1000+ Literary Theory MCQs – Part 20: Reader-Response & Reception Theory

1. What is an “implied reader”?

1. The ideal audience envisioned by the author and to whom the work of literature is supposedly addressed.
2. A reader who embodies all those predispositions necessary for a literary work to exercise its effect.
3. The ideal reader of a work of literature which is approximated over time by successive responses of generations of actual readers.
4. The ideal “average” reader who can approach a work of literature with no preconceived ideas about the author’s life, the time of composition, etc.

2. Given below are two statements, one labelled Assertion (A) and the other labelled Reason (R). In the light of the statements, choose the most appropriate answer.

1. A is correct, but R is not correct.
2. A is not correct, but R is correct.
3. Both A and R are correct and R is the correct explanation of A.
4. Both A and R are correct, but R is not the correct explanation of A.

3. An “implied reader” is a ________.

1. reader who participates in creating the meaning of a text
2. hypothetical reader, not the actual reader, that the text addresses
3. reader who anticipates authorial intention
4. reader who reads critically against the grain of the text

4. Which of the following statements is incorrect with reference to Wolfgang Iser’s reader-response theory?

1. It is important for readers to negotiate textual “gaps”.
2. The act of “ideation” is central to a reader’s response to any particular text.
3. Consistency-building is the indispensable basis for all acts of comprehension.
4. “Uncontrolled subjectivism” does not make literary readings chaotic.

5. ‘This at least of flame-like, our life has, that it is but the concurrence, renewed from moment to moment, of forces parting sooner or later on their ways.’ This quotation from Walter Pater has been used by Stanley Fish to elaborate ________. Fill in the blank with the appropriate option given below.

1. interpretive communities
2. affective stylistics
3. actual reader
4. deconstruction

6. Choose the incorrect option with regard to the notion of ‘interpretive community’.

1. The notion of interpretive community is proposed by Stanley Fish.
2. The notion of interpretive community suggests that some readers do not stray away from the intention of the author even while structuring the text through their own interpretation.
3. The notion of interpretive community argues that each community interprets a text differently and thus all interpretations of a particular text are equally acceptable.
4. The notion prioritises academia, literary critics and theoreticians because they are the ones who share the competence required to understand exactly what the author intended to mean.

7. The perspective called “affective stylistics” was developed by

1. Stanley Fish
2. David Bleich
3. Michael Riffaterre
4. Jonathan Culler

8. Of the following theoreticians, who is associated with the idea of interpretive communities?

1. Hans-Georg Gadamer
2. Stanley Fish
3. Hans Robert Jauss
4. Wolfgang Iser

9. The perspective called “affective stylistics” was developed by

1. Michael Riffaterre
2. David Bleich
3. Stanley Fish
4. Jonathan Culler

10. Which critic theorised the act of reading by foregrounding the concept of interpretive communities?

1. Stanley Fish
2. Cleanth Brooks
3. Allen Tate
4. John Crowe Ransom

11. “There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, and It’s a Good Thing, Too” is an essay written by:

1. Norman Holland
2. Wolfgang Iser
3. Stanley Fish
4. Roland Barthes

12. Is There a Text in This Class? is a popular work in reader-response criticism written by:

1. Stanley Fish
2. Hans Robert Jauss
3. Wolfgang Iser
4. Terry Eagleton

13. The perspective called “affective stylistics” was developed by ____.

1. Michael Riffaterre
2. Stanley Fish
3. David Bleich
4. Jonathan Culler

14. Who wrote Is There a Text in This Class?

1. Hans Robert Jauss
2. Wolfgang Iser
3. Norman Holland
4. Stanley Fish

15. The term ‘horizon of expectations’ is associated with

1. Wolfgang Iser
2. Stanley Fish
3. H.R. Jauss
4. Harold Bloom

16. Who among the following theorists particularly emphasized the social and historical dimensions of a text’s reception?

1. Wolfgang Iser
2. Hans Robert Jauss
3. Stanley Fish
4. Pierre Bourdieu

17. The hermeneutics of suspicion is a term coined by Paul Ricoeur

1. A and B only
2. A and D only
3. C and D only
4. B and C only

18. Who is credited as the founder of the phenomenological movement?

1. Edmund Husserl
2. Johann Gottlieb Fichte
3. Immanuel Kant
4. Jean-Jacques Rousseau

19. Identify the two names from the following who are associated with Hermeneutics:

1. A and C
2. A and B
3. B and C
4. B and D

20. Georges Poulet is closest to ____ criticism.

1. Marxist
2. Phenomenological
3. Archetypal
4. Ecological

21. ‘Bracketing’ is a term used in phenomenological criticism to describe the

1. meeting of the writer’s world and the writer’s inner self
2. meeting of the writer’s world and the publisher’s world
3. meeting of the writer’s language and the reader’s language
4. meeting of the writer’s world and the reader’s world

22. Which of the following statements is/are correct about Phenomenology?

1. It is a form of methodological idealism, seeking to explore an abstraction called ‘human consciousness’.
2. It is a philosophical method associated with Edmund Husserl.
3. It believes that the act of thinking and the object of thought are internally related, mutually dependent.
4. All of the above

23. The “targetedness” of our thoughts towards one content or another is referred to by phenomenologists as:

1. Intentionality
2. Defamiliarisation
3. Hegemony
4. Phenomena

24. Which of the following statements is incorrect?

1. Roman Ingarden was a student of Edmund Husserl.
2. Roman Ingarden claimed that literary works are expressions of intentionality.
3. According to Roman Ingarden, literary texts have indeterminacies that are filled up with ‘active reading’.
4. According to Roman Ingarden, there can be no ‘concretization’ of meaning within a text.

25. With which theorist is phenomenology associated?

1. Edmund Husserl
2. Wolfgang Iser
3. Jean-Paul Sartre
4. All of the above answers are correct.

26. What is phenomenology?

1. The examination of our unconscious experience
2. The examination of desires informing our consciousness
3. The examination of structures informing our conscious experience
4. The examination of intricate structures within our unconscious

27. Who was the first critic to develop a “reader-centred” approach to literature?

1. Plato
2. Aristotle
3. Sigmund Freud
4. Sophocles

28. Who among the following is not a reader-response critic?

1. Wolfgang Iser
2. Hans Robert Jauss
3. Stanley Fish
4. Maud Bodkin

29. What form of criticism believes that the understanding of a text is contingent upon reader knowledge and experience?

1. Writer-response
2. Journal-revision
3. Reader-response
4. Reader-awareness

30. Given below are two statements: one is labelled as Assertion (A) and the other is labelled as Reason (R). In the light of the above two statements, choose the correct option.

1. Both A and R are true and R is the correct explanation of A
2. Both A and R are true but R is not the correct explanation of A
3. A is true, but R is false
4. A is false, but R is true

31. ‘Reader-Response Theory’ implies that

1. there is no one correct meaning of the text
2. the readers of an age construct the meaning
3. beliefs determine meaning
4. a style is the hallmark of the text

32. Which of these theories uses the duck-rabbit puzzle as a key explicatory motif?

1. Queer Theory
2. Jungian Psychoanalysis
3. Third Wave Feminism
4. Reader-Response Theory

33. According to which school of thought ought the critic to be considered to ‘create’ the finished work by his reading of it, and not to remain simply an inert consumer of a ‘ready-made’ product?

1. Postmodernism
2. Reader-response theory
3. New Historicism
4. Dialogism

34. In her essay “The Poem as Event”, Louise M. Rosenblatt sees the reader as performing what function?

1. The reader participates in a transaction with the text.
2. The reader is acted upon by the text.
3. The reader acts upon the text.
4. All of the above answers are correct.