As I have begun to develop my Critical Theory Today wiki page, I am finding that many (if not all of the categories) have overlapping issues. For example, my particular area was New Historical and Cultural Criticism and I have found Reader-response items within this area as well. I guess this makes perfect sense since I, as an actively engaged reader, am making meaning of the piece of literature I am reading. So, my understanding is that really each of the chapters in Critical Theory Today has to do with a portion of the Reader Response Theory. (The "Reader-response Criticism" chapter is the one that I focused on this week.) After all, the Reader-response theory ". . . maintains that what a text is cannot be separated from what it does" (Tyson, 2006, p. 170).
It seems that Rosenblatt's transactional reader-response theory pertains especially well to reading graduate school material. Often times, I find myself reading graduate school homework and I have to stop and go back because I am not sure what I just read. I may start out with one idea in mind and as I continue reading, I change my thinking as I realize I may have missed the author's main points. "This process of correcting our interpretation as we move through the text usually results in our going back to reread earlier sections in light of some new development in the text" (Tyson, 2006, p. 173). I find myself reading and rereading to fill in gaps or clear up confusion that occurs. Rosenblatt refers to this as figuring ". . . determinate and indeterminate meanings. . . " (Tyson, 2006, p. 174).
Although Tyson gives the reader five different categories of reader-response, it seems there is a fine line between some of them. Affective stylistics became a little more clear when I read Stanley Fish's questions, ". . .'What does the sentence do to the reader?' and 'How does the reader of the sentence make meaning?'" (Tyson, 2006, p. 176).
Overall, I felt that the one of the most important points made in the "Reader-response Criticism" chapter, is for teachers to have an awareness ". . . by helping them [their students] decide if and when to try to replace those strategies with others; and helping them take responsibility for the strategies they choose to teach instead of hiding behind the belief that certain ways of reading are natural or inherently right because they represent what's in the text" (Tyson, 2006, p. 187). It seems that this social reader-response theory is extremely important for our students. It is definitely important to never assume that students know certain reading strategies that we, as teachers, may take for granted.
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I like your title! You are absolutely right that many of the chapters (probably except for Structuralism and New Criticism) in the Tyson book are overlapping, which probably tells you a lot about the tension we continue to experience in the literacy field as the leading theoreticians keep pulling us in more progressive directions even as the "real world" pulls back!
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