SOURCE: Pratt, Mary Louise. “Interpretive Strategies/Strategic Interpretations: On Anglo-American Reader-Response Criticism.” boundary 2 11, no. 1-2 (fall-winter 1982-83): 201-31.

In the following essay, Pratt examines the rise of reader-response theory as a reaction to formalist criticism, analyzing the works of Stanley Fish, Susan Suleiman, and placing their theories in the context of new critical thinking.

When the call for self-justification goes out, reader-response criticism often presents itself as a corrective to formalist or intrinsic criticism. This explanation, though undoubtedly true, does not seem altogether adequate. On the one hand, formalist and new criticism are already so discredited in theoretical circles that there seems little need for another round of abuse. On the other hand, much reader-response criticism turns out to be a notational variant of that very formalism so roundly rejected. An antiformalist theoretical stance invoked to uphold a neo- or covertly formalist practice—a contradiction not altogether unfamiliar...