Reader response criticism on Charles Baxter’s "Gryphon‪"‬

Reader-response criticism is a modern way of analyzing and interpreting literature with
emphasis on the reader and not on the author or the text. As defined in The Columbia Dictionary
of Modern Literary and Cultural Criticism, reader-response criticism shifts “critical attention
from the inherent, objective characteristics of the text to the engagement of the reader with the
text and the production of textual meaning by the reader.” One of the most influential readerresponse
critics, Louise Rosenblatt, informs the reader that previous, historical forms of literary
criticism primarily focused either on literature as a reflector of reality or “the relationship
between the poet and his work.” Rosenblatt explains that critics perceived the reader as a passive
recipient, outshone by the author and the text; the reader became invisible.
Since the 1960s, as stated in The Columbia Dictionary of Modern Literary and Cultural
Criticism, the school of reader-response criticism has formed, and, as Peter Rabinowitz,
professor and chair of Competitive Literature at Hamilton College, illustrates, “became
recognized as a distinct critical movement […], when it found a particularly congenial political
climate in the growing anti-authoritarianism within the academy.” Then, most notably in the
United States, the civil rights movement started, leading citizens to plead freedom, individuality,
and nonconformity.