Phenomenology and Reader-Response

                During the last classes we have been working in the topics of Phenomenology and Hermeneutics. First of all, it is important to know that in phenomenology the important matter is the relation between phenomena and consciousness, all factors like the historical context, conditions of production and all external facts of the literary text are not taken into account. Moreover, it is focus on the conscious of the author that is manifested through the work itself, and the reader experience not only the stylistic and the semantic aspects that are given by the text, but also it is concerned with the deep structures that are impregnated by the world perception of the author. Furthermore, Hermeneutics is very similar to phenomenology but focusing in historical interpretation.

                Then, the second topic that we were working on was the reader response criticism. Which states that all the believes and experiences of the reader cannot be omitted from the literature, and taking that into account it analyzes how is the reader response when he or she reads the text.  It has different categories or kinds of reader response. Some of them focus on the meaning which is created through the relation between the text and the reader, other focuses more in the cognitive process that the reader has when he is reading each part of the text. Another focuses in that there is not text, but the text is created by the reader response to it. Other kind of reader response is centered in what the readers’ responses reveal about themselves. And the last one states that there is not a subjective response but just social conventions created by interpretative communities. But as a conclusion of this paragraph, there is not possible separation of all the experiences, and all what we are from the text that we are reading and how we see and understand it.

References:

Tyson, L. (2006). Reader Response Criticism, In Critical Theory Today. (pp. 169-208). Routledge. New   York.

Eagleton, T.  (1996).Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, Reception Theory. In Literary Theory (pp. 47-78). Oxford: Blackwell  publishing.