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Basic Writing questions is not a crit forum. All crits belong in Share Your Work
Do inline critiques fall under Reader Response Literary Theory?
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Yes, please don't link-drop. Give us a summary or your thoughts—even briefly—to give us context or definition of the subject to discuss.
That's a bit cynical. I believe he's a professor. It's a whole 3-minute video. I thought you guys would be interested in literary theory. He explains it better than I ever could.
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If inline critiques are in fact reader-response theory, should we know more about it to be better critters? Also, on these forums and other sites, there seems to be large sect who believe in writing transparent prose, that writing is for the benefit of the reader. Are they falling in line with this particular school of criticism?
Not really a good video, or a good discussion. Reader-Response is a derivative of explication de texte via Structuralism.
It's great if you want to lead a discussion of undergraduates, but not so much if you want to help a writer.
If you want to know more about reader-response, which has mostly fallen by the wayside, see: Jane Tompkins. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Note that this, the seminal study (and really, the formal invention of) Reader-Response was from 1980. The world has moved on since then, as has Dr. Tompkins.
Its basic premise is sort of duh: readers bring different experience to a text, the act of reading a text can change a reader's understanding/interpretation of a text, and that texts can support an infinite number of readers.
For the purposes of helping a writer by delivering a crit, close reading is probably more helpful; it identifies specifically what works or doesn't work in a text for a particular reader, allowing the writer to decide what to use and what to discard.
The ultimate goal of reader-response (like most critical theory) is to produce a tight ball of conclusions with the end-goal of tenure points. It's fun and interesting and potentially useful for the person doing the reading, but not so much for the writer of the text.
It's great if you want to lead a discussion of undergraduates, but not so much if you want to help a writer.
If you want to know more about reader-response, which has mostly fallen by the wayside, see: Jane Tompkins. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Note that this, the seminal study (and really, the formal invention of) Reader-Response was from 1980. The world has moved on since then, as has Dr. Tompkins.
Its basic premise is sort of duh: readers bring different experience to a text, the act of reading a text can change a reader's understanding/interpretation of a text, and that texts can support an infinite number of readers.
For the purposes of helping a writer by delivering a crit, close reading is probably more helpful; it identifies specifically what works or doesn't work in a text for a particular reader, allowing the writer to decide what to use and what to discard.
The ultimate goal of reader-response (like most critical theory) is to produce a tight ball of conclusions with the end-goal of tenure points. It's fun and interesting and potentially useful for the person doing the reading, but not so much for the writer of the text.
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Writing that is published is for the benefit of the reader; the author has released it into the world, and no longer controls it.
Reader response criticism is not really about "transparent" prose. In fact that's a slippery phrase, because transparent to me, may not be transparent to you, and vice versa.
Rather than think about "clear" or "transparent," consider thinking of text as multi-layered.
You can look through the text to find meaning in what it says.
Alternatively, you can look at the text to attempt to discover how it works, how it creates (or fails to create) meaning. *
At/Through analogy stolen from rhetorician Richard A. Lanham.
Interesting post, but aren't there schools of criticism where the author matters as well? I ask because I know nothing about literary theory.
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It would have been really helpful to put that info in OP. (I don't think he's a uni lecturer.)
Some of us are interested in literary theory; we're not interested in clicking blindly on internet links. I found AW Admin's posts more enlightening than that vid.
There's a whole subforum for this sort of thing, btw. You might find some previous discussion here: https://absolutewrite.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?136-Critical-Theory-and-Philosophy-of-Language
Yes. They've kinda sorta fallen into disrepute, though they are still important in some schools, like New Historicism, or social criticism like Post Colonialism and Marxism.
But the old school, where biography and attempts to psychoanalyze the author fell into disfavor, largely due to the efforts of what was called the Yale School of Criticism or New Criticism (this is what gave rise, in part, to Wimsatt and Bearsley's Intentional Fallacy), 1946.
If you're genuinely interested in this Terry Eagleton's Literarary Theory: An Introduction is readable and a decent survey. *
* AW affiliate link.
I'm pretty much ignorant of literary theory. I use the term reader response, in particular in relation to 'criticism' (which I prefer to call and think of as reader feedback) - then describing in concrete terms my response - the movie I saw in my head (frex), or things that distracted me when I read the text, that description can go quite nicely in a line by line
text
"here I could really see blah blah blah"
text
"the character is patting & smoothing her hair and clothes an awful lot"
text
"here I could really see blah blah blah"
text
"the character is patting & smoothing her hair and clothes an awful lot"
The title of the thread is the question. I actually found the video to be delightful. It's only three minutes. He's not giving you an MFA lecture; he's just touching on the subject. I happen to find reader response theory interesting when it comes to critiquing. Many people focus on the nuts and bolts and mechanics of the work without really telling the submitter how it made them feel. Inline critiques over at Critique Circle allows people to give feedback as they're reading. I think that's pretty cool.
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I suggest that you include information such as the length of the video, the topic, and the name of the talent in the OP, if you want people to engage by clicking the link. Perhaps it'd be worth editing it now to help readers new to the thread.
At risk of sounding like a science grad who's stumbled upon a English grad conversation and who doesn't have a clue what "reader response literary theory" even is (or what an inline critique is compared to any other critique)... do you always need to understand the theories behind something to be good at doing them? For example: you don't need to be able to do calculus or understand how the mass of the Earth curves spacetime and how this affects the path a ball takes when you throw it while standing on Earth to be able to catch a ball. You learn to catch a ball from experience and practice. If anything, fretting about time dilation and spacetime curvature while you're trying to catch a ball will distract you and make you miss the ball. So I'd say practice and experience is what's going to make someone better at doing critiques.
I totally understand that learning about theories behind things is extremely interesting and has plenty of useful applications. Just that it's not the same as learning to do something instinctively from experience.
They can see the length of the vid when they click on it. The thread is on reader response, surely you can deduce that's what the link is about.
"and the name of the talent in the OP,"
Huh?
If you don't want to click on links or use Google...then don't.
Boy, I realize why I left this site. To to go again.
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Or you could be helpful by putting that information upfront, so readers can make the decision for themselves. I'm not sure why you're so resistant to this. Several people in this thread have commented on the problems of context-light links.
Google is your friend. Or I could put the information into this post. Which would be more helpful?
Talent in this case refers to the person fronting the video.
Why on earth should someone who doesn't know anything about reader response literary theory except that it's the title of your thread click on some random YouTube link that's presented with no explanation, discussion, or identification?
You're assuming a level of interest that isn't necessarily there.
I have better things to do with my time than watch unidentified YouTube videos. It's your job, as the person posting the link, to give me a reason to follow it. Otherwise...
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Up until now, I didn't know what you meant by inline critiques. I thought it was referring to a line-by-line critique. But I gather it's something different? An explanation would be appreciated.
Thanks. That seems to work on a similar principle to the comment feature in Word.
That's nice. However, what you actually did was link-drop. And while it's great to call attention to a useful resource, there are some problems with the way you did it and the resource.
1. He's not a prof, which you seem to suggest he was.
2. You don't really understand reader response theory in part, because he doesn't seem to either. That's ok though, because it doesn't actually offer anything that a reader can't do without knowing lots of nifty jargon from critical theory.
3. You're actually asking about a feature from another site which you don't explain or provide a context for; that's going to cause confusion for your readers.
4. Critical theory is about methods and tools for engaging in literary criticism. Literary criticism, unlike a critique, is not about the work/the text; it's about the reader. It's not terribly helpful in general to the writer of a work.
5. Reader response theory while great fun for the reader of a text, doesn't really help writers much because, despite the video and your own desire to make it mean "how the work made the reader feel" isn't what reader response is about.
6. The core concept of reader response theory is that there isn't an actual text. What the writer wrote, what you read, what I read and what Jennie Doe read are all different texts. There is not central shared text; the text is different, entirely, because each reader is different. Perhaps the best example of this is that the second central text in terms of engaging in reader response theory, after Tompkins' Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism, is the work of her spouse Stanley Fish, Is There a Text In This Class. Telling a writer that there is no central text, no shared meaning, is more often than not perceived by writers as a useless exercise in frustration, because it simultaneously renders all feedback, all responses, from readers as equally valid and equally invalid.
7. The assertion that "Many people focus on the nuts and bolts and mechanics of the work without really telling the submitter how it made them feel" is not about reader response theory; it's about a poorly presented or poorly understood crit.
8. A preponderance of crits talking about "nuts and bolts and mechanics" may be that the work is so difficult to read because of those issues that the readers can't really make sense of the work. If there are a lot of mechanical issues, or nuts and bolts issues, the piece may have been posted a bit too early for crit.
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I realise you've left, OP, but may I offer this as an explanation as to why you feel frustrated with this thread:
You seem, from your posts here, to be very interested in the role of author, of what matters to them, if the reader need matter as much as some say it does, if maybe the author is just as important if not more so.
Most of us here feel that if one puts ones writing out there in public it is specifically so that it is read. So that it affects the reader in some manner.
Basically most of us think reader is king.
You think author is king (at least that's the impression I'm getting).
That's why you are frustrated with this thread. To you you posted a post, and that's the end of the story, why are people making a big deal? But for most of us here everything we do on AW is about communicating as effectively as we can as writers for the reader. People were offering some critique of your posting to help you in future, and to help get your message and thoughts across better to the reader. They weren't insulting you or your link. They just wanted to inform you how you could have better reached your audience had you taken some time to consider said audience in the first place.
Anyway, that's the difference and that's I think where your frustration stems from. You want the reader to do all the work, most of us want the writer to.
You seem, from your posts here, to be very interested in the role of author, of what matters to them, if the reader need matter as much as some say it does, if maybe the author is just as important if not more so.
Most of us here feel that if one puts ones writing out there in public it is specifically so that it is read. So that it affects the reader in some manner.
Basically most of us think reader is king.
You think author is king (at least that's the impression I'm getting).
That's why you are frustrated with this thread. To you you posted a post, and that's the end of the story, why are people making a big deal? But for most of us here everything we do on AW is about communicating as effectively as we can as writers for the reader. People were offering some critique of your posting to help you in future, and to help get your message and thoughts across better to the reader. They weren't insulting you or your link. They just wanted to inform you how you could have better reached your audience had you taken some time to consider said audience in the first place.
Anyway, that's the difference and that's I think where your frustration stems from. You want the reader to do all the work, most of us want the writer to.