This article examines the relationship between current concepts of the reading process and contemporary theories of literary response. It is argued that text-based concepts of the reading process are highly isomorphic with the New Criticism that dominated literary theory from the 1930s to the 1960s, and that reader-based concepts of the reading process are equally isomorphic with the “reader-response” theories of literary understanding that have succeeded the New Criticism. It is maintained that the interactive formulation of the reading process that evolved from the conflict between text-based and reader-based formulations has been ignored by literary theorists to the detriment of developing literary theories that reflect the psychological reality of processing literary texts.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
Anderson, R. C.
(1977). The notion of schemata and the educational enterprise. In R. C. Anderson, R. J. Spiro, & W. E. Montague (Eds.), Schooling and the acquisition of knowledge. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
2.
Anderson, R. C.
(1978). Schema-directed processes in language comprehension. In A. Lesgold, J. Pelligreno, S. Fokkema, & R. Glaser (Eds.), Cognitive psychology and instruction (pp. 67-82). New York: Plenum.
3.
Anderson, R. C.
, Spiro, R. J., & Anderson, M. C. (1977, March). Schemata as scaffolding for the representation of information in connected discourse (Tech. Rep. No. 24). Urbana-Champaign: University of Illinois, Center for the Study of Reading.
4.
Bartlett, F. C.
(1932). Remembering: A study in experimental and social psychology. London: Cambridge University Press.
5.
Bleich, D.
(1978). Subjective criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
6.
Brooks, C.
(1947). The well wrought urn. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
7.
Culler, J.
(1975). Structuralist poetics. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.
8.
Ehri, L. C.
(1979). Linguistic insight: Threshold of reading acquisition. In T. B. Waller & G. E. MacKinnon (Eds.), Reading research: Advances in theory and practice (Vol. 1, pp. 63-114). New York: Academic Press.
9.
Fish, S. E.
(1970). Literature in the reader: Affective stylistics. New Literary History, 2, 123-162.
10.
Fish, S. E.
(1971). Surprised by sin: The reader in paradise lost. Berkeley: University of California Press.
11.
Fish, S. E.
(1973). What is stylistics and why are they saying such terrible things about it? In S. Chatman (Ed.), Approaches to poetics (pp. 109-152). New York: Columbia University Press.
12.
Fish, S. E.
(1983). Short people got no reason to live: Reading irony. Daedalus, 112, 175-191.
13.
Goodman, K. S.
(1967, February). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. Paper presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, New York.
14.
Goodman, K. S.
(1970). Reading: A psycholinguistic guessing game. In H. Singer & R. B. Ruddell (Eds.), Theoretical models and process of reading. Newark, DE: International Reading Association.
15.
Goodman, K. S.
(1976). What we know about reading. In P. D. Allen & D. V. Watson (Eds.), Findings of research in miscue analysis: Classroom implications. Urbana, IL: National Council of Teachers of English.
16.
Holland, N.
(1973). Poems in persons: An introduction to the psychoanalysis of literature. New York: Norton.
17.
Iser, W.
(1978). The act of reading: A theory of aesthetic response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
18.
LaBerge, D.
, & Samuels, S. J. (1974). Toward a theory of automatic information processing in reading. Cognitive Psychology, 6, 293-323.
19.
LaBerge, D.
, & Samuels, S. J. (1983). A theory of automaticity in reading: Looking back: A retrospective analysis of the LaBerge and Samuels reading model. In L. M. Gentile, M. L. Kamil, & J. S. Blanchard (Eds.), Reading research revisited (pp. 39-54). Columbus: Charles E. Merrill.
20.
Lesgold, A. M.
, & Perfetti, C. A. (Eds.). (1981). Interactive processes in reading. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
21.
Liberman, I.
, Liberman, A. M., Mattingly, I., & Shankweiler, D. (1980). Orthography and the beginning reader. In J. F. Kavanagh & R. L. Venezky (Eds.), Orthography, reading and dyslexia (pp. 137-147). Baltimore: University Park Press.
22.
Lowes, J. L.
(1927). The road to Xanadu. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
23.
Mattingly, I. G.
(1972). Reading, the linguistic process and linguistic awareness. In J. F. Kavanagh & I. G. Mattingly (Eds.), Language by ear and by eye (pp. 133-147). Cambridge: MIT Press.
24.
Miller, J. H.
(1970). Poets of reality. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
25.
Poulet, G.
(1969). The phenomenology of reading. New Literary History, 1, 53-68.
26.
Rayner, K.
(1981). Eye movement and perceptual span in reading. In F. J. Pirozzolo & M. C. Wittrock (Eds.), Neuropsychological and cognitive processes in reading (pp. 145-165). New York: Academic Press.
27.
Rosenblatt, L. M.
(1978). The reader, the text, the poem: The transactional theory of the literary work. Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press.
28.
Rumelhart, D. E.
(1977). Toward an interactive model of reading. In S. Dornic (Ed.), Attention and performance VI (pp. 573-603). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
29.
Smith, F.
(1971). Understanding reading. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
30.
Smith, F.
(1982). Understanding reading (3rd ed.). New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.
31.
Suleiman, S.
, & Crosman, I. (Eds.). (1982). The reader in the text: Essays on audience and interpretation. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
32.
Tate, A.
(1959). Collected essays. Denver: Alan Swallow.
33.
Tompkins, J. P.
(Ed.). (1981). Reader response criticism: From formalism to post-structuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
34.
van Dijk, T. A.
, & Kintsch, W. (1983). Strategies of discourse comprehension. New York: Academic Press.
35.
Wellek, R.
, & Warren, A. (1956). Theory of literature (3rd ed.). New York: Harcourt, Brace & World.
36.
Wimsatt, W. K.
, & Beardsley, M. C. (1954). The verbal icon. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.
