Yandell, John; (2020) Reader response in the classroom. In: Marshall, Bethan and Manuel, Jackie and Pasternak, Donna L and Rowsell, Jennifer, (eds.) The Bloomsbury Handbook of Reading Perspectives and Practices. (pp. 22-35). Bloomsbury Publishing: London, UK.

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Abstract

Reader response has tended to be presented as one among a range of different literary theories – and often as part of the theoretical turn in the 1960s and 1970s. What is meant by reader response theory, however, is so hugely variable as to call into question its usefulness as a category, while its roots can be traced back to the origins of literary study as a modern discipline. And yet there is a sense in which reader response presents the most fundamental challenge to common-sense assumptions about the reading process, in that it directs our attention not to the text as the repository of (more or less stable) meaning but rather to the activity and agency of readers. Because of this, reader response has had, from the start, a pedagogic orientation: transcending the merely literary, it offers teachers the possibility of a theoretically-informed praxis and raises vital questions about the assessment of reading.

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