This document provides an overview of Readers' Response Theory (Reception Theory). It discusses the history and key concepts, including that readers actively interpret works based on their own background, experiences, and context. The theory emerged in the 1930s as authors recognized the importance of readers' perspectives. Key figures who influenced the theory include Hans Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser, and Stanley Fish. Readers' Response Theory holds that readers play a creative role in deriving meaning from texts based on their own perspectives and backgrounds.

1. Camilla Tenova Katayane | Christian Paskah |
Cipta Dewi Larasati | Manda Ajie Safitri

Readers’ Response Theory
(Reception Theory)
Literary Theory

2. What’s in this PowerPoint?
• What is Readers’ Response?
• The history of Readers’ Response
• The concept


3. To start with…
• Go to your presentation group.
• Listen to this song.
• After you listen to this song, please discuss:
– What is the theme of this song? Tell your interpretation of the
song.
• Be ready to present this in front of the class.


4. So, you’ve done the Readers’ Response Theory!
• Do you still need us anymore? 


5. 
What Kind of Food
is Readers’ Response
Theory?

6. So, this is it.
• Readers’ Response Theory (or you can say it as Reception
Theory) is a theory that allows INFERENCES and READERS’
POINT OF VIEWin understanding a literary work.
• These things will affect your interpretation:
– Background knowledge
– Time
– Emotion


7. How to use Readers’ Response Theory? (discussion)
• You can go to your group and discuss these questions according
to the song you’ve heard.
– What do you feel about the song?
– How does the song agree or disagree with your point of view?
– How well does the song address things that you personally care about
and consider important in the world? Cite specific lines from the song.
– Do you connect this song with something that you remember? Cite lines
from the song and explain the connection.
– What is your overall reaction to the song?


8. How to use Readers’ Response Theory?
• Be ACTIVE(it’s a must!) because you give meaning to the work.
• You have to READ and CONTEMPLATE the content of the literary
work (you will involve your emotion through this. Trust us!)
• After you read and contemplate the literary work, you have to
state your perspective towards the literary work.


9. 
The Historical
Development of
Readers’ Response Theory

10. Here is the story behind this Reception Theory.

• In 1930, students and authors are disenchanted due to the
‘death’ of the readers in interpreting the literary work.
• In 1938, Louise Rosenblatt thought that criticism should
involve “personal sense of literature” and your “spontaneous
and honest reaction”.

11. People behind this theory are…(1)
• Edmund Husserl
• He is well-known for his
theory: ‘phenomenon’.
• Phenomenon: appearances of
things, or things as they
appear in our experience, or
the ways we experience things,
thus the meanings things have
in our experience

12. • Hans Robert Jauss
• He is well-known for his theory:
horizon of expectation.
• Horizon of expectation: expectation
about literary work brought by the
reader based on experience,
background knowledge, and
experience.
People behind this theory are…(2)


13. • Wolfgang Iser
• He is well-known for ‘the affective
structure of the text’.
• …in considering a literary work,
one must take into account not
only the actual text but also the
actions inolved in responding to
that text.
• …reading is an active and creative
process, it is reading which brings
the text to life, which unfold its
inherently character.
People behind this theory are…(3)

14. • Martin Heidegger
• His theory is called ‘existential
time’.
• …time is something unique to
particular person’s consciousness;
a person’s life, her traversing of the
journey between birth and death, is
most fundamentally constituted by
time.
People behind this theory are…(4)

15. • Stanley Fish
• …meaning is not somehow
contained in the text but is
created within the readers’
experience.
People behind this theory are…(5)

16. Readers’
Response
Theory
Background
Knowledge
Experience
You have to be
actively involved.
Time
So…

17. • Ask before you are confused. 
Did we make ourselves clear?

18. Gracias.