ABSTRACT
As its name implies, reader-response criticism focuses on readers’ responses to literary texts. Many new students of critical theory are relieved and happy when they get to the unit on reader-response criticism, perhaps because they enjoy the idea that their responses are important enough to become the focus of literary interpretation. Or perhaps they assume that reader-response criticism means “I can’t be wrong because any way I interpret the text is my response, so the professor can’t reject it.” Let me break the bad news to you up front. Depending on the kind of reader-response theory we’re talking about, your response to a literary text can be judged insufcient or less sufcient than others. And even when a given reader-response theory does assert that there is no such thing as an insuf- cient (or inaccurate or inappropriate) response, your job as a practitioner of that theory isn’t merely to respond but to analyze your response, or the responses of others, and that analysis can be found wanting.
