MAYA ANGELOU’S CONTRIBUTION TO AFRO-AMERICAN LITERATURE

Аннотация

This article discusses peculiarities of the reader response theory within the main approaches of it. The literary text, reader and interpreting the text being the key notions of the theory are studied within the approaches mentioned in the article. Key words: Reader-response criticism, Transactional approach, Historical context, Affective stylistics, Psychological approach, Subjective approach, Social approach,Textual approach. One of the main critical schools in modern culture and literary studies, reader-response criticism, has contributed significantly to the way we read the texts. Often called the criticism of consciousness, it originated with the phenomenological approach of renowned philosopher Edmund Husserl in the 20th century. In line with this, it was also modified by the use of hermeneutics in Hans-Georg Gadamer's conceptual framework1. Late in the 1971s and early in the 1981s, reader-oriented techniques gained popularity. To a large degree, this strategy was established by individuals such as Gerald Prince, Louise M. Rosenblatt, Norman Holland, Stanley Fish, and David Bleich. This form of critique was also greatly aided in its growth by the writings of the Constance school critics, such as Wolfgang Iser and Hans Robert Juass. As a result, the reader-response approach to reading the texts was given access to a new toolbox of extremely technical terms, including the Implied/Actual Reader dichotomy, Concretization, Negation, Assimilation, Creation, and Horizons of Expectation. Within the context of current figures' new theoretical frameworks, reader-response criticism has been extensively studied over the past few decades. There are multiple approaches to classify reader-response theory: Louise Rosenblatt and Wolfgang Iser's transactional approach, Hans Robert Juass's preferred historical context, The affective stylistics by Stanley Fish, Norman Holland used a psychological approach, Subjective method in David Bleich's works, Stanley Fish's mature works employ a social approach, while Gerald Prince's work employs a textual approach. Transactional‖ approach. A Transactional reader-response critic, Louise M. Rosenblatt asserts that both the reader and the text must work together to produce meaning2. They share or take part in a transactional experience. The text serves as a catalyst for the reader to recall a variety of prior encounters, ideas, and thoughts from both prior reading experiences and our daily lives. Upon reading the text, readers bring with them their unique personalities, recollections of past events, current problems, unique physical conditions, and their entire individuality. But the text also acts as a blueprint, picking, reducing, and prioritizing thoughts that best fit the book's framework in order to mold the reader's experiences in its image. She 1 Guerin, Wilfred L. et al. A Handbook of Critical Approaches to Literature. Fifth edition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015. 2 Rosenblatt, Louise. The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1978. 142 refers to the new work that the reader and the text create together as a poem. This is the result of their transactional interaction. The two main divisions of reading, according to Rosenblatt, are: Engaging in efferent reading occurs when we read for information. Conversely, when we interact with the text, we read in an artistic way. A conversation between the reader and the text is what happens when we read beautifully. Between an efferent and an aesthetic mode of reading, a reader may alternate between them during the reading process. Historical approach. Hans Robert Jauss, an important German exponent of ‗reception theory,‘ gave a historical dimension to reader-oriented criticism. Literary works are not standalone objects that present the same perspective to every reader at every time, according to Jauss in Toward an Aesthetic Reception. The monument doesn't convey its timeless core in a monological manner3. He goes on to say that when understanding a text, one must take its social history into account. Furthermore, Jauss employs the phrase "horizons of expectation" to delineate the standards by which readers evaluate literary works within a specific age. He contends that since every historical era creates its own expectations, the text's meaning can never be definitive or universal. Because a text's meaning might vary depending on the historical context, there is no one right way to interpret it. Affective stylistics approach. An American exponent of reader-response criticism, Stanley fish examined the differences between the affective and reception aesthetics. He is one of the practitioners of affective stylistics4. Rather than being an object that exists in place, they contend that a literary text is an event that occurs in time and comes into being as it is read. A thorough analysis of the text is conducted to determine how (stylistically) and