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The Readerthe Text

the Poem

The Transactional Theory of the

Literary Work

Louise M.Rosenblatt

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CHAPTER 4: EVOKING A POEM

Rosenblatt sketches some of the major

process involved in evoking the work

from the text.

There are different functions readers go

through as they read the text and how

this activities influence their response to

literature.

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CHAPTER 4: EVOKING A POEM

Through conscious and unconsciouschoice, the reader uses the verbal cluesgiven by the author ( diction, setting,

character development) along withpersonal circumstance and experience,to form his or her response to the work.

Through these activities, the readerbecomes part of the creative processalong with the author.

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CHAPTER 4: EVOKING A POEM

Through the readers evocation and

interpretation of a poem, actually has the

power to change the text.

Different readers have decidedly diverse

personal responses which become

woven into the texture of the

experienced poem (p. 65)

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CHAPTER 4: EVOKING A POEM

The author gives the examples of areaders cultural background, personalexperience and literary knowledge as

elements which can dramatically changea piece of literature for that reader.

There are no wrong response becausereader response is always the readerresponse. It is built out of logic andexperience of the reader.

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CHAPTER 4: EVOKING A POEM

So, teachers must not set boundaries for

interpretation of the text instead give the

students the freedom to be part of the

creative process and respond to the textaccording their personal experience.

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CHAPTER 4: EVOKING A POEM

Explains that the experience of evokingthe poem goes on as the reader getsfurther into the works.

The term poemhere refers to the artisticcreation that the reader constructs while

reading a literary work. (Rosenblatt is notdiscussing only poetry here but anyartistic work of literature)

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CHAPTER 4: EVOKING A POEM

The reader is immersed in a creative

process that goes on largely below the

threshold of awareness (p.52).

This process imposes the delicate task

of sorting the relevant from the irrelevant

in a continuing process of selection,

revision and expansion: (p.53)

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P.54

As one decodes the opening lines or sentences

and pages of a text, one begins to develop a

tentative sense of a framework within which to

place what will follow. Underlying this is theassumption that this body of words, set forth in

certain patterns and sequences on the page,

bears the potentiality for a reasonably unified

or integrated, or at the very least coherent,experience.

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P.54

One evolves certain expectations aboutthe diction, the subject, the ideas, thethemes, the kind of text, that will signal

certain possibilities and exclude others,thus limiting the arc of expectations.What the reader has elicited form thetext up to any point generates a

receptivity to certain kinds of ideas,overtones, or attitudes.

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P. 54

Perhaps one can think of this as an

alerting certain areas of memory, a

stirring-up of certain reservoirs of

experience, knowledge, and feeling. Asthe reading proceeds, attention will be

fixed on the reverberations of

implications that result from fulfillment orfrustration of those expectations.

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CHAPTER 4: EVOKING A POEM

This process itself is part of the appeal of

reading a work of literature.

P.54-55

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CAPTER 4: EVOKING A POEM

One potential objection to the reader-response

theory of literary criticism is that it suggests

that anyones reading of a work is just as valid

as any other reading.

Some readings are more informed than others

and that people can become better readers

through practice and experience:

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Extract from the book:

Past literary experiences serve as subliminal

guides as to anticipated, the details to be

attended to, the kinds of organizing patterns to

be evolved. (p.57)

Traditional subjects, themes, treatments, may

provide the guides to organization and the

background against which to recognize

something new or original in the text. (p.57)

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Extract from the book:

Awareness-more or less explicit-of

repetitions, echoes, resonances,

repercussions, linkages, cumulative

effects, contrasts, of surprises is themnemonic matrix for the structuring of

emotion, idea, situation, character, plot-

in short, for the evocation of a work ofart. (p.58)

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CHAPTER 4: EVOKING THE POEM

For the experienced reader, much of thishas become automatic, carried onthrough a continuing flow of responses,

syntheses, readjustment andassimilation.

The readers reading process allowscompatible associations into the focusof attention. (p.60)

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TO SUMMARIZE:

2 streams of responses involved in any

reading event:

# evocation

# interpretation

Cannot be separated.

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TO SUMMARIZE:

Rosenblatt argues the range of potential

responses and the gamut of degrees of

intensity and articulateness are infinitely

vast, since they depend not only on thecharacter of the text but even more on

the special character of the individual

reader (p.49)

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TO SUMMARIZE:

The readers role in evoking and

interpreting the poem can be quite

complex.

The texts involvement in this process is

of equal importance

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TO SUMMARIZE:

Each genre makes different demands of a

reader.

New meaning arrives on the scene concerningthe expectation the reader has of each

particular work.

Brings to work past associations and

experiences

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THE END

Presented by:

AZLINDA ZAFIRAH BINTI ASHAARY

AFIQAH AMANINANOOR HARMIMI BT ABDUL HALIM