Reader-response criticism

How it is used

Use when analyzing how expectations, gaps and reading choices shape meaning; support claims with the reading process.

Example sentences

1. Reader-response criticism helped us explain why the withheld name made us suspect the wrong person.

   The analysis follows an inference produced while reading.

2. The essay uses reader-response criticism to compare first impressions with reactions after the ending.

   Later information changes the reader's earlier construction of meaning.

Common collocations

• apply reader-response criticism
• reader-response criticism and interpretation

Related terms

• interpretationAn explanation of what a text or a part of it means, supported by evidence from the text; also the act of explaining it.
• literary theoryThe study of the ideas and methods used to read and interpret literature, such as structuralism, Marxism, psychoanalysis, feminism and postcolonial theory.

More terms: Criticism and Analysis

• literary criticism
• literary analysis
• close reading
• canon
• intertextuality
• feminist criticism
• explication
• narratology
• defamiliarization
• intentional fallacy
• affective fallacy
• New Criticism