It is actually how would the readers response to the message of the writer. Without the writer making his work, there would not be readers. And out readers reading the writers' work, there would not be sense of having it. It is actually a vice-versa relationship where both should function according to their role.

1. Literary Theory
Reader-Response

2. Subjective vs. Objective
• When we refer to something as “subjective” we mean
that it pertains to the individual (the reader). A
subjective reading of a text is one in which emphasis is
placed on the attitudes, moods, and opinions of the
reader.
• When we refer to something as “objective” we mean
that it pertains to an object (the text) separate from
the individual (the reader). An objective reading of a
text is one that is uninfluenced by emotions or
personal prejudices.
• Reader-Response criticism offers a subjective, or
egocentric, reading of a text. Egocentrism refers to
anything that regards the self of the individual as the
center of all things.

3. What is Reader-Response?
• RR critics believe that a reader’s
interaction with the text gives the text its
meaning. The text cannot exist without
the reader.
• If a tree falls in the forest and no one is
around to hear it does it make a noise? If
a text sits on a shelf in a bookstore and no
one is around to read it, does the text
have meaning?

4. What is Reader-Response?
• RR criticism is NOT a free-for-all school of
thought where anything goes. RR criticism is
still a disciplined theory deserving of a careful
reading of the text.
• RR critics are focused on finding meaning in the
act of reading itself and examining the ways
individual readers or communities of readers
experience texts.
• The reader joins with the author to “help the
text mean.”

5. What is Reader-Response?
• A successful reader-response critic does not
just respond to a text—anyone can do that—
but analyzes his or her response, or the
responses of others.
• Our life experiences and the communities we
belong to greatly influence our reading of a text
• Because each reader will interact with the text
differently, the text may have more than one
valid interpretation.

6. READER-RESPONSE STYLISTICS
According to Jonathan Culler (1981), RR
examines the reader’s response to a text as a
response to a horizon of expectations. By a
horizon of expectations, is meant that there is
multiplicity of meanings of interpretations in a
text and these can be accessed by the reader
according to his or her level or literary
competence.

7. A reader’s literary competence is highly
informed by the social world in which a text is
produced as it usually has a shaping effect on his
or her interpretation of a such text.
In RR, there is an interaction between the
structure of the text and the reader’s response. It
evokes a situation where individual readers give
meaning to the text. This is because each reader
will interact with the text differently, as the text
may have more than one vivid interpretation.

8. RR theorists share two beliefs:
1. The role of the reader cannot be omitted
from our understanding of literature (unlike
New Critics who believe that the meaning of
a text is contained in the text alone).
2. Readers do not passively consume the
meaning presented to them by an objective
literary text. Instead, readers actively make
the meaning they find in literature.

9. Reader Response Theory, simply stated, is the
reader's response to literary text. Tyson (2006)
describes in Critical Theory Today the five types of
Reader Response theories and the differences that lie
within each. The following table summarizes each
theory, the noted researcher(s) associated with the
theory, and provides a basic definition.

10. Theory Theorist(s) Definition
Transactional Louise Rosenblatt;
Wolfgang Iser
Transactional Reader Response Theory analyzes
the transaction between the text and reader.
Both are seen as equally important. A reader can
take an efferent stance, based on determinant
meanings in a text, or an aesthetic stance, based
on determinant and indeterminacy of meanings.
Affective Stylistics Stanley Fish Affective Stylistics Reader Response Theory examines
a text in a "slow motion" format, in which each line is
studied in order to determine "how (stylistics) affects
(affective) the reader in the process of reading"
(Tyson, 2006, p. 175).
Subjective David Bleich Subjective Reader Response Theory believes that
the readers' responses are the text, and that all
meaning of a text lies in the readers'
interpretations.
Psychological Norman Holland Psychological Reader Response Theory znalyzes
what the readers' interpretations and responses
reveal about the reader, not the text.
Social Stanley Fish Social Reader Response Theory believes that
readers approach a text with interpretative
strategies that are the products of the
"interpretive communities" in which they belong.

12. Transactional Reader Response
Analyzes the transaction between
reader and text both the reader and the
text are necessary in the production of
meaning As we read, the text acts as a
stimulus to which we respond feelings,
associations, and memories all influence
the way we make sense of a text as we
read it.

13. CONCLUSION
Reader response theory is the best
theory which makes the reader and
students to be active and to analysis a text
by their own ways it achieved great
importance in 19th century and for
students and teacher it is the most reliable
method of studying and teaching.