The s Reading Process Theory Through The Text Of Mrs...

Yadav Dr. Nidhi Vats M.A. English (Final) Decoding Wolfgang Iser‟s Reading Process Theory through the Text of Mrs Dalloway and Bravely Fought the Queen In the 1960s, the new criticism theory in the American Literary arena focused on the reading of a literary text as an independent form and not to be studied in relation to any context. This gave birth to another theory that began majorly in 1960s and 1970s known as reader response criticism, which also tried to do away with the author‟s role and focused on the reader‟s perception that defined the text‟s subjectivity. In his work ‘The Reading Process-A Phenomenological Approach’, Wolfgang Iser describes about the reading of a literary work or text as an interaction between the reader and the author. In order to understand a text in a better way and to explore its meaning, Louise Rosenblatt in his work ‘Literature as Exploration’ described how the readers should be free from any â€Å"preconceived notions about the proper way to react to any work† (Lewis,C.S.,1961) to experience any work or text individually. Similarly, Iser also want the readers to make a niche for themselves while the aesthetic reading of a wok or a text. Wolfgang Iser‟s reading in reference to two works, namely, Mrs Dalloway by Virginia Woolf and Bravely Fought the Queen by Mahesh Dattani has been assessed in order to have a better understanding and a practical approach in exploration or understanding the meaning of the texts. Mrs Dalloway