Customer Reviews

Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism

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Jane Tompkins came out with the first edition of this book in 1980 and, nearly thirty years later, her book remains a good collection of essays by reader-response theorists. An Introduction by Jane Tompkins situates the essays within literary theory.

Reader response rose out of New Criticism, whose history is conveyed by contributer Walker Gibson. Gibson's chapter is accompanied by chapters written by Gerald Prince and Jonathan Culler (structuralism), Michael Riffaterre (stylistics), a translation of Georges Poulet by Catherine and Richard Macksey (phenomenology), Wolfgang Iser (phenomenology), Stanley Fish (phenomenology), Norman Holland (psychoanlytic), and Walter Benn Michaels (poststructuralist). A concluding chapter by Jane Tompkins reminds the reader of the changing shape of literary response.

An annotated bibliography nicely concludes this helpful collection of reader-response critical theory.

Tompkins's(ed.) _Reader-Response Criticism_ is an excellent place to start for any student of reader theory. It is a collection of essays that deals with the development of literary response theory, from New Criticism to post-structuralism.

A lively and thoughtprovoking tour of literary response theory. A classic and still the best work in its field.

This book is very accessible and the material is very relevant to today's theories. I do find that a lot of it is repetitive and half of the articles could have been left out! How much can you say about Reader Response Criticism!? ;0)