Reader-Response

Reader-response critics raise the question of where literary meaning resides—in the text, the reader, or the space between them. Reader-response critics differ in the degree of subjectivity they emphasize. David Bleich sees a literary work as a mirror in which readers contemplate themselves. Norman Holland focuses on the psychological dynamics of reading, and suggests that readers create their identities through reading literature. Wolfgang Iser emphasizes negotiating the text rather than the reader’s feelings. Text-centered theorists like Iser highlight the temporal aspect of reading, emphasizing how readers construe texts word-by-word, line-by-line, sentence-by-sentence, making and altering their sense of what is happening in a text and what it means as they progress through it.