Rosenblatt 1995

Rosenblatt, L. (1995). Literature as Exploration (5th Edition). New York, NY: Modern Language Association of America.

Barry, P. (2002). Beginning Theory: An Introduction to Literary and Cultural Theory. Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press.

In the foreword to the fifth edition, Wayne Booth hopes that someone will apply Rosenblatt's work to TV and video.

"In other words, the students we meet in classrooms today need something more than education in conducting transactions with books. To survive as the kind of people Rosenblatt would have us become, they need what seems to be the much more difficult art (though new technologies are making it possible): slowing down the image, recognizing that living with the flow of images and talking back to them is, as Rosenblatt says of reading literature, a "mode of living" (264), a training for the life that occurs after the images are turned off."

When he wrote this in 1995, the kind of response he was talking about was less possible than it is now. With desktop video and online video publishing, it becomes possible for a wide range of people to "slow down" the moving image, dissect it, and respond in the same mode. The moving images that both reflect and help to shape our culture are now infinitely re-viewable - through DVD, online video, and particularly through online video sharing sites like YouTube. If I want to more closely examine a political speech, or a popular movie, or a video composed by an anonymous person (commonplace since online video sharing, almost unheard of before that), I can access the original (video) text, slow it down, pause it, segment it, re-present it in new contexts, and juxtapose it with other (video) texts to produce my response in the same mode as the original. Online video sharing means that the potential audience for my response may be as great as that of the original text, depending in large part on the quality of my work.

I just began reading Barry's Beginning Theory, which interestingly omits any reference to Louise Rosenblatt and reader response theory. Barry says he's providing a survey of all major developments in literary theory, at least over the past 100 years. According to Wayne Booth, "she has probably influenced more teachers in their ways of dealing with literature than any other critic". Literature as Exploration, originally published in 1938 and revised constantly since then, includes responses to all of the major literary theories that Barry lists. Why isn't Rosenblatt included, even as a footnote, in Barry's book? Why not even a word to say why he doesn't value her work?

In Barry's book, I've just finished the section on liberal humanism. This describes the state of English studies before critical theory. Liberal humanism argues against bringing preconceived notions into the analysis of literature. It says that a book should be evaluated based solely on a close reading of the text on the page, not through any lens of theory. It presupposes the existence of an essential human nature, absolute truth, and timeless great works of literature. It is criticized for unexamined Eurocentric and androcentric underlying assumptions that marginalize others by elevating European male perspectives to the status of essential truths. It also ignores the context that produces and influences a work of literature. From this perspective, the teacher (or critic) must help the student discover the essential truths in the text. There is only one correct answer and one correct response to a given piece of literature.