M.H Abrams write,

“The two critics wrote in direct reaction to the view of I. A. Richards, in his influential Principles of Literary Criticism (1923), that the value of a poem can be measured by the psychological responses it incites in its readers.”

(Abrams)

According to Wimsatt and Beardsley,

“The Intentional Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its origins, a special case of what is known to philosophers as the Genetic Fallacy. It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological causes of the poem and ends in biography and relativism. The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does), a special case of epistemological skepticism, though usually advanced as if it had far stronger claims than the overall forms of skepticism.”

(Wimsatt and Beardsey).

The impact on a reader’s psychology by a poem leads to impressionism, i.e., the subjective response to a poem by its reader becomes the ultimate or final interpretation of it. As a result, the objectivity of the poem disappears in this kind of reading. They argue that a successful interpretation of a text needs not be depended on how powerful or emotional impact it has made on its readers.

Wimsatt and Beardsley question the rationale behind emotional responses towards a text. Emotions vary with respect to different functions of a text even though the objects or actions towards which they are brought out are same. On the other hand, the emotions may remain same for different objects in different cultures. Even though they agree with the ability of emotion to reinforce the opinions about a text, to perceive its understanding, and to provide a rationale behind the understanding, but the problem arises because different emotions like apprehension, depression etc are indeed immature and unclear. “At a less intensely affective level, we have “sensitivity” and on the other hand what has been called ‘affective stupidity’.” In this essay, they criticize the belletristic traditions of analyzing a text as faulty because of their dependency on subjective impressions.

Affective Fallacy upholds the idea that literary criticism depending on emotional effects will be susceptible towards confusion and uncertainty. According to them, the affective theory is more of a choice than being a tool for scientific or reasonable study of literature. As a result of this, the critics’ sincerity may arise question just like in intentional fallacy, the author’s sincerity is questionable. The response of the readers towards a text may contain a variety of strong and powerful images, feelings, or ‘heightened consciousness’, but they are neither to be accepted nor rejected because they contribute nothing towards the objective criticism of a text. The emotive knowledge produced by the subjective readings may contain some aesthetic value but they cannot form the principle for understanding a text.

Wimsatt and Breadsley also claim in this essay that the emotive quality of a poem is within its objectivity. The implication is the emotion aroused by poetry has permanency even when the cultural or anthropological context around them change functionally. They assign a complex structure to this emotive object and state that it can be recovered at any point of time if a reader is willing to do so. Therefore, the critics do not need to analyse a text in terms of varying emotions. This is how they write

“In short, though cultures have changed and will change, poems remain and explain; and there is no legitimate reason why criticism, losing sight of its durable and peculiar objects, poems themselves, should become a dependent of social history or of anthropology.”

(Wimsatt and Beardsley)

According to Wimsatt and Beardsley, a literary critic’s responsibility is not to report about a poem  but  rather  to  explain  its  meaning objectively,  without  influencing  the  text by author’s intent or his or her own response towards it. The readers of such critics will be able to, thus, examine the text without judging it from any subjective point of view. They consider the text itself  is  a  unique  entity  which  can  be  interpreted  by  objective  reading  of  the  text  alone.

Therefore, they reject the necessity of both author and reader to determine the meanings of a text. However, the  concept of  Affective  Fallacy was rejected  by the Reader-Response critics since it ignores the potential of a reader to render meanings to a text. Stanley Fish’s essay ‘Literature in the  Reader’  tries  to  find  out  the  fallacious  nature  of  Affective  Fallacy  itself.  Fish  calls  it  “Affective Fallacy Fallacy” and asserts that the objective nature of a text is nothing but an illusion because the “self-sufficiency and completeness” that a text possesses eventually threatens the movement it may contain. This movement which Fish calls as the “kinetic art” enables a text, and its reader, to change or shift with time. But Wimsatt and Beardsley’s consideration of a text being “an object of specifically critical judgement” disallows this movement and converts this temporal frame to spatial.

Reference

• Abrams, M. H. A Glossary of Literary Terms: Seventh Edition. Boston: Heinle & Heinle, 1999. Web.
• Holland, Norman N. The Dynamics of Literary Response. New York: Oxford University Press, 1968. Print.
• Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1978. Print.
• Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1994. Print.
• Tyson, Lois. Critical Theory Today. New York : Routledge, 2006. Print.
• Wimsatt Jr., W. K., and M. C. Beardsley. “The Affective Fallacy.” The Sewanee Review, Vol. 57, No. 1 (1949): 31-55. Web.
• —. “The Intentional Fallacy.” The Sewanee Review, Vol. 54, No. 3 (Jul. – Sep., 1946): 468-488. Web.