Much of the work in DisciplineOfEnglish.co.uk is centered around a critical perspective that requires more reading, more tracing, more historical contexts, more structural connections. Whether it be the factual defining characteristics, the historicity of sign systems, or the cultural theories which have all now been detailed extensively here – where ever you turn within this virtual department at all times it is proposed that meaning comes from outside the text; that meaning can only be properly inferred by cross referencing. This perspective leans upon Michael Faucult and the concept of genealogical transmissions, or genre theory which leans upon taxonomies of texts. This creates a paradox however; if reading, meaning and pleasure relies upon some wider knowledge of other texts, why do so many people (and children especially) enjoy reading in the absence of this genealogical or taxonomical structuralism? If meaning could not be constructed without this relational system of encoded signs, how did the first texts convey meaning? Reader-Response theories posit the opposite; that the text is not a reliable conveyor of meaning at all and that we learn to ‘see’ a particular reading because of who we are…

An admission; when reading to my children the work of Robert Louis Stevenson, Jules Verne or C.S.Lewis, I am rarely scaffolding their reading, interpretation or comprehension with some structuralist references… Good lord I hope that no reading of Dickens is interrupted by reference to the Reformation, Industrial Revolution and rise of the middle classes. Connecting Dickens backwards to Thackeray, Bronte, Austen, Richardson and Dafoe who each develop the theme of ‘becoming’ might make the text more ‘consequential’ – but at what cost?

So, we simply read. This act of simply reading is problematic. In what way is ‘simply reading’ of equal social value to ‘simply doing advanced physics’? How does it contribute to the economy of analysis? This question goes to the heart of the identity of Literature, and DoE.co.uk places academic value in almost all circumstances as the methodological knowledge and critical language.

Rick Rylance, in Debating Texts engages with the perspective of Reader-Response in section five; Interpretations, Contexts and Readers. The opening problem is; does meaning exists in the mind of the interpreter, or in the thing being interpreted? It is a philosophical question that moves between the need for anaytical tools used to access meaning, or simply an alert an enquiring reader who constructs meaning.

Much of this curriculum builds upon the idea that meaning is within the text, and the analytical tools are taught as discrete units of knowledge – a structuralist or formalist perspective. But poststructuralism shows us how meaning is unstable, plural or divergent, despite the writers best efforts.

Rylance demonstrates the problem of divergence through a line of Robert Burns; “O, my luve’s like a red, red rose”. Love is like beauty? Health? Romance? Or love is like a Lancastrian? Or love is like the Labour Party? Love will last a week then wilt? Which of these does Burns intend? Rylance asks; “For who is to adjudicate amongst these divergent readings without appeal to something beyond his or her interpretive frameworks?” p151.

What gives validation to any one interpretation, the interpretive framework, is really a wider interpretive community. An interpretation is correct if enough people read it in the same way. The community is self-validating, but the individual is not. Rylance reprints Stanley fish;

“Any procedure that attempts to determine which of a number of readings is correct will necessarily fail,” p155. “Any evidence which is brought to bear in the course of formalist analysis – that is, analysis generated by the assumption that meaning is embedded in the artifact – will always point in as many directions as there are interpreters. Not only will it prove something it ill prove anything,” p156.

Take for example, the uncertainty as to whom we should ascribe blame in Macbeth; Is Macbeth to blame? Is Lady Macbeth to blame? The Witches? What about Duncan himself for being too trusting? What about a culture that propagates murderers and murders?

The ambiguity invites judgement, because any evidence that participates in the debate is ultimately blurry or indefensible. Actually, we participate in value-judgements; we readers decide which of the many evidences ranks highly based on some internal criterion.

“This transferring of responsibility from the text to the reader is what the [text] asks us to do – it is the essence of their experience… by fixing the sense of the lines is to give responsibility back [to the text]. The text, however, will not accept it and remains determidnly evasive… [The text] confirms the impossibility of extracting some moral formula” p157.

Readers must manage the text for themselves, and choose outcomes for ourselves. The fear however becomes of ‘interpretive anarachy’.

Fish dissolves the fear of interpretive anarchy by suggesting that the reader is already present within an interpretive community, we readers are the product of interpretive communities. How do we know if / that we are members of the community? Fish, continues the paradox of avoiding proceduralising meaning and concludes merely that ‘if you know, you know’. There is no proof nor measure or admittance to the community, but the very nature of two people coming to agreement over the meaning of any on thing is all that is needed to assure us that we are part of that community.

But… and yet but… The function of these essays is guided by Anderson and Krathwohl’s delineations of knowledge; facts, concepts, procedures and metacognitions. Procedures require some guidance, rules and steps to follow, and I fume against the notion that reading for meaning, interpretation, and interpretive communities is ‘intuitive’ and unknowable. To assume to places the academic study of Literature in some closed community where one cannot be told the ‘right words’ but if you can say those ‘right words’ would allow you access. Fish would argue that we are part of interpretive communities already and don’t need to be invited in – but this is not the experience of many students. Many feel they do not have the ‘sixth sense’, nor the ‘stonemason’s handshake’ that authorises their interpretation – they want to be actively invited into the community by being taught the procedure, process and steps to follow.

Fish tells us that critics should be more concerned with the structure of the reader’s experience and less the structures available on the page (p157). In this instance, we are far less likely to make a “spectacular failure” in interpreting the “fleeting readings” available to a reader.

“While we may be able to extract from [the text] a statement affirming [a theme], we are not allowed to forget the evidence that makes the extraction so difficult,” p159. “In the procedure I would urge, the reader’s activities are at the centre of attention, where they are regarded, not as leading to meaning, but as having meaning. The meaning they have is a consequence of their not being empty; for they include the making and revising of assumptions, the rendering and regretting of judgements, the coming to and abandoning of conclusions, the giving and withdrawing of approval… The solving of puzzles,” p162

A reader-response review is focused on the experience of the reader, but not the self – the critic is looking at other readers and how or why they come about their conclusions. The obvious question then is; how can we presume to know, or to describe the reader’s (singular or plural) experience? Especially when, as Fish himself says is “the action of the mind which its possession makes possible for one reader, and impossible for the other” p163. The possession of the mind makes the process of comprehension some subjective experience that is not possessed universally, but uniquely, and the critic has no greater access to the internal experience of the individual reader.

I take this as a paradox, that if the reader’s experience is insular and unknowable, then interpreting the reader is not more reliable than interpreting the text. There is no authorised reading of text, there is no authorised reading or the author, there is no authorised reading of the reader. And this is the crux of many theoretical positions in Literature Studies or Critical Reading – the premise of the theory might be agreeable but the act of solving the text still comes down to some intuitive sixth sense of interpretation.

I am strongly inclined to facilitate the needs of the students, to act in sympathy with their needs, and to proceduralise the act of the reader response theory – partly because I don’t feel to have been taught the pin number myself, and have gotten into the club like a hitman in a waiter’s suit. What should students do when reading or analysing a text?

Putting attempts to resolve the objection with the following:

“to construct the profile the profile of the informed or at-home reader is at the same time to characterise the author’s intention and vice-versa, because to do either is to specify the contemporary conditions of utterance, to identify, by becoming a member of, a community made up of those who share interpretive strategies,” p163.

The interpretive community really is another way of asserting the different contexts, periods, eras or politics in which the reader participates with the text. This surrounding context contains cultural groups of people all motivated by some shared cultural experience. It is the reader’s context, and participation in this culture that trains the way we interpret texts – that interpretation belongs to, or comes from these contexts is the core nature of reader-response theory. The reading we produce is motivated not by some profound truth within the text, but by the conditions within which we read.

This is ultimately why we continue to talk about literature. The text does not contain within it some knowable, singular meaning. If this was so, then we would be able to read a book, know the meaning, and no future contention would be necessary – it is a solved puzzle and we are no longer interested in someone else also solving the puzzle. There are different ways of solving the puzzle, and different solutions, which are each produced by different readers. If all readers were the same, then there would be a single solution. Interpretive communities is a plural and divergent system.

Fish explains his procedure when reading toom “to perform certain acts” that are not done after reading, but during:

1. to find themes
2. to confer significance
3. to mark out formal units

Fish provides the example or a Christian (or any religious) interpretive community, who have been taught that all texts, scripture and indeed the world, when read properly, all convey the meaning of God’s infinite love and power. When a reader finds a text that does not match the outcomes, it has to be seen as a text that does not conventionally match the outcomes – it gets there figuratively. The interpretive community will investigate and find the meaning that best fits their training (that God’s love is in all things). This continues today when religions attempt to internalize the work of Darwin, Hawkins, germ theory etc. Readers are often incapable of drawing conflicting conclusions. Arguments ensue over who is correctly perceiving the text – in the case of origins / genesis, both rationalism and creationism claim the authority of perception.

Interpretive strategies are learned, and the critic should be aware of who is learning what, from where, and how it is the context around the reader doing the interpretation, not the reader himself. So as we are seeing interpretations, we are seeing where a reader comes from. Readers obtain decoding strategies from their learning, in which significance is seen based on experience. Fish frequently refers to his own work as ‘making the text disappear’, and what is left is the reader – we are not really interpreting texts, we are interpreting readers.

Going back to the question of blame in Macbeth. We might observe how a masculine community might attribute blame upon Lady Macbeth, we might observe this to be a misogynistic or patriarchal community (though one should be careful not to be pejorating). We might observe how a community might attribute blame upon the Witches, we might observe this to be a group that is more likely to believe in the powers of the occult. Another group might attribute blame upon Macbeth, and maybe this is a feminist group.

And this isn’t just theoretical and academic. I am aware of students being removed from GCSE Literature classes on religious grounds, because the ghosts and curses are seen as occult temptation away from spiritual purity. I have known students removed from cooking lessons on grounds of ‘clean’ eating. We see hostility in the streets over football allegiance, clothing choice and music preference.

Each group obtains their interpretation through a culture of experience. It is not especially subjective because it is not the point of view of the individual but the structures of a community. It is given credibility as an interpretation because of the quantity of people who might agree.

The critic cannot know for certain which interpretive community is interpreting ‘correctly – ultimately meaning is not to be found in the text but to be created by the reader. The critic accounts for this plurality, is aware of the tension that cannot be resolved from within the text, and disposes of their own personal ‘reading’.

Reader-response theories then require less of the formalism or structuralism that this curriculum typically presses for, but is still an academic perspective to apply, and it has real world application too.

To understand a procedure for investigating texts aligned with Reader Response theory

• To know what we mean by Reader Response
• To have a series of steps through which to investigate a text

We typically think of a text as having a message presented to us by the author, such as ‘who is to blame, how does this impact us, how to live a better life’. But, readers might each individually read a text and come to different conclusions – they will rank the significant of evidence differently, they will see different patterns, and they will interpret symbols differently.

So what we get is not that the text means one thing, but that the text is open to meaning different things to different people. Which of them is right? All of them.

Why do they each have different readings? It’s because they grew up in different communities. Maybe one grew up in a spiritual / religious community. Another grew up in a poor, working class community. Another grew up in a subculture (think: pagan, Viking re-enactments, goth etc). The kinds of books they read, the kinds of life experiences they have will define the type of interpretations they take from texts.

The job of the critic can be to identify the different interpretations possible, the different communities to which they belong, and how they came to their reading. A critic doesn’t decide on the author’s actual meaning but focuses on the way texts can be read in multiple ways – depending on which community you belong to.

• Interpretive community – a group of people with shared values and lifestyles (political, religious, social, economic etc)
• Strategies – what that group is looking for, or what stands out as important to them (religious groups will prioritise spiritual evidence, not scientific. Working class groups will prioritise inequality and exploitation, not inherited power etc)
• Reading – the final interpretation and message the reader thinks the text is about
• Plurality – many / wide ranging readings
• Divergence – the more we read a text, the more variety of readings we will find. The number of readings doesn’t converge with increased reading.
• Ideal reader – the reader who is within the interpretive community as the writer and so will recieve the message the writer encoded. But, books are accessible to all, and the ideal reader is not the only one allowed to react to a text.

• One way that the text can be read is as a message of…
• The group most likely to obtain this reading is…
• What will stand out to that group is…
• What is important to that group is…
• An author cannot guarantee that people will take away…
• What critics see is the plurality of readings…

Texts do not have single messages – even if the author intends to give one. That is because the author does not control who reads the text, nor what lived experiences that person had. We approach texts with the bias of our upbringing.

When they watch a football match, their impression of fairness and favoritism will be heavily coloured by their home environment, and the wider team community. They will have learned to shout and cheer for their own team, and to challenge the referee if finds against their team player.

You might call this a bias for one type of reading, a favoritism, or a culturally conditioned reaction. You can see how the children are being brought up to react in the same way as their community – they are being trained to value the same things as each other. That value is selective and subjective.

Suddenly he awoke and was running – raw
In raw-seamed hot khaki, his sweat heavy,
Stumbling across a field of clods toward a green hedge
That dazzled with rifle fire, hearing
Bullets smacking the belly out of the air –
He lugged a rifle numb as a smashed arm;
The patriotic tear that had brimmed in his eye
Sweating like molten iron from the centre of his chest –

In bewilderment then he almost stopped –
In what cold clockwork of the stars and the nations
Was he the hand pointing that second? He was running
Like a man who has jumped up in the dark and runs
Listening between his footfalls for the reason
Of his still running, and his foot hung like
Statuary in mid-stride. Then the shot-slashed furrows

Threw up a yellow hare that rolled like a flame
And crawled in a threshing circle, its mouth wide
Open silent, its eyes standing out.
He plunged past with his bayonet toward the green hedge,
King, honour, human dignity, etcetera
Dropped like luxuries in a yelling alarm
To get out of that blue crackling air
His terror’s touchy dynamite.

Most study guides present the hare as a non-symbolic, literal object within the narrative. It is given as a parallel for the fear experienced by the soldiers, or maybe as a reflection on how war impacts the natural world. It seems to come from a community of readers who are focused on a kind of formalism – identifying literary devices, naming them, and interpreting effects.

A different community is likely to interpret the hare as symbolic of other soldiers. It is not nature crawling in a threshing circle, mouth wide silent, eyes standing out but a real soldier experiencing true terror. It might be written in symbolic terms because of the way literature will often canonize soldiers as courageous heroes. Texts like Charge Of The Light Brigade glorify the soldiers acts, even if they are a fiction. Bayonet Charge might be expressing a reality through a fiction. There is no hare, but there is terror.

An interpretive community likely to come to this conclusion is one that is greatly aware of the trauma in veterans, the suffering, and the fragility of mankind.

Neither the hare as a non-fiction of nature, or the hare as fiction symbolising man’s capacity for terror are correct, but represent the experiences of the reader.