Literary Criticism > Module - 90 > Flashcards

Module - 90 Flashcards

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1
Q

What is the primary focus of Reader-Response Criticism (RRC)?

A

The reader’s active role in creating meaning from a text.

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2
Q

How did views prior to RRC generally characterize the reader’s role?

A

As passive recipients of information.

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3
Q

Who are considered the two primary pioneers of Reader-Response Criticism?

A

I.A. Richards and Louise Rosenblatt.

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4
Q

Name the three major categories of Reader-Response critics identified by Bressler.

A

Structuralists, Phenomenologists, and Subjective Critics.

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5
Q

Which critic is specifically associated with the development of Narratology within the Structuralist school?

A

Gerard Prince.

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6
Q

Who are the two lead proponents of Subjective Criticism?

A

Norman Holland and David Bleich.

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7
Q

According to Plato, what risk did watching a play pose to the audience?

A

It could inflame passions and cause them to abandon reason.

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8
Q

In Aristotle’s Poetics, what is the intended emotional effect of a play on its spectators?

A

To arouse and then purge emotions like pity or fear.

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9
Q

What was the predominant view of the reader during the Romanticism period?

A

The reader was viewed as passive.

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10
Q

In Romanticism, where did the focus of literary analysis shift?

A

From the text to the author as a genius.

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11
Q

Which critical approach emphasizes the author’s life and social context as the primary tools for analysis?

A

Biographical Criticism.

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12
Q

How did New Criticism view the status of a literary text?

A

As an autonomous, objective entity that reveals its own meaning.

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13
Q

I.A. Richards was a founding father of which critical school before exploring RRC?

A

New Criticism.

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14
Q

In ‘Principles of Literary Criticism’ (1925), what did Richards claim leads to ‘truth’?

A

Science.

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15
Q

What term did Richards use to describe the ‘bundles of desires’ that constitute human beings?

A

Appetencies.

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16
Q

According to Richards, how does a person achieve ‘psychic health’?

A

By balancing appetencies to create a personally acceptable vision of the world.

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17
Q

What does Richards’ ‘affective system of analysis’ examine?

A

A reader’s emotional response to a text.

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18
Q

What did Richards conclude was the best way to harmonize humankind’s appetencies?

A

Poetry.

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19
Q

Later in his career, what did Richards suggest was more ‘correct’ than personal responses for interpretation?

A

Close textual analysis of diction, imagery, and unity.

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20
Q

How does Louise Rosenblatt define the relationship between the reader and the text?

A

They are partners in the interpretive process.

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21
Q

What is Rosenblatt’s term for the interaction between a reader and a text?

A

Transactional Experience.

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22
Q

According to Rosenblatt, what role does the text play during the Transactional Experience?

A

It acts as a stimulus to elicit past experiences and shapes the reader’s ideas.

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23
Q

How does Rosenblatt define a ‘Literacy Experience’?

A

An event that occurs when a reader and print interact.

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24
Q

According to Rosenblatt, what is the ‘Poem’?

A

The new creation resulting from the event of the reading process.

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25
In Rosenblatt’s theory, when is a 'poem' created?
Each time a reader interacts with a text (an aesthetic transaction).
26
What is the purpose of 'Efferent Reading'?
To gain information or follow specific directions.
27
What is the purpose of 'Aesthetic Reading'?
To experience the text's words, sounds, and patterns.
28
What is the basic 'formula' for meaning in Reader-Response Criticism?
The reader + the text = meaning.
29
What central question drives the methodology of RRC?
What happens during the reading process?
30
In RRC, meaning is considered to be _____ dependent.
Context.
31
According to Structuralist RRC, what does a reader bring to a text to ascertain meaning?
A predetermined system of signs.
32
Why is the text important to a Structuralist critic?
It contains established signs and signals for the reader to interpret.
33
What is the focus of Narratology in RRC?
Analyzing a story through elements like narrator, voice, style, and tense.
34
How does Gerard Prince define the 'Narratee'?
The reader produced by the narrative itself through internal references.
35
Who is the 'Real Reader' in Prince’s narratology?
The actual person physically reading the text.
36
Who is the 'Virtual Reader' in Prince’s narratology?
The reader the author believes they are writing for.
37
Who is the 'Ideal Reader' in Prince’s narratology?
The reader who understands every nuance, term, and structure of the text.
38
What is the central emphasis of the philosophical tendency known as Phenomenology?
The perceiver or the consciousness of the individual.
39
In Phenomenology, where is the 'true poem' located?
Only in the consciousness of the reader.
40
Which critic is known for developing 'Reception Theory'?
Hans Robert Jauss.
41
What does Jauss’s Reception Theory examine?
How a text was accepted or received by its contemporary readers.
42
What are Jauss’s 'Horizons of Expectation'?
The critical vocabulary and assessment criteria of a specific historical period.
43
Why does Jauss believe a text’s meaning changes over time?
Because the criteria for evaluation shift from one historical period to another.
44
According to Wolfgang Iser, when does an object (like a poem) achieve meaning?
When an active consciousness recognizes or registers it.
45
What does Iser believe is the primary job of the literary critic?
To examine and explain the text's effect on the reader.
46
How does Iser define the 'Implied Reader'?
A reader created by the predispositions and structure within the text itself.
47
How does Iser define the 'Actual Reader'?
The person who brings their own personal biases and norms to the text.
48
In Iser’s theory, what is 'Concretization'?
The process by which a reader makes the text 'concrete,' resulting in a unique meaning.
49
According to Iser, what is the reader’s role in relation to the author?
The reader is a co-author who writes part of the text as they read.
50
What is the primary claim of Subjective Critics Holland and Bleich?
We shape and find our self-identities through the reading process.
51
What is the theoretical foundation of Norman Holland’s interpretive process?
Freudian psychoanalysis.
52
According to Holland, what is an 'Identity Theme'?
The lens of individualized identity, received at birth and personalized through experience, through which we see the world.
53
How does Holland view the act of textual interpretation?
As a way to work out personal fears, desires, and needs for psychological health.
54
What does Holland mean when he says a reader transforms a text into a 'private world'?
A space where one uses the ego to work out fantasies in a socially acceptable way.
55
Does Subjective Criticism believe in a 'correct' interpretation?
No; there are as many valid interpretations as there are readers.
56
According to David Bleich, where is meaning developed?
When a reader works in cooperation with other readers to achieve collective meaning.
57
What is the 'Point of Departure' for interpretation in Bleich's Subjective Criticism?
The reader's responses to a text, rather than the text itself.
58
How does Bleich define an 'Interpretive Community'?
A group of readers who share the same interpretive strategies.
59
According to Bleich, where must a reader's interpretation be developed?
Communally, such as in a classroom or similar setting.
60
Which group of critics concentrates on the overall system of meaning a society has developed?
Structuralists.
61
What is the result of 'Aesthetic Reading' according to Rosenblatt?
Living through the transactional experience of creating the poem.
62
Which critic emphasized that 'objects exist if and only if we register them on our consciousness'?
The Phenomenologists (influenced by the philosophical movement).
63
What does Jauss call the historical period's criteria for judging a text?
Horizons of expectation.
64
In RRC, the reader's background, purpose, and world knowledge are all factors of the _____.
Reader.
65
Which group believes interpretation is a 'transaction between the text and the reader' used to maintain psychological health?
Subjective Critics (specifically Norman Holland).
66
What is the difference between an Implied Reader and an Actual Reader in Iser’s theory?
The Implied Reader is defined by the text's structure; the Actual Reader is the physical person with personal biases.
67
Who argued that 'Meaning... does not reside in the text but is developed' through community negotiations?
David Bleich.
68
In Prince's model, pronoun references and writing style help produce the _____.
Narratee.
69
According to Richards, what constitutes the 'appetencies' of human beings?
Bundles of desires.
70
Under New Criticism, the text is treated as an autonomous and _____ entity.
Objective.
71
According to Jauss, can a text have one and only one correct interpretation?
No, because its meaning changes across historical periods.
72
What term refers to the specific kind of structuralism analyzing all elements involved in storytelling?
Narratology.
73
Which school of RRC is Roland Barthes and Claude Levi-Strauss associated with?
Structuralism.
74
Who defined the poem as the 'result of an event' rather than a physical object?
Louise Rosenblatt.
75
In subjective criticism, interpretation is described as a 'subjective experience' rather than a search for _____.
Correct interpretation.
76
Which critic focuses on 'communally motivated negotiations' to determine text meaning?
David Bleich.
77
What are the two specific ways of reading defined by Rosenblatt?
Efferent and Aesthetic reading.
78
The Phenomenologist Wolfgang Iser claims the reader becomes the _____ of the story as it is read.
Co-author.
79
What is the focus of Richards’ 'Principles of Literary Criticism'?
The nature of poetry, science, and the psychological health of the reader.
80
According to Holland, interpretation is the ego mediating _____ so they are socially acceptable.
Fantasies.
81
Structuralists focus more on _____ than on close textual analysis.
Acceptable societal standards and sign systems.
82
Who are the key figures in the Phenomenological branch of RRC?
George Poulet, Wolfgang Iser, Hans Robert Jauss, Roman Ingarden, and Gaston Bachelard.
83
Which critic suggests we receive a 'primary identity' from our mothers at birth?
Norman Holland.
84
According to Iser, a reader’s expectations about what may happen next in a story are called _____.
Horizons of expectation.
85
What does a reader do to 'concretize' a text?
They apply their personal worldview to make the text unique in meaning and effect.
86
Term: Narratology
Definition: A structuralist approach analyzing story elements like voice, style, and narrator.
87
Term: Identity Theme
Definition: The individualized psychological lens through which a reader interprets the world and texts.
88
Term: Reception Theory
Definition: A theory examining how readers of different historical periods judge and evaluate a text.
89
Who stated that poetry produces only 'pseudostatements' regarding reality?
I.A. Richards.
90
In RRC analysis, what refers to the reader actually picking up the book?
The Actual Reader.
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