The meal made at the table
A recipe is only ink until someone cooks and tastes it — the meal happens in the eating. Reader-response says meaning works the same way: a text isn't complete on the page but is made in the act of a reader experiencing it.
The reader completes the text
Reader-response criticism argues that meaning is not fixed in the text but produced in the transaction between text and reader. Different readers — shaped by experience and expectation — actualize a work differently, filling its gaps and silences.
Against a single 'correct' meaning
Where formalism seeks the meaning in the text, reader-response holds that meaning happens in reading — so a text can support many valid interpretations.
Lab · Fill the gap
- Find a moment a story leaves unstated (a motive, an ending).
- Note how you, the reader, supply it.
- Consider how a different reader might fill it differently.
What you should see: Readers actively construct meaning by filling gaps — so interpretation varies with the reader.