Both the reader and text determine meaning

The argument

According to this theory, meaning originates in the relationship between a text and its reader. A text's meaning depends on the reader's experience of it during the act of reading, not on the work as an independent, untouched object. The position is deliberately placed between two others: it denies that meaning sits in the text waiting to be extracted, and equally that it is whatever the reader happens to bring, locating it instead in what occurs when the two meet. Louise M. Rosenblatt is a key proponent of this perspective. Rosenblatt described the reading process as a transactional experience, in which the text prompts certain responses through its attributes. Readers then interpret these attributes depending on their experiences. The word transactional is doing precise work: each party contributes something the other cannot supply, and what results belongs to neither alone. The text constrains what can be responded to, since its words, images and structure are fixed and not everything can be found in them; the reader supplies what those attributes are met with. Thus, the reader and text create meaning together, with neither holding a greater role in the interpretative process. This is what distinguishes the transactional account from the subjective versions of reader-response criticism, which locate meaning in the reader alone and therefore struggle to explain why readings are not arbitrary. Since each reader brings unique experiences to the text, they will all react differently to it and will each arrive at a one of a kind interpretation. In light of this, multiple interpretations of a given work are acceptable — not because anything may be said of a text, but because the text meets a different reader each time while remaining the same text. Because both the reader and the text determine meaning, reader-response criticism describes how interpretation actually works.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The final step overreaches what the theory can support. If every reader's distinct response yields an equally legitimate interpretation, the position cannot explain how a misreading is possible — yet misreadings plainly are, and readers agree about them: someone who takes a text to assert the opposite of what its sentences say has got it wrong, and no appeal to unique experience rescues the reading. A theory of interpretation needs to license some readings and rule out others, and 'multiple interpretations are acceptable' as stated licenses everything. The entry also goes beyond the theorist it cites. Rosenblatt's transactional account insists that the transaction is constrained by the text: the reader's contribution operates on something with determinate features, which is why she distinguished efferent from aesthetic reading and treated some responses as inadequate to the work. Presenting her as holding that neither party has the greater role, and then concluding that every interpretation is legitimate, blurs a distinction she maintained. The symmetry claim is asserted rather than argued. The strongest evidence against it is that the same reader responds differently to different texts, reliably and predictably — which indicates the text is doing substantial and specific work. Rival positions press the consequence: if interpretations cannot be wrong, literary criticism has nothing to argue about, and the disagreements that constitute the discipline become unintelligible.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P2] That each reader brings unique experience does not entail that each resulting interpretation is legitimate; a theory that cannot classify any reading as a misreading cannot account for the agreement readers actually display. [Rejecting P1] Rosenblatt's transactional account treats the reader's contribution as constrained by determinate features of the text, and the same reader responding differently to different works indicates the text does substantial specific work.