ABSTRACT
In her analysis of reading as a transaction, Louise Rosenblatt (1978) distinguishes between the text and the poem. By the text she means the set of marks on the page; by the poem she means the transaction that occurs as readers bring their past experience to bear on the text to create meaning. The poem, therefore, is not a thing but a process, not an object but an event. Moreover, it is a continually changing process. When a reader reads a story for the second time, his/her prior knowledge includes what is remembered from the first reading. Thus the second reading is not merely a reiteration of the first but a new process that takes its form partly from the reader's knowledge of the first reading. (N.B. When Rosenblatt uses the term ‘poem’, we need to understand that she is referring to the meaning created in the reader's mind as he/she interacts with the work of literature, which can be in any form – story, drama or poetry.)
