The Literary Transaction: Evocation and Response

Author(s): Louise M. Rosenblatt

Source: Theory into Practice, Vol. 21, No. 4, Children's Literature (Autumn, 1982), pp. 268-277
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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Louise M. Rosenblatt

The Literary Transaction:

Evocation and Response

The term response seems firmlyestablished in the In order to deal with my assigned topic, it becomes
vocabulary of the theory, criticism, and teaching of necessary, therefore, to sketch some elements of
literature. Perhaps I should feel some satisfaction my view of the reading process,2 to suggest some
at the present state of affairs since I am sometimes aspects of what happens when reader meets text.
referred to as the earliest exponent of what is (Note that although I refer mainlyto reading, I shall
termed reader-response criticism or theory.1 Yet be defining processes that apply generally to en-
the more the term is invoked, the more concerned counters with either spoken or written symbols.)
I become over the diffuseness of its usage. In the This will require consideration of the nature of lan-
days when simply to talk about the reader's re- guage, especially as manifested in early childhood.
sponse was considered practically subversive, it Only then shall I venture to develop some impli-
would undoubtedlyhave been prematureto demand cations concerning children, literature, and re-
greater precision in the use of the term. Now that sponse.
the importance of the reader's role is becoming The Reading Process and the Reader's Stance
more and more widely acknowledged, it seems es-
sential to differentiate some of the aspects of the Reading is a transaction, a two-way process,
involving a reader and a text at a particulartime
reading event that are frequently covered by the under particularcircumstances. I use John Dewey's
broad heading of "response."
term, transaction, to emphasize the contributionof
Response implies an object. "Response to both reader and text. The words in their particular
what?" is the question. There must be a story or
a poem or a play to which to respond. Few theories pattern stir up elements of memory, activate areas
of consciousness. The reader, bringing past ex-
of reading today view the literary work as ready-
made in the text, waiting to imprint itself on the perience of language and of the world to the task,
sets up tentative notions of a subject, of some
blank tape of the reader's mind. Yet, much talk frameworkinto which to fit the ideas as the words
about response seems to implysomething like that, unfurl. If the subsequent words do not fit into the
at least so fr as assuming the text to be all-
framework,it may have to be revised, thus opening
importantin determiningwhether the result will be, up new and further possibilities for the text that
say, an abstract factual statement or a poem. Un- follows. This implies a constant series of selections
fortunately, important though the text is, a story from the multiple possibilities offered by the text
or a poem does not come into being simply because and their synthesis into an organized meaning.
the text contains a narrative or the lines indicate But the most important choice of all must be
rhythmand rhyme. Nor is it a matter simply of the made early in the reading event-the overarching
reader's abilityto give lexical meaning to the words. choice of what I term the reader's stance, his "men-
Louise M. Rosenblatt is professor emeritus at New York tal set," so to speak. The reader may be seeking
University. information,as in a textbook; he may want direc-

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tions for action, as in a driver's manual; he may example, and we adopt the appropriate efferent
be seeking some logical conclusion, as in a political stance. Or we note broad marginsand uneven lines,
article. In all such reading he will narrow his at- and automaticallyfall into the stance that willenable
tention to buildingup the meanings, the ideas, the us to create and experience a poem.
directions to be retained; attention focuses on ac- Any text, however, can be read either way. We
cumulating what is to be carried away at the end may approach novels as sociological documents,
of the reading. Hence I term this stance efferent, efferently seeking to accumulate evidence concern-
from the Latin word meaning "to carry away." ing, say, the treatment of childrenin the 19th cen-
If, on the other hand, the reader seeks a story, tury. The "pop" poet may select a "job wanted"
a poem, a play, his attention will shift inward, will advertisement,arrangeits phrases in separate lines,
center on what is being created during the actual and thus signal us to read it aesthetically, to ex-
reading. A much broader range of elements will be perience its human meaning, as a poem. Some-
allowed to rise into consciousness, not simply the times, of course, readers adopt an inappropriate
abstract concepts that the words point to, but also attitude-for example, reading a political article
what those objects or referents stir up of personal aesthetically when they should be efferently paying
feelings, ideas, and attitudes. The very sound and attention to facts. And many people, alas, read the
rhythm of the words will be attended to. Out of texts of stories and poems efferently.
these ideas and feelings, a new experience, the Recognizing that the reader's stance inevitably
story or poem, is shaped and lived through. I call affects what emerges from the reading does not
this kind of reading aesthetic, from the Greek word deny the importance of the text in the transaction.
meaning "to sense" or "to perceive." Whether the Some texts offer greater rewards than do others.
product of the reading will be a poem, a literary A Shakespeare text, say, offers more potentialities
work of art, depends, then, not simply on the text for an aesthetic reading than one by Longfellow.
but also on the stance of the reader. We teachers know, however, that one cannot pre-
I am remindedof the first grader whose teacher dict which text will give rise to the better evocation
told the class to learn the following verses: - the better lived-throughpoem-without knowing
In fourteen hundred and ninety-two the other part of the transaction, the reader.
Columbus crossed the ocean blue. Sometimes the text gives us confusing clues.
I'mremindedof a letter a colleague received. "Dear
When called on the next day, the youngster Professor Baldwin," it began, "You will forgive my
recited: long silence when you learn about the tragedy that
has befallen me. In June, my spouse departed from
In fourteen hundred and ninety-three
the conjugal domicile with a gentleman of the vi-
Columbus crossed the bright blue sea.
cinity."The first sentence announces that we should
Questioned as to why she had changed it, she adopt an aesthetic stance. The second would be
simply said she liked it better that way. appropriate in a legal brief, since the vocabulary
I submitthat this represents a problemin stance. seems adapted to an impersonal, efferent stance.
The teacher had wanted her to read efferently, in Any reading event falls somewhere on the con-
order to retain the date "1492." The pupilhad read tinuumbetween the aesthetic and the efferent poles;
aesthetically, paying attention to the qualitativeef- between, for example, a lyric poem and a chemical
fect, to her own responses, not only to the image formula.I speak of a predominantlyefferent stance,
of the ship crossing the sea, but also to the sound because according to the text and the reader's
of the words in her ear, and in this instance the purpose, some attention to qualitative elements of
discomfort evidently occasioned by the reversal of consciousness may enter. Similarly,aesthetic read-
the normal adjective-noun order. ing involves or includes referentialor cognitive ele-
Freeing ourselves from the notion that the text ments. Hence, the importance of the reader's
dictates the stance seems especially difficult, pre- selective attention in the reading process.
cisely because the experienced reader carries out We respond, then, to what we are calling forth
many of the processes automatically or subcon- in the transaction with the text. In extreme cases
sciously. We may select a text because it suits our it may be that the transaction is all-of-a-piece, so
already chosen, efferent or aesthetic, purposes. Or to speak. The efferent reader of the directions for
we note clues or cues in the text-the author first aid in an accident may be so completely ab-
announces the intention to explain or convince, for sorbed in the abstract concepts of the actions ad-
VolumeXXI, Number 4 269

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vised that nothing else will enter consciousness. need to adopt a predominantstance to guide the
Or an aesthetic reader may be so completely ab- process of selection and synthesis; the construction
sorbed in living through a lyric poem or may so of efferent meaning or the participationin aesthetic
completely identify with a character in a story that evocation; the currentof reactions to the very ideas
nothing else enters consciousness. But in most and experiences being evoked. To develop the ca-
reading there is not only the stream of choices and pacity for such activities is the aim of "the teaching
syntheses that construct meaning; there is also a of reading and literature." We shall find support
stream of accompanying reactions to the very and clarificationin going on to consider children's
meaning being constructed. For example, in reading early entrance into language and into literature. It
a newspaper or a legal document, the "meaning" will then perhaps be possible to arrive at some
will be constructed, and there will be an accom- implications for desirable emphasis in the child's
panying feeling of acceptance or doubt about the early transactions with texts.
evidence cited or the logical argument.
In aesthetic reading, we respond to the very Entrance into Language
story or poem that we are evoking duringthe trans-
action with the text. In order to shape the work, The transactional view of the human being in
we draw on our reservoir of past experience with a two-way, reciprocal relationship with the envi-
people and the world, our past inner linkage of ronment is increasingly reflected in current psy-
words and things, our past encounters with spoken
chology, as it frees itself from the constrictions of
or written texts. We listen to the sound of the behaviorism.3Language, too, is less and less being
words in the inner ear; we lend our sensations, our considered as "context-free."4 Children's sensori-
emotions, our sense of being alive, to the new motor exploration of the physical environment and
experience which, we feel, corresponds to the text. their interplay with the human and social environ-
We participate in the story, we identify with the ment are increasingly seen as sources and condi-
characters, we share their conflicts and their feel- tions of language behavior. Duringthe prelinguistic
ings. period, the child is "learning to mean,"5 learning
At the same time there is a stream of responses the functions of language through developing a
being generated. There may be a sense of pleasure personal sound-system for communicatingwith oth-
in our own creative activity, an awareness of pleas- ers before assimilating the linguistic code of the
ant or awkwardsound and movement in the words, social environment.
a feeling of approval or disapproval of the char- Recent research on children's early language
acters and their behavior. We may be aware of a supports WilliamJames's dynamic picture of the
contrast between the assumptions or expectations connection among language, the objects and re-
about life that we brought to the reading and the lations to which it refers, and the internal states
attitudes, moral codes, social situations we are associated with them-sensations, images, per-
living through in the world created in transaction cepts and concepts, feelings of quality, feelings of
with the text. tendency. James says, "The stream of conscious-
Any later reflectionon our readingwilltherefore ness matches [the words] by an inwardcoloring of
encompass all of these elements. Our response will its own. ... We ought to say a feeling of and, a
have its beginnings in the reactions that were con- feeling of if, a feeling of but, and a feeling of by,
current with the evocation, with the lived-through quite as readily as we say a feeling of blue or a
experience. Thus an organized report on, or artic- feeling of cold."6
ulation of, our response to a work involves mainly Werner and Kaplan, in their study of symbol
efferent activity as we look back on the reading formation, show us the child at first internalizing
event-an abstracting and categorizing of elements such "a primordialmatrix"of sensations and pos-
of the aesthetic experience, and an ordering and tural and imaginal elements. The child's early voc-
development of our concurrent reactions. ables "are evoked by total happenings and are
I have tried briefly to suggest some major as- expressive not only of reference to an event ex-
pects of my view of the reading process-reading ternalto the child,"but also of "the child's attitudes,
as basically a transaction between the reader and states, reactions, etc."7 Evidenceof this early sense
the text; the importance of the reader's selective of words as part of total happenings is the fact
attention to what is aroused in consciousness that some children at five years of age may still
through intercourse with the words of the text; the believe that the name is an inherent part of the
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referent. Cat at first is as much an attribute of the mainly to the "token" top-of-the-inner-iceberg,to
creature as its furor pointed ears. Thus, in language organizingthe abstract concepts the verbalsymbols
as in experience in general, the child is faced with point to. These can yield the information,the di-
the need for a process of differentiationof percep- rections, the logical conclusions that will be the
tion.8 The child's movement toward conventional residue of the reading act.
linguisticforms entails a sorting out of these various In aesthetic reading, the child must learn to
elements. draw on more of the experiential matrix. Instead
Werner and Kaplan describe the sorting-out of looking outward mainly to the public referents,
process as an "inner-dynamicor form-building"or the reader must include the personal, the qualita-
"schematizing" activity. Acquisition of language is tive, kinesthetic, sensuous inner resonances of the
a "twin process," they show us, because the child words. Hence attention is turned toward what is
must learn to link the same internal, organismic immediately lived-through in transaction with the
state both to the sense of an external referent or text, toward what is being shaped as the story or
object, on the one hand, and to a symbolic or the poem.
linguistic vehicle, on the other. What links a word, Both efferent reading and aesthetic reading
cat, to its referent, the animal, is their connection should be taught. If I concentrate on aesthetic read-
with the same internal state.
ing, it is not only because our interest here today
Bates similarlysees the emergence of symbols is in children and literature, but also because it is
as "the selection process, the choice of one aspect the kind of reading most neglected in our schools.
of a complex array to serve as the top of the
Contrary to the general tendency to think of
iceberg, a light-weightmental token" that can stand the efferent, the "literal," as primary, the child's
for the whole "mental file drawer" of associations
earliest language behavior seems closest to a pri-
and can be used for higher-ordercognitive opera-
tions.9 In other words, the child learns to abstract marilyaesthetic approach to experience. The poet,
from the total context in order to arrive at a gen- Dylan Thomas, told a friend, "When I experience
eralized concept of "cat." anything, I experience it as a thing and as a word
at the same time, both amazing."12Such a bond
This process of decontextualization is, of
between language and the inner experiential matrix
course, essential to the development of the ability continues to be stressed in recent studies of chil-
to think, to apply the symbol to new contexts and
dren's early language. Words are primarilyaspects
situations. The "mental token" is the public mean-
of sensed, felt, lived-throughexperiences:
ing of the word. Understandably, parents and
schools welcome and foster this phase. But much
less attention has been paid to the broad base of Beginningabout the last quarterof the first
year and continuing through the second, in-
"the iceberg" of meaning.10"The sense of a word," creased differentiationsof self and other, the
Vygotsky reminds us, "is the sum of all the psy- sharpening of self-awareness and the self-con-
chological events aroused in our consciousness by cept, and the abilityto form and store memories
the word. It is a dynamic, fluid, complex whole .... enable the infant to begin the development of
The dictionary meaning of a word is no more than
a stone in the edifice of sense ..."11 Along with affective-cognitive structures, the linking or
the cognitive abstraction from past experiences bonding of particularaffects or patterns of af-
fects with images and symbols, includingwords
which is the public meaning of the word, there are and ideas. ...
the private kinesthetic and affective elements that
Since there is essentially an infinitevariety
comprise the complex, fluid matrix in which lan- of emotion-symbol interactions, affective-cog-
guage is anchored. nitive structures are far and away the predom-
inant motivational features in consciousness
The LiteraryTransaction soon after the acquisition of language.13

The connection can now be made with the view DorothyWhite, in her classic diaryof her child's
of the reading process that I have sketched. The introductionto books before age five, documents
role of selective attention in the two kinds of reading the transactional character of language. She notes
becomes apparent. In predominantlyefferent read- how, at age two, experience feeds into language,
ing, the child must learn to focus on extracting the and how language helps the child to handle further
public meaning of the text. Attention must be given experience.
VolumeXXI, Number 4 271

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 The experience makes the book richerand the story puzzles or frightens, or because it offers
the book enriches the personal experience even no links with the child's past experiences.
at this level. I am astonished at the early age When an adolescent girl calls the story of a
this backwardand forwardflow between books wallflower at her first dance "the greatest tragedy
and life takes place. With adults or older chil- I have ever read" we must recognize that this is
dren one cannot observe it so easily, but here a sign of the intensity of the lived-throughtrans-
at this age when all a child's experiences are action with the text, and not a judgment on the
known and the books read are shared, when relative potentialities of this book and, say, King
the voluble gabble which is her speech reveals Lear. This transactional process is especially dem-
all the associations, the interactionis seen very onstrated in early reading and listening to stories.
clearly. Now and again Carol mystifies me with Whitetells of readingto her three-year-oldthe story
a reference to life next door, or with some of a small boy who wakes one morning to find
transposed pronunciation which defeats me, himself the sole inhabitant of his town. White re-
but on the whole I know her frame of refer- marks:
ence.14
All this to an older child might well represent
White also illustrates the private facet of the a deliriumof joy and liberty,but to Carol,whose
child's acquisition of the public language. Having pleasure is the presence of people, not their
observed the actual experiences that fed into the absence, it was stark tragedy. "He's all by
child's words, the mother realizes that she under- himself," she said, overcome and deeply
stands the child's particularmeanings and emphasis mournful. Paul's isolation obviously wounded
on words that even the father cannot grasp. Of and shocked her, but I had the feeling that in
course, it is such privateovertones that we all draw creating this dismay, the book provided her
on in our aesthetic reading. with the most tremendous emotional experi-
Parents and teachers have generally recog- ence she has known in all her reading. How-
nized signs of the young child's affinity for the ever, here's the rub, this emotional experience
aesthetic stance. Joseph Conrad tells us that the was of a kind totally different from anything
aim of the novelist is "to make you hear, to make the author had planned to provide, for planned
you feel-it is, before all, to make you see."15 he had.16
Children enthralled by hearing or reading a story
or a poem often give various nonverbal signs of The author, she points out, may plan a particular
such immediacy of experience. They delightedly book, but "one cannot plan what childrenwill take
from it."
sway to the sound and rhythmof words; their facial
expressions reveal sensitivity to tone; their postural Understandingthe transactionalnature of read-
responses and gestures imitate the actions being ing would correct the tendency of adults to look
described. That they are often limited by lack of only at the text and the author's presumed inten-
knowledge, by immaturecognitive strategies, in no tion, and to ignore as irrelevant what the child
way contradicts the fact that they are livingthrough actually does make of it. As in the instance just
aesthetic experiences, their attention focused on cited, it may be that the particularexperience or
what, in their transaction with the words, they can preoccupations the child brings to the spoken or
see and hear and feel. printed text permit some one part to come most
A most eloquent verbal sign that the story or intensely alive. Let us not brush this aside in our
poem is being aestheticallyexperienced is the child's eagerness to do justice to the total text or to put
"Read it again." White's account of her daughter's that part into its proper perspective in the story.
"voluble gabble" as stories are read testifies that It is more important that we reinforce the child's
a relaxed, receptive atmosphere, with no questions discovery that texts can make possible such intense
or requirements, is conducive to children's verbal personal experience. Other stories, continued read-
expressions of that second stream of reactions to ing, the maturation of cognitive powers, will con-
the work that is the source of "responses." White's tribute to the habit of attending to the entire text
book shows a child, even before age five, offering or organizingthe sequence of episodes into a whole.
various kinds of verbal signs of aesthetic listening We have the responsibility first of all to develop
- questions, comments, comparisons with life ex- the habit and the capacity for aesthetic reading.
periences and with other stories, rejection because Responsibilityto the total text and the question of
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"the author's intention"comes later - with all the "real" events and "real" people can be read with
indeterminacyof meaning that implies.17 all the sensuous, kinesthetic, imaginative richness
The notion that first the child must "under- that are applied to fantasy. Imaginationis needed
stand" the text cognitively, efferently, before it can also in cognitive processes, in the process of re-
be responded to aesthetically is a rationalization membering, in thinking of the past, in thinking of
that must be rejected. Aesthetic reading, we have alternative solutions to a problem. Again, we need
seen, is not efferent readingwith a layer of affective to see that the reader's stance transcends the
associations added on later. (I call this the "jam distinction between the real and the fictive.
on bread" theory of literature.) Rather, we have The obvious question, in all such developmental
seen that the aesthetic stance, in shaping what is generalization, is-to what extent are the changes
understood, produces a meaning in which cognitive observed due to innate factors and to what extent
and affective, referentialand emotive, denotational are they the result of environmental influences?
and connotational, are intermingled.The child may Fortunately,an ethnographicemphasis is beginning
listen to the sound, hear the tone of the narrative to be valued in contemporaryresearch on the teach-
"voice," evoke characters and actions, feel the ing of English,19and I should wish only to broaden
quality of the event, without being able to analyze its purview. Hence the question: to what extent
or name it. Hence the importance of finding ways does the emphasis in our culture on the primarily
to insure that an aesthetic experience has hap- practical,technical, empirical,and quantitativecon-
pened, that a story or a poem has been lived- tribute to the reported loss of aesthetic receptivity
through,before we hurrythe young listeneror reader as the child grows older? Why do we find teachers
into something called "response." This is often at every level, from the early years through high
largely an efferent undertakingto paraphrase, sum- school and college, seeming always to be having
marize, or categorize. Evocation should precede to start from scratch in teaching poetry?
response. The fact of the great diversity of the cultures
evolved by human beings is in itself testimony to
MaintainingAesthetic Capacity the power of the environment into which the child
is born. Anthropologists are making us aware of
Why, if the capacities for aesthetic experience how subtle signals from adults and older children
are so amply provided at the outset of the child's are assimilated by the infant. "In depth" studies of
linguistic development, do we encounter in our child-rearingand particularcustoms or rituals doc-
schools and in our adult society such a limited ument the complexity of the individual'sassimilation
recourse to the pleasures of literature?We cannot to his culture.20All who are concerned about ed-
take the easy route of blaming television for this, ucation and children have a responsibilityto inter-
since it was a problem already lamented at least pret this process to our society, and to be actively
50 years ago. critical of the negative aspects of our culture. Just
One tendency is to assume a natural devel- as the medical profession is helping us relate our
opmental loss of aesthetic capacity, or at the least, physical health to general environmental and cul-
interest, as the child grows older. We often still tural conditions, so we as professionals need to
share Wordsworth's romantic view that "Shades emphasize the importance of the child's general
of the prison-house begin to close/Upon the growing social, economic, and intellectualenvironmentboth
boy."'8 Some believe that in the early school years outside and in the school.
children become mainly concerned with the "real" A nurturingenvironmentthat values the whole
and reject "the worlds of the imaginative and the range of human achievements, the opportunityfor
fantastic." This idea, and confusion of the aesthetic stimulatingexperiences, cultivationof habits of ob-
stance with the fictive, with the imaginativeor fan- servation, opportunities for satisfying natural curi-
tasy, may have contributed to the neglect of lit- osity about the world, a sense of creative freedom-
erature in the middle years. all of these lay the foundation for linguistic devel-
The child's problem of delimiting the objects opment. Reading, we know, is not an encapsulated
and the nature of the real world may at a certain skill that can be added on like a splint to an arm.
stage foster a preoccupation with clarifying the If I have dwelt so long on the organismic basis of
boundary between reality and fantasy. But distrust all language, it is because reading draws on the
of fantasy should not be equated with rejection of whole person's past transactions with the environ-
aesthetic experience. Literaryworks representing ment. Reading, especially aesthetic reading, ex-
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tends the scope of that environmentand feeds the more disconcerting is the neglect of the aesthetic
growth of the individual,who can then bringa richer stance when the declared aim is "the teaching of
self to further transactions with life and literature. literature,"when stories and poems are presented,
We must at least indicate awareness of broader not as exercises for reading skills, but presumably
underlyingsocietal or cultural needs before we go for their value as literature, for their capacity to
on to talk about the teaching of reading, and es- present images of life, to entertain, to deal with
peciallythe teaching of literature,the kindof reading human situations and problems, to open up vistas
our economy-minded school boards often consider of differentpersonalities and differentmilieus. Here,
elitist and dispensable. too, the concern in most classes still seems to be
In my sketch of the child's acquisition of the first of all with the kinds of response that can be
environing language system, I presented as a nat- met by efferent reading. Questions often ask for
ural and desirable development the selective proc- highly specific factual details - What did the boy
ess by which the child detaches a sense of the do, where did he go, what did he see, what does
public meaning of a verbal symbol from its personal this word mean? At the other extreme is the tend-
organismic matrix. But in our society the emphasis, ency to nudge the young reader toward a labeling,
at home and at school, is almost entirely on that a generalization, a paraphrase, a summary that
decontextualizing,abstractingprocess. Parents quite again requires an abstracting analytic approach to
rightlywelcome the child's abstracting-outof words what has been read. Repeated questions of that
so that they can be applied to other instances of sort soon teach the young reader to approach the
the same category and be used in new situations. next texts with an efferent stance. Studies of stu-
Of course, the child needs to participate in the dents' responses to literature have revealed the
public, referential linguistic system. Of course, the extent to which in a seemingly open situation the
child needs to distinguish between what the society young reader will respond in ways already learned
considers "real" and what fantasy. Of course, the from the school environment.21The results of the
rational, empirical,scientific, logical components of 1979-80 National Assessment of Reading and Lit-
our culture should be transmitted. erature demonstrate that the traditional teacher-
Nevertheless, are these aptitudes not being dominated teaching of literature,with its emphasis
fostered - or at least favored - at the expense on approved or conventional interpretations, does
of other potentialities of the human being and of not produce many readers capable of handlingtheir
our culture? The quality of education in general is initialresponses or relatingthem to the text. Ques-
being diluted by neglect of, sacrifice of, the rich tions calling for traditionalanalyses of character or
organismic, personal, experiential source of both theme, for example, reveal such shallowness of
efferent and aesthetic thinking.Is there not evidence response.
of the importance of the affective, the imaginative, Educators and psychologists investigating chil-
the fantasizing activities even for the development dren's aesthetic activities and development reflect
of cognitive abilities and creativity in all modes of a similartendency to focus on the efferent-a leg-
human endeavor? acy, perhaps, from the hegemony of traditionalbe-
Throughoutthe entire educational process, the haviorist experimental research methodology.
child in our society seems to be receiving the same Investigations of children's use of metaphor seem
signal: adopt the efferent stance. What can be often actually to be testing children's cognitive
quantified - the most public of efferent modes metalinguistic abilities. Studies of the "grammar"
becomes often the guide to what is taught, tested, of story tend also to eliminatethe personal aesthetic
or researched. In the teaching of reading, and even event and to center on the cognitive ability to ab-
of literature,failure to recognize the importance of stract out its narrativestructure. Stories or poems
the two stances seems to me to be at the root of can thus become as much a tool for studying the
much of the plight of literaturetoday. child's advance through the Piagetian stages of
One of the most troubling instances of the cognitive or analytic thinkingas would a series of
confusion of stances is the use of stories to teach history texts or science texts.
efferent reading skills. Is it not a deception to induce
the child's interest through a narrativeand then, in Implications for Teaching
the effort to make sure it has been (literally,effer-
ently) "understood," to raise questions that imply What, then, are the implications for teaching?
that only an efferent reading was necessary? Even The view of language and the reading process I
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have sketched demonstrates the importance of the greater emphasis in the earlier stages on aesthetic
early years for the development of adult readers listening and reading.
able to share in the pleasures and benefits of lit- This view of the two stances opens up the
erature. The theoretical positions I have sketched necessity for a new and more rounded concept of
apply, I believe, throughout the entire educational comprehension in both efferent and aesthetic read-
span, from the beginning reader to the adult critic. ing. I shall venture here only the suggestion that
At every stage, of course, knowledge of students this will involve attention to the transactional, two-
and books is essential to the sound application of way, process and to affective as well as cognitive
any theoretical guidelines. At best, I can only sug- components of meaning. Recent interest of some
gest criteria for differentiatingbetween potentially psychologists in the role of context in comprehen-
counterproductive or fruitful practices. I shall un- sion indicates movement in this direction.23
doubtedly only be offering theoretical support for In the teaching of literature,then, our primary
what many sensitive teachers are already doing. responsibility is to encourage, not get in the way
A reading stance is basically an expression of of, the aesthetic stance. As the child carries on the
purpose. Children will read efferently in order to process of decontextualization that serves the log-
arrive at some desired result, some answer to a ical, analytic, cognitive abilities whose development
question, some explanation of a puzzling situation, Piaget traced so influentially,we need also to keep
some directions as to procedures to be followed in alive the habit of paying selective attention to the
an interesting activity. inner states, the kinesthetic tensions, the feelings,
Aesthetic reading, by its very nature, has an the colorings of the stream of consciousness, that
intrinsicpurpose, the desire to have a pleasurable, accompany all cognition, and that particularlymake
interesting experience for its own sake. (The older possible the evocation of literaryworks of art from
the students, the more likelywe are to forget this.) texts.
We should be careful not to confuse the student Much of what we need to do can fortunately
by suggesting other, extrinsic purposes, no matter be viewed as a reinforcement of the child's own
how admirable. That will turn attention away from earliest linguistic processes, richly embedded in a
participatingin what is being evoked. cognitive-affective matrix. Transactions with texts
Paradoxically,when the transactions are lived that offer some linkage with the child's own ex-
through for their own sake, they will probably have periences and concerns can give rise aesthetically
as by-products the educational, informative,social, to new experiences. These in turn open new lin-
and moralvalues for which literatureis often praised. guistic windows into the world. Recall that when I
Even enhancement of skills may result. By the same refer to a reading event, it can be either hearing
token, literary works often fail to emerge at all if the text read or having the printedtext. Both types
the texts are offered as the means for the dem- of literary experience should continue into the el-
onstration of reading skills. ementary years.
Exercises and readings that do not satisfy such A receptive, nonpressured atmosphere will free
meaningful purposes for the child, but are consid- the childto adopt the aesthetic stance with pleasant
ered defensible means of developing skills, should anticipation, without worry about future demands.
be offered separately, honestly, as exercises. If There will be freedom, too, for various kinds of
needed, they should be recognized as ancillaryand spontaneous nonverbal and verbal expression dur-
supplementary to the real business of reading for ing the reading. These can be considered intermin-
meaning, whether efferent or aesthetic.22 gled signs of participationin, and reactions to, the
I speak of both the teaching of efferent reading evoked story or poem.
and the teaching of aesthetic reading because the Afterthe reading,our initialfunctionis to deepen
distinctions in purpose and process should be made the experience. (We know one cannot predict de-
clear from the outset. (Of course, I do not mean velopments in a teaching situation, but we can think
to implytheoretical explanationof them to the child.) in terms of priorityof emphasis.) We should help
If reading is presented as a meaningful, purposive the young reader to return to, relive, savor, the
activity, and if texts are presented in meaningful experience. For continuing the focus on what has
situations, the two kinds of stance should naturally been seen, heard, felt, teachers have successfully
emerge. Texts should be presented that clearly provided the opportunityfor various forms of non-
satisfy one or another purpose. Given the linguistic verbal expression or response: drawing, painting,
development of the child, probably there should be playacting, dance. These may sometimes become
VolumeXXI, Number 4 275

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ends in themselves, perhaps valuable for a child's young readers have made of the text, the teacher
development, but only very generally relevant to can provide positive reinforcement by leading to
the reading purposes. Such activities can, however, further reflection on what in the experienced story
offer an aesthetic means of giving form to a sense or poem had triggered the reactions. Comments by
of what has been lived through in the literarytrans- other childrenand the teacher, of course, also con-
action. This can give evidence of what has caught tribute to this imaginative recall of the experience.
the young reader's attention, what has stirred Second, if for some reason the teacher finds
pleasant or unpleasant reactions. This can lead it appropriate to initiate discussion, remarks (or
back to the text. questions, if necessary!) can guide the reader's
Requests for verbal responses create the great- attention back toward the reading event. Questions
est hazards. Adults may, often unconsciously, re- can be sufficientlyopen to enable the young readers
veal a testing motive. Perhaps there will be a to select concrete details or parts of the text that
suggestion of what the approved or "correct" re- had struck them most forcibly.The point is to foster
sponse should be. Sometimes there is a tacit steer- expressions of response that keep the experiential,
ing toward an efferent or analytic stance, toward qualitativeelements in mind. Didanythingespecially
the kinds of subjects the adult thinks interesting or interest? annoy? puzzle? frighten? please? seem
important. The reader is often hurried away from familiar?seem weird? The particulartext and the
the aesthetic experience and turned to efferent teacher's knowledge of the readers involved will
analysis by questions such as those appended to suggest such open-ended questions. The habit of
stories in various basal readers and anthologies the aesthetic stance, of attention to concrete detail,
and by teachers' questions or tests "checking will be strengthened for further reading. Cognitive
whether the student has read the text." Questions abilities, to organize, to interpret,or to explain, will
that call for the traditional analyses of character, be rooted in the ability to handle responses. (And
setting, and plot are often premature or routine, enhanced "reading skills" will probably be a by-
contributingto shallow, efferent readings. product!)
Some object that the formalists and post-struc- The young reader will be stimulated to make
turalists are right in identifying literature with its the connections among initialresponses, the evoked
system of conventions, its technical traits. My reply work, and the text. He may then be motivated to
is that, by focusing on these components of the return to the actual words of the text, to deepen
text, they fail to do justice to the total aesthetic the experience. As students grow older, sharing of
experience. Metaphor,narrativestructure, linguistic responses becomes the basis for valuable inter-
conventions, verbal techniques are, of course, im- change. Discovering that others have had different
portant elements of "literary"texts, and they con- responses, have noticed what was overlooked, have
tribute much to the quality of the aesthetic made alternative interpretations, leads to self-
transaction. But they are vacuous concepts without awareness and self-criticism.24
recognitionof the importanceof stance. Poetic met- At the opening of these remarks, I mentioned
aphors or narrativesuspense, for example, become the need to clarify my own version of reader-re-
operative, come into existence, only if the reader sponse theory, but felt no urge to survey the gamut
pays attention to the inner states that these verbal of competing theories. It seems important,however,
patterns arouse. After this repeatedly happens, we to recall that the transactional theory avoids con-
can communicate to our students the appropriate centration solely on the reader's contributionor on
terminology- when they need it! "Form"is some- feeling for its own sake,25 but centers on the re-
thing felt on the pulses, first of all. ciprocal interplay of reader and text. For years I
How, then, can we deal with the young reader's have extolled the potentialities of literaturefor aid-
responses without inhibitingthe aesthetic experi- ing us to understand ourselves and others, for
ence? Two answers to this quite real dilemma sug- wideningour horizons to includetemperaments and
gest themselves. First, a truly receptive attitude on cultures different from our own, for helping us to
the part of teacher and peers - and this requires clarify our conflicts in values, for illuminatingour
strong efforts at creating such trust - can be world. I have believed, and have become increas-
sufficient inducement to children to give sponta- inglyconvinced, that these benefits spring only from
neous verbal expression to what has been lived emotional and intellectual participation in evoking
through. Once nonverbal or verbal comments have the work of art, through reflection on our own
given some glimpse into the nature of what the aesthetic experience. Precisely because every aes-
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thetic reading of a text is a unique creation, woven 13. Izard, CarrollE. On the ontogenesis of emotions and
out of the inner life and thought of the reader, the emotion-cognitionrelationshipsin infancy.In MichaelLewis
and LeonardRosenblum(Eds.), The developmentof affect.
literarywork of art can be a rich source of insight New York: Plenum Press, 1978, p. 404.
and truth. But it has become apparent that even 14. White, Dorothy. Books before five. New York:Oxford
when literatureis presented to young readers, the UniversityPress, 1954, p. 13.
efferent emphasis of our society and schools tends 15. Conrad,Joseph. Preface. The nigger of the narcissus.
to negate the potential interest and benefits of the New York: Doubleday, Page, 1922, p. x.
reading. Literatureis "an endangered species." By 16. White, p.79.
establishing the habit of aesthetic evocation and 17. The problems of validity in interpretationand of the
personal response during the elementary years, author's intention are treated in Rosenblatt, The reader,
teachers of children's literaturecan make a prime the text, the poem, Chapters 5 and 6.
contributionto the health of our culture. 18. Wordsworth,William.Ode, intimationsof immortality.
Poetical works. London: Oxford University Press, 1959,
Notes p.46.
19. See Research in the teaching of English, 15 (4), De-
1. Tompkins, Jane P. (Ed.) Reader-response criticism. cember 1981, pp. 293-309, 343-354, and passim.
Baltimore:Johns Hopkins UniversityPress, 1980, p xxvi;
Suleiman, Susan R. and Crosman, Inge (Eds.) The reader 20. Bateson, Gregory, and Mead, Margaret. Balinese
in the text. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980, character. New York: New York Academy of Sciences,
p. 45. 1942; Geertz, Clifford.The interpretationof cultures. New
York: Basic Books, 1973.
2. Rosenblatt, Louise M. The reader, the text, the poem. 21. Purves, Alan. Literatureeducation in ten countries.
Carbondale, III.:Southern IllinoisUniversity Press, 1978 Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell, 1973.
presents the fullest statement of the transactionaltheory.
The present article cannot deal with such matters as 22. Cf. Huey, Edmund Burke. The psychology and pe-
"correctness" of interpretation,the author's intention,the dagogy of reading. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1968
openness and constraints of the text, or the role of the (originaledition, 1908), pp. 345, 380.
critic. 23. See Harste, Jerome C., and Carey, Robert F. Com-
3. This is conveniently documented by articles by 11 prehension as setting. In New perspectives on compre-
hension, Monograph in Language and Reading Studies,
leading psychologists (Jerome Bruner, Richard Lazarus, IndianaUniversity,No. 3, October 1979.
Ulric Neisser, David McClelland,et al.) on "the state of In a volume and an article that reflect the psychol-
the science" in Psychology Today, May 1982, pp. 41-59.
See especially the article by Ulric Neisser. ogists' usual preoccupation with efferent reading, I find
this concession: "Itmay be in the rapidinterplayof feelings
4. Keller-Cohen,Deborah. Context in child language, An- ... that the source of the creation of ideas, later to
nual Review of Anthropology, 1978, 7, pp. 433-482. receive their analytic flesh and bones, may be found. If
5. Halliday,M.A.K.Learningto mean. New York:Elsevier, so, how sad it would be if it were discovered that the
1975. real problem of many readers is that their instructionso
automatizes them that they do not develop a feeling for
6. James, William. The principles of psychology. New what they read or use the feelings available to them in
York: Dover Publications, pp.245-246. the development of new understandings from reading."
7. Werner,Heinz,and Kaplan,Bernard.Symbol formation. Spiro, Rand J. Constructive processes in prose compre-
New York: Wiley, 1963, p. 18. hension and recall. In Rand J. Spiro, BertramBruce, and
WilliamBrewer (Eds.), Theoreticalissues in reading com-
8. Gibson, E.J. How perception really develops. In David
prehension. Hillside, N.J.: L Erlbaum,1980, p. 274.
Laberge and S. Jay Samuels (Eds.), Basic Processes in 24. Rosenblatt, L. Literatureas exploration, 1976 (dis-
Reading. Hillsdale,N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum,1975, p. 171; tributed by the National Council of Teachers of English)
Rommetveit, Ragnar. Words, meanings, and messages.
New York:Academic Press, 1968, pp. 147, 167; Werner develops furtherthe implicationsfor teaching.
and Kaplan, Symbol Formation,pp.23-24 and passim. 25. The recent publicationof On Learning to Read, by
Bruno Bettelheim and Karen Zelan, with its subtitle, The
9. Bates, Elizabeth. The emergence of symbols. New Child's Fascination with Meaning, and its emphasis on
York:Academic Press, 1979, pp. 65-66.
response, leads me to disclaim any actual resemblance
10. See Dewey, John. How we think. Lexington, Mass.: to my views. These authors reiterate what many of us,
D.C.Heath,1933, Ch. X; Dewey, John. Qualitativethought, from Dewey on, have been saying about the importance
Philosophyand civilization.New York:Minton,Balch, 1931, of meaning and the child's own feelings, and about the
pp. 93-116. narrow,dullapproachof much teaching of beginningread-
11. Vygotsky, L.S. Thoughtand language, (EugeniaHanf- ing. But the book's concentration on a doctrinal psy-
mann and Gertrude Vakar, Ed. and trans.) Cambridge, choanalytic interpretationof response, disregard of the
Mass.: MIT Press, 1962, p. 8. process of making meaning out of printed symbols, and
treatmentof the text as a repositoryof ready-mademean-
12. Tedlock, Ernest (Ed.) Dylan Thomas. New York:Mer- ings or didactic human stereotypes, add up to an inad-
cury, 1963, p. 54. equate view of the relationshipbetween reader and text.

VolumeXXI, Number 4 277

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