Abstract
Students arc routinely asked in English courses for their reactions to the texts they arc reading. Sometimes there arc so many different reactions that wc may wonder whether everyone has read the same text. And some students respond so idiosyncratically to what they read that wc say their responses arc “totally off the wall.” This variety of response interests rcadcr-rcsponsc critics, who raise theoretical questions about whether our responses to a work arc the same as its meanings, whether a work can have as many meanings as we have responses to it, and whether some responses arc more valid than others. They ask what determines what is and what isn’t “off the wall.” What, in other words, is the wall, and what standards help us define it?
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Works Cited
Achebe, Chinua. “An Image of Africa: Racism in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” Hopes and Impediments: Selected Essays. New York: Doubleday, 1989. 1–20. Rpt. of “An Image of Africa.” Research in African Literatures 9.1 (1978): 1–15.
Adelman, Gary. Heart of Darkness: Search for the Unconscious. Boston: Twayne, 1987.
Bergstrom, Robert F. “Discovery of Meaning: Development of Formal Thought in the Teaching of Literature.” College English 45.8 (1983): 745–55.
Berthoud, Jacques. Joseph Conrad: The Major Phase. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1978.
Blake, Susan L. “Racism and the Classics: Teaching Heart of Darkness.” College Language Association Journal 25.4 (1982): 396–404.
Bleich, David. Readings and Eeelings: An Introduction to Subjective Criticism. Urbana: NCTE, 1975.
Brantlinger, Patrick. Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1988.
Brooks, Peter. Reading for the Plot: Design and Intention in Narrative. New York: Knopf, 1984.
Conrad, Joseph. The Collected Letters of Joseph Conrad, Volume 2: 1898–1902. Ed. Frederick R. Karl and Laurence Davies. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1986.
Duffey, Mrs. E.B. The Ladies’ and Gentlemen’s Etiquette: A Complete Manual of the Manners and Dress of American Society. Containing Forms of Letters, Invitations, Acceptances and Regrets. With a Copious Index. New rev. ed. Philadelphia: David McKay, 1911.
Fish, Stanley. “Affective Stylistics.” Is There a Text in This Class?: The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980.
Guerard, Albert J. Conrad the Novelist. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1958.
Holland, Norman N. The Dynamics of Literary Response. 1968. New York: Norton, 1975.
Holland, Norman N. 5 Readers Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1975.
Iser, Wolfgang. The Fictive and the Imaginary: Charting Literary Anthropology. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993.
Kahane, Claire. “Seduction and the Voice of the Text: Heart of Darkness and The Good Soldier.” Seduction and Theory: Readings of Gender, Representation and Rhetoric. Ed. Dianne Hunter. Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1989. 135–53.
Kartiganer, Donald M. “The Divided Protagonist: Reading as Repetition and Discovery.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 30.2 (1988): 151–78.
London, Bette. “Reading Race and Gender in Conrad’s Dark Continent.” Criticism: A Quarterly for Literature and the Arts 31:3 (Summer 1989): 235–52.
Miller, J. Hillis. “Heart of Darkness Revisited.” Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness.” Ed. Ross C Murfin. 2nd ed. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1996. 206–20.
Phelan, James. Reading People, Reading Plots: Character, Progression, and the Interpretation of Narrative. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989.
Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987.
Rabinowitz, Peter J. “Whiting the Wrongs of History: The Resurrection of Scott Joplin.” Black Music Research Journal 11.2 (1991): 157–76.
Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1984.
Reeves, Charles Eric. “A Voice of Unrest: Conrad’s Rhetoric of the Unspeakable.” Texas Studies in Literature and Language 27.3 (1985): 284–310.
Reitz, Bernhard. “The Meaning of the Buddha-Comparisons in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” Fu Jen Studies 13 (1980): 41–53.
Ridley, Florence H. “The Ultimate Meaning of ‘Heart of Darkness.’” Nineteenth-Century Fiction 18 (1963): 43–53.
Sams, Larry Marshall. “Heart of Darkness: The Meaning Around the Nutshell.” International Fiction Review 5.2 (1978): 129–33.
Shaffer, Brian W. “‘Rebarbarizing Civilization’: Conrad’s African Fiction and Spencerian Sociology.” PMLA 108.1 (1993): 45–58.
Stewart, Garrett. “Lying as Dying in Heart of Darkness.” PMLA 95.3 (1980): 319–31.
Trilling, Lionel. Beyond Culture: Essays on Literature and Learning. New York: Harcourt, 1965.
Wasserman, Jerry. “Narrative Presence: The Illusion of Language in Heart of Darkness.” Critical Essays on Joseph Conrad. Ed. Ted Billy. Boston: G.K. Hall, 1987. 102–13.
Watt, Ian. “Conrad’s Heart of ’Darkness and the Critics.” North Dakota Quarterly 57.3 (1989): 5–15.
Young, Gloria. “Kurtz as Narcissistic Megalomaniac in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness” Working Papers in Linguistics and Literature. Ed. A. Kakouriotis and R. Parkin-Gounelas. Thessaloniki: Aristotle U, 1989. 255–63.
Some Introductions to Reader-Response Criticism
Beach, Richard. A Teacher’s Introduction to Reader-Response Theories. Urbana: NCTE, 1993.
Fish, Stanley E. “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics.” New Literary History 2 (1970): 123–61. Rpt. in Fish, Text 21–67, and in Primeau 154–79.
Freund, Elizabeth. The Return of the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism. London: Methuen, 1987.
Holub, Robert C. Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction. New York: Methuen, 1984.
Leitch, Vincent B. American Literary Criticism from the Thirties to the Eighties. New York: Columbia UP, 1988.
Mailloux, Steven. “Learning to Read: Interpretation and Reader-Response Criticism.” Studies in the Literary Imagination 12 (1979): 93–108.
Mailloux, Steven. “Reader-Response Criticism?” Genre 10 (1977): 413–31.
Mailoux, Steven. “The Turns of Reader-Response Criticism.” Conversations: Contemporary Critical Theory and the Teaching of Literature. Ed. Charles Moran and Elizabeth F. Penfield. Urbana: NCTE, 1990. 38–54.
Rabinowitz, Peter J. “Whirl Without End: Audience-Oriented Criticism.” Contemporary Literary Theory. Ed. G. Douglas Atkins and Laura Morrow. Amherst: U of Massachusetts P, 1989. 81–100.
Rosenblatt, Louise M. “Towards a Transactional Theory of Reading.” Journal of Reading Behavior 1 (1969): 31–47. Rpt. in Primeau 121–46.
Suleiman, Susan R. “Introduction: Varieties of Audience-Oriented Criticism.” Suleiman and Crosman 3–45.
Tompkins, Jane P. “An Introduction to Reader-Response Criticism.” Tompkins ix-xxiv.
Reader-Response Criticism in Anthologies and Collections
Flynn, Elizabeth A., and Patrocinio P. Schweickart, eds. Gender and Reading: Essays on Readers, Texts, and Contexts. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1986.
Garvin, Harry R., ed. Theories of Reading, Looking, and Listening. Lewisburg: Bucknell UP, 1981. Essays by Cain and Rosenblatt.
Machor, James L., ed. Readers in History: Nineteenth-Century American Literature and the Contexts of Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993. Contains Mailloux essay “Misreading as a Historical Act: Cultural Rhetoric, Bible Politics, and Fuller’s 1845 Review of Douglass’s Narrative.”
Primeau, Ronald, ed. Influx: Essays on Literary Influence. Port Washington: Kennikat, 1977. Essays by Fish, Holland, and Rosenblatt.
Suleiman, Susan R, and Inge Crosman, eds. The Reader in the Text: Essays on Audience and Interpretation. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1980. See especially the essays by Culler, Iser, and Todorov.
Tompkins, Jane P., ed. Reader-Response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-Structuralism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1980. See especially the essays by Bleich, Fish, Holland, Prince, and Tompkins.
Reader-Response Criticism: Some Major Works
Bleich, David. Subjective Criticism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978.
Booth, Stephen. An Essay on Shakespeare’s Sonnets. New Haven: Yale UP, 1969.
Booth, Wayne C. A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974.
Eco, Umberto. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1979.
Fish, Stanley Eugene. Doing What Comes Naturally: Change, Rhetoric, and the Practice of Theory in Literary and Legal Studies. Durham: Duke UP, 1989.
Fish, Stanley Eugene. Is There a Text in This Class? The Authority of Interpretive Communities. Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1980. This volume contains most of Fish’s most influential essays, including “Literature in the Reader: Affective Stylistics,” “What It’s Like to Read L’Allegro and Il Penseroso,” “Interpreting the Variorum,” “Is There a Text in This Class?” “How to Recognize a Poem When You See One,” and “What Makes an Interpretation Acceptable?”
Fish, Stanley Eugene. Self-Consuming Artifacts: The Experience of Seventeenth-Century Literature. Berkeley: U of California P, 1972.
Fish, Stanley Eugene. Surprised by Sin: The Reader in “Paradise Lost.” 2nd ed. Berkeley: U of California P, 1971.
Holland, Norman N. 5 Readers Reading. New Haven: Yale UP, 1975.
Holland, Norman N. “UNITY IDENTITY TEXT SELF.” PMLA 90 (1975): 813–22.
Iser, Wolfgang. The Act of Reading: A Theory of Aesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1978.
Iser, Wolfgang. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1974.
Jauss, Hans Robert. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. Trans. Timothy Bahti. Intro. Paul de Man. Brighton, Eng.: Harvester, 1982.
Mailloux, Steven. Interpretive Conventions: The Reader in the Study of American Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1982.
Mailloux, Steven. Rhetorical Power. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1989.
Messent, Peter. New Readings of the American Novel: Narrative Theory and Its Application. New York: Macmillan, 1991.
Prince, Gerald. Narratology. New York: Mouton, 1982.
Rabinowitz, Peter J. Before Reading: Narrative Conventions and the Politics of Interpretation. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1987.
Radway, Janice A. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1984.
Rosenblatt, Louise M. Literature as Exploration. 4th ed. New York: MLA, 1983.
Rosenblatt, Louise M. The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work. Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1978.
Slatoff, Walter J. With Respect to Readers: Dimensions of Literary Response. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1970.
Steig, Michael. Stories of Reading: Subjectivity and Literary Understanding. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1989.
Exemplary Short Readings of Major Texts
Anderson, Howard. “Tristram Shandy and the Reader’s Imagination.” PMLA 86 (1971): 966–73.
Berger, Carole. “The Rake and the Reader in Jane Austen’s Novels.” Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 15 (1975): 531–44.
Booth, Stephen. “On the Value of Hamlet.” Reinterpretations of English Drama: Selected Papers from the English Institute. Ed. Norman Rabkin. New York: Columbia UP, 1969. 137–76.
Easson, Robert R. “William Blake and His Reader ’ in Jerusalem.” Blake’s Sublime Allegory. Ed. Stuart Curran and Joseph A. Wittreich. Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1973. 309–28.
Kirk, Carey H. “Moby-Dick: The Challenge of Response.” Papers on Language and Literature 13 (1977): 383–90.
Leverenz, David. “Mrs. Hawthorne’s Headache: Reading The Scarlet Letter” Nathaniel Hawthorne, “The Scarlet Letter.” Ed. Ross C Murfin. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1991. 263–74.
Lowe-Evans, Mary. “Reading with a ‘Nicer Eye’: Responding to Frankenstein.” Mary Shelley, “Frankenstein.” Ed. Johanna M. Smith. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1992. 215–29.
Rabinowitz, Peter J. “’A Symbol of Something’: Interpretive Vertigo in ‘The Dead.’” James Joyce, “The Dead.” Ed. Daniel R. Schwarz. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1994. 137–49.
Treichler, Paula. “The Construction of Ambiguity in The Awakening” Kate Chopin, “The Awakening.”Ed. Nancy A. Walker. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1993. 308–28.
Other Works Referred to in What Is Reader-Response Criticism?
Booth, Wayne C. A Rhetoric of Irony. Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1974.
Culler, Jonathan. Structural Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study of Literature. Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1975.
Koestenbaum, Wayne. “Wilde’s Hard Labor and the Birth of Gay Reading.” Engendering Men: The Question of Male Feminist Criticism. Ed. Joseph A. Boone and Michael Cadden. New York: Rout-ledge, 1990.
Richards, I.A. Practical Criticism. New York: Harcourt, 1929. Rpt. in Criticism: The Major Texts. Ed. Walter Jackson Bate. Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt, 1970. 575.
Wimsatt, William K., and Monroe C. Beardsley. The Verbal Icon. Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1954. See especially the discussion of “The Affective Fallacy,” with which reader-response critics have so sharply disagreed.
Reader-Oriented Approaches to Heart of Darkness
Lenta, Margaret. “Narrators and Readers: 1902 and 1975.” Ariel: A Review of International English Literature 20 (1989): 19–36.
Rosmarin, Adena. “Darkening the Reader: Reader-Response Criticism and Heart of Darkness” Joseph Conrad, “Heart of Darkness.” Ed. Ross C Murfin. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Boston: Bedford-St. Martin’s, 1989.
Straus, Nina Pelikan. “The Exclusion of the Intended from Secret Sharing in Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.” Novel: A Forum on Fiction 20(1987): 123–37.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 1996 Bedford Books of St. Martin’s Press
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Murfin, R.C., Rabinowitz, P.J. (1996). Reader-Response Criticism and Heart of Darkness. In: Murfin, R.C. (eds) Heart of Darkness. Case Studies in Contemporary Criticism. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14016-9_4
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-14016-9_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-65707-2
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-14016-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave Literature & Performing Arts CollectionLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)