Reader Response Criticism a wide-ranging, interesting, and evolving literature study that focuses on understanding the reading processes of readers and how they relate to specific elements in the text they read, their life experiences, and the scholarly community they are apart of. This study centers on readers' responses to literary texts, and how crucial they are the creator of meaning (Tyson 169; Harker 29). The reading process is very important, so in order for a reader to get the most out of it, he must approach it the right way. The reader-response theory implores readers' to recognize reading as a meaningful, social, and truly personal act (Sheridan 805). Reader-response criticism consists of different theories and concepts formulated by several literary critics. These theories, along with the literary theorists behind them, are imperative to understand and recognize for their role as the foundation of this modern literary study. .
Louise Rosenblatt's Transactional Reader-Response Theory was based upon the concept of Transactional Analysis" which declares that meaning derives from the transaction between the reader and a text (Siegel). This transaction sparks "feelings, associations, and memories " in the reader, and these reactions impact the way he rationalizes the text as he moves through it. Furthermore, the physical and mental status, along with any previously encountered literary text or accrued knowledge, may also affect the reader as well (Tyson 173). But, none of this can occur if the reader does not approach reading in an aesthetic manner. When reading aesthetically, the reader, along with the text, and the "poem, " all take part in this transaction and influencing one another together as one synchronized being. The text, as Rosenblatt says, "serves as a blueprint, a guide for selecting, rejecting, and ordering of what is being called forth " in the reader's mind.