This paper is a re-examination of Louise Rosenblatt's seminal work of reader-response theory, The Reader, The Text, The Poem. I argue that poems are essentially social in nature and that they open up a space in which conversation and interpretation can take place. With Rosenblatt I argue that until a reader engages with a poem, bringing to it a…

A key instructional goal of English language arts instruction is teaching students to read and interpret complex literary texts. This report reviews the literature on the development and pedagogy of literary analysis skills. It analyzes literary analysis skills as a "key practice," a bundle of disciplinary skills and strategies that form…

Assuming that readers' emotional responses can enhance readers' metacognitive experiences and inform literary analysis, this study of 11th-grade poetry readers features instruction that models both cognitive and affective reading processes. The author: (1) Presents a case for more explicit attention to emotion in language arts classrooms; (2)…

Examines how literary criticism exploits and marginalizes the poem as printed artifact. Argues that the author-centered, phonocentric premise of close reading neutralizes spatial dynamics and reduces material identity to the status of a transparent medium. Suggests that appreciation of silent visual form is a convention of post modernist writing.…

Students can learn to understand prose by carefully listening to the author's voice. The paper gives examples of prose in standard block form and in a poetic form, explaining why students find the poetic form more comprehensible. Students' awareness of rhetoric can be developed through the Myers Briggs inventory. (SM)

Discusses the problem of criticizing students' interpretations of poetry. Argues that faulty interpretations should only be ignored for artistic reasons, but should be called mistakes for factual and experiential reasons. (MM)

Discusses the conflict over deconstruction, explaining its usefulness in reading, writing, and responding to poetry. After defining deconstruction, presents five approaches to deconstructive reading (self-referentiality, reading from different positions, binary oppositions, figurative/literal language, and intertextuality) and concludes that…

Reasons that teachers of literature should have as their focus not what writers do but what readers do in the process of reading literature. Concludes that readers construct literary works based on their own experience, education, and ability to imagine in response to a writer's suggestions. (JAD)

Uses the author's poems to illustrate the interrelationships among a poem's rhythm, lineation, and syntax. (MM)

Presents Gregory Corso's poem, "Poets Hitchhiking on the Highway," as an intellectually profitable assignment graphically illustrating the metonymic and metaphoric modes. (MM)

Claims that the insights of reader response theory can be brought into the teaching of poetry in college literature courses. Outlines methods for utilizing reader response techniques to help students enjoy and understand poetry. (HB)

Describes a teacher's unsuccessful attempt to introduce the poetry of Tu Fu, a wayward bureaucrat of the T'ang dynasty, to a class of part-time students. Uses his students' resistance to this poetry as an occasion to discuss the importance of personal responses to poetry, as opposed to "correct" academic responses. (TB)

Discusses ways to teach modern plays and poetry, using a reader response approach that makes the works more accessible to students. (HTH)

States that psychological models help shape students' responses to literature. Explains how a Freudian model can be used to explore the meanings inherent in Emily Dickinson's "A Narrow Fellow in the Grass." (MM)