My argument is that a literary education should build on a primary level of responsivity towards literature, involving empathy and immersion in the world of the text. To engage with literary works from the past involves a play between familiarity and strangeness, and this play should be located as part of a reader's response to texts, rather than…

Nursing students' evaluations of a unit in which they examined images of mental health in literature elicited three themes: (1) textual narratives imitate and expand horizons of the real world; (2) texts serve as a model of the real world; and (3) texts can challenge health care professionals' perspectives on their practice. (Contains 58…

Explains that as young readers respond to narrative texts in a variety of media, they repeatedly step in and out of the fictional universe of their different stories. Outlines contemporary texts that foster various forms of such border crossing, in and out of diegesis, the framework of events as narrated in the text. Explores how an awareness of…

Examines Louise Rosenblatt's theory of the reading transaction to aid teachers in the dilemma of either encouraging individual responses to literature or expecting literal comprehension of the material. Encourages teachers to look at their teaching purposes for any given text and to match questions and activities to those purposes. (SR)

Summarizes the history of, and theory and research in, reader response approaches to teaching literature. Proposes an instructional process employing response-based teaching. (MM)

Answers the question of whether fiction can mean anything you want it to. Offers suggestions to help students use their personal experiences to make sense out of Kafka's "A Hunger Artist." (EL)

Introduces a student-composed diagram as a means of discussing obstacles and resistances to teaching literature, such as assumptions about what a text is and whether it should be analyzed at all. Discusses a possible structure for the introductory literature course. (TB)

Studies the ways readers create meaning initially from literary texts. Analyzes the data collected via think-aloud protocols and interviews. Compares reading tactics of first-year college students and graduate students. (HB)

A critical reader "does more than simply soak up bits and pieces of information." He applies a personal reserve of knowledge and experience to a text to ascribe possible meanings. In other words, he interprets. In addition, he compares his own values and beliefs with those suggested to him by a text and defends them, if necessary. In…

A study investigated the phenomenon "response to literature" through the window of language to determine how different researchers assigned meaning to this central concept in twentieth century research. The benchmark conceptions of the terms "literature" and "response" (with which the research conceptions could be…

Finds that instead of trying to acquire knowledge about literature, students must learn to read between the lines to respond emotionally as well as intellectually to novels, drama, or poetry. (EL)

Teachers need not drop entirely the nonliterary aspects of classroom talk and response to put students back in touch with the aesthetic role of classroom reading. Affect is the "gut reaction" a reader experiences when his or her raw emotions are touched. This first level of response must be acknowledged, even encouraged, before moving on…

Elaborated by a group of teacher educators and reading researchers, this monograph serves as a forum for responses to the federally sponsored 1985 report, "Becoming a Nation of Readers." It consists of the following essays, listed here with their authors: (1) "Reading Instruction and Underlying Metaphors in 'Becoming a Nation of…

Notes that when assigned writing topics requiring sophisticated reading students circumvent interpretation by rewriting the text in their personal idiom. Suggests that since meaning is discovered through process, students should be given numerous opportunities to respond to the same text. Offers several kinds of response activities. (JG)

Advocates focusing literature instruction on the classroom community rather than the individual because through language, as through mathematics, concepts and worlds are fabricated. (CRH)