This week, in my "Shakespeare, Systems, and Intertextuality" course, one of our readings is from The Reader, the Text, the Poem, by Louise M. Rosenblatt, a mother of "reader-response" criticism. One passage struck home for me, as a member of a discipline that too easily pronounces flip judgment on literary works and performances:
Critical theory and practice both suffer from failure to recognize that the reader carries on a dymanic, personal, and unique activity. Many contemporary critics and teachers evidently think that they are being "objective" when they discuss identifiable elements of the text. They do not include in their theoretical assumptions recognition of the fact that even the most objective analysis of "the poem" is an analysis of the work as they themselves have called it forth (15).
A literary work doesn't exist alone; it exists only as a text is being read by a reader. To judge a text—or a performance—bad is to admit defeat. It is to say, "I don't have the ability to call forth a satisfying work from this."
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