Pragmatic Theories
Pragmatic Theories
Pragmatic Theories
Reader-response criticism is a school of literary theory that focuses on the reader (or
“audience") and his or her experience of a literary work.
Although literary theory has long paid some attention to the reader's role in creating the
meaning and experience of a literary work, modern reader-response criticism began in the
1960s and '70s, particularly in America and Germany,
Basically, reader response theories reject the New Criticism of the late 1930s through the
1950s which assumed that the texts themselves were central and that teachers were to teach
the skills of close, concise, attentive analysis while discouraging expression of and attention
to differences in students' own individual responses.
Theoretical Assumptions:
a. What does the text have to do with you, personally, and with your life (past, present or
future)?
b. How much does the text agree or clash with your view of the world, and what you
consider right and wrong?
Use several quotes as examples of how it agrees with and supports what you think about
the world, about right and wrong, and about what you think it is to be human.
Use quotes and examples to discuss how the text disagrees with what you think about the
world and about right and wrong.
c How did you learn, and how much were your views and opinions challenged or
changed by this text, if at all?
Did the text communicate with you? Why or why not? Give examples of how your views
might have changed or been strengthened (or perhaps, of why the text failed to convince
you, the way it is).
d. How well does it address things that you, personally, care about and consider
important to the world?
How does it address things that are important to your family, your community, your
ethnic group, to people of your economic or social class or background, or your faith
tradition?
e. How well did you enjoy the text (or not) as entertainment or as a work of art? Use
quotes or examples to illustrate the quality of the text as art or entertainment.
f. To sum up, what is your overall reaction to the text? Would you read something else
like this, or by this author, in the future or not? Why or why not? To whom would you
recommend this text?