Chapter Three - The Lens of Reader Response: The Promise and Peril of Response-Based Pedagogy
"There can be no denying the power and purpose of a reader-centered approach to literature and the degree to which it has positively informed our practice. It has made the enterprise of literature teaching more relevant, immediate, and important. It has forced us to rethink what we do when we teach literature, why we do it, and whom we do it for." (Appleman 26)
I think Appleman offers a great description of the benefit or reader response, one of the problems we face in teaching reader response is students taking it too far. By too far I mean leaving the text to explore some facet of their life that somehow relates to the text, but getting off track.
There is also the downfall that students feel since it is a personal response that they don't really have to respond, or that their response is correct. I'm not saying a response is right or wrong, but some interpretations and relations to the text can be very misinformed.
I really disliked the reader-response diagram. I don't believe that all students will be able to respond to all texts. Like the activity we did in class. I read a book on an orphan in France, who floated away. 1. I'm not an orphan. 2. I've never been to France. 3. I definitely cannot float, wish as I may. I suppose I can relate to pictures I've seen of France, but I don't believe that is enough to really accomplish a reader-response piece.
I like the idea of reader-response, but I believe it has some serious shortcomings.
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I've come to the conclusion that reader response is a useful way for students to respond to texts so long as it is paired with another literary theory. By itself, reader response can become meaningless - an exercise in self-expression, but doing little to explore the text in question itself.
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