A Critique of Appleman
Reading Chapter 3 of Deborah Appleman’s Critical Encounters in High School English–the chapter on Reader Response theory–I found myself wondering if Appleman is being completely fair to Reader Response theory and one of its primary architects, Louise Rosenblatt. On the whole, I came away with the impression that she suggests that the theory itself is somehow deficient, resulting in “the doctrine of individualism” (Appleman quoting Bruce Pirie, p. 28), and that students come away with the idea that their personal connections and responses to texts are the only thing that matters. She also writes that “If reader response is a transaction, at the very least we need to acknowledge that the text is an equal partner in that transaction” (28). I think, having read Rosenblatt’s Literature as Exploration, that Rosenblatt makes clear that the personal connection with the literature is only one component in the self-text-world triad of reader response. To be fair, Appleman does say that “[a]s English teachers we may have been guilty of overprivileging and romanticizing the individual at the expense of the context” (28), rightly acknowledging that the problem lies not with the theory but with the application, but it seems like only a passing acknowledgement.
Appleman continues to call Rosenblatt’s theory into question by presenting student responses to the novel Running Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound. She cites Rosenblatt, who wrote that readers’ different personalities, memories, needs, physical conditions, preoccupations, “and many other elements in a never-to-be-duplicated combination determine his [or her] response to the peculiar contribution of the text” (qtd. in Appleman, 41), and then presents the responses of two students who have very different backgrounds. Their responses were similar, and Appleman writes: “The student response diagrams seem to call these assumptions into question. Although the text is not at all obviously theme-driven, many students seem to have similar transactions with the text, not at all like the never to be duplicated combination that Rosenblatt predicted” (41). Of course they were similar: it was the same text! This seems to be practicing what she preaches against in her own critical assertion that we need to acknowledge that the text is an equal partner in the transaction.
I found numerous other flaws in Appleman’s critique of Reader Response theory, but I will not cite them here in the interest of brevity. Her appreciation for Reader Response theory definitely shone through throughout the chapter, but I felt she was building a “straw man” out of the theory so that she could attack it in the interest of supporting her larger purpose of encouraging the use of various critical theories in the classroom. I agree with her in that respect (that the knowledge and practice of various critical perspectives is extremely valuable), but felt a little put off by what I felt to be fallacious critiques of this particular theory.
Did anybody else feel this way, or am I just being grumpy?
on October 4th, 2006 at 12:33 pm
Jim- I DO agree with you, and had a similar response to this chapter. Appleman fails to acknowledge the similarities in the students that can account for their similar responses- age, geographic location, identical classroom context- all having strong influence on their “individual” responses. Not to mention, as you already pointed out, that it is the same text, which is one whole leg of the triad.
Appleman reads as though she finds reader-response the weakest of the theories, as though personal experience is not a “critical” enough lens. I find this bias against the personal sort of lame, considering that Marxist and Feminist lenses are equally rooted in thematic criticism and response. There is no real method or process to criticism, so I reject the idea that personal connection is somehow less deep or less validly critical.
on October 4th, 2006 at 2:35 pm
Jim,
I thought very much the same thing as I read Appleman’s chapter on Reader Response. While it is important to acknowledge how we as readers bring our biases, our experiences, and our beliefs to a text, I understand Louise Rosenblatt’s Lierature as exploration to require us to go much further than that. What I can thank Appleman for is making me question her remarks to the degree that I am currently re-reading Rosenblatt’s book in order to re-examine my perception of Reader Response.
on October 4th, 2006 at 8:51 pm
I also noticed the Reader Response hate, but it may help to remember that Appleman almost HAS to discount Reader Response. When you argue for the placing literary theory in the classroom, Rosenblatt’s place in our classrooms has to be pushed aside a bit in order to make room for new schools of thought. You can’t really produce a reader response criticism and simultaneously weave together a marxist, or post-structuralist, criticism. Rosenblatt’s theories are valid and wonderful, but they have such a stronghold on what English teacher’s do that people can’t remove reader response practices from the fact that they are a theory just like feminism. So yeah, Appleman was a bit harsh on old Louise, but I’d consider it more an act of making room for others than of malice.
on October 5th, 2006 at 9:16 am
I agree, jesteban, that Appleman is trying to make room for other theories in the high school English classroom, but, . . . oh this is going to sound silly, but here goes. . . . When we were kids, my older sister was in the Girl Scouts and she and her GS friends used to sing a song that went, “Make new friends, but keep the old / One is silver and the other’s gold.” My point is that, sure, it’s good to introduce new theoretical perspectives, but we don’t have to undermine the old ones. Reader response has been dominant in the secondary classroom at least since the seventies, and, historically one theoretical emphasis has displaced another–like a coup, only not as sudden–just as Reader Response largely displaced and discredited New Criticism. If you think about it, what Appleman and others are suggesting is radical. They are suggesting that we can incorporate a variety of literary theoretical perspectives simultaneously, and that we can do this without having to displace any valid theoretical perspective (Implicit in this suggestion is a huge degree of confidence in the intellectual capacities of both secondary scholars and their teachers, which is an attitude that I think our schools need desperately). This incorporation of various perspectives is what Appleman is after, but she let a little of the old “coup” mindset creep in to her argument. I think it is a case of a rhetorical misstep. I like what Appleman is saying. A lot. But with me, Appleman is on probation. Being an educated person, I don’t like to feel like I’m being rhetorically toyed with, and when I catch a hint of fallacy in an argument, I become wary of everything else the author/speaker says.