Reader Response Theory Blog
#1 For your first post, you will use the reader-response theory to respond to what you have read so far.
To guide your reflections on the book you have chosen, below you will find a series of questions to help you think about various aspects of the text.
- Predicting or Generating Expectations: What sort of things could happen in the short and long term?
- Mental Images: What mental images are you forming of people, places and events in the novel? Consider the nature of these mental images and where they come from. For example, are they purely pictorial or are they more significantly “feelings about” things?
- Puzzles: What puzzles or problems are you formulating at various reading moments? What specific questions are you asking of the text?
#2 Applying Archetypal Literary Theory
Before you write, your second post, make sure you’ve read the second third of your book. In this post, you will focus on archetypal literary theory to respond to what you have read so far.
To guide your reflections on the book you have chosen, below you will find a series of questions to help you think about various aspects of the text.
- Do any of the characters in the book remind you of any archetypal characters (e.g., the Great Mother, the Mentor, the Trickster, the Hero)?
- How does the main character’s journey align with or differ from the archetypal hero’s journey?
- How does the main character’s journey align with or differ from the archetypal hero’s journey?
#3 You only have to do one. Whichever one is easier for you.
Before you write your third post, make sure you’ve read the final third of your book. You’re being given a choice for this post since, depending on your book, it may be difficult to apply both feminist and postcolonial literary theory. So you can choose which one you’d like to use.
To guide your reflections on the book you have chosen, below you will find a series of questions to help you think about various aspects of the text.
Feminist:
- How are women represented in the text?
- What roles do both men and women play within family, work situations, etc.? (for example, hero, breadwinner, friend, helper, cook, servant, sex object…)
Postcolonial:
- What person(s) or groups does the work identify as “other” or stranger? How are such persons/groups described and treated?
- What does the text reveal about the politics and/or psychology of anti-colonialist resistance?