The Structure of Response

A Repertory Grid Study of a Poem

Bibliographic Data

ID13683059
AuthorsDavid S Miall (College of St. Paul & St. Mary, Cheltenham, England, corresponding author)
Year1985
Volume19
Issue3
Pages254-268
Publication date1985-10-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueResearch in the Teaching of English (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0034-527X • E-ISSN: 1943-2348
PublisherRoutledge (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.58680/rte198515639
OpenAlexW261685894
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited10

Responses to one poem, Coleridge's Frost at Midnight, were studied using repertory grid technique. Twenty-one undergraduate stu- dents of English literature participated. A significant commonality in response was found within the grids, suggesting that for this group of readers a number of invariant features in the poem were determining response. The grids also brought to light individual differences in approach to the poem, which were explored during interviews with each student. Grid technique thus offers a method for mapping the boundary between individual and common features in literary response. A major tradition in literary studies has argued that a literary text offers one correct reading which all well-informed and sufficiently sensitive read- ers can be expected to discover. Recent arguments have undermined the authority of this approach: Fish (1980, p. 13), for instance, finds the author- ity of the text secondary to that of the interpretive community in determin- ing a given reader's response. One recent reader of Fish has taken him to imply that any reading of a literary work is acceptable (Eagleton, 1983, p. 85). Behind this debate lies an obvious but important theoretical point. To what extent does a given literary work constrain individual readings? Does a work's structure as a whole, for example, tend to determine the way in which its parts will be understood? Or is the work open at any point to influences originating outside the boundary of the text? Clearly, texts cannot be divorced from the language and culture in which they are written and read; but it might be postulated that a work of literature is distinguishable from other types of discourse by its possession of a structure of meaning internal to the text, and that this tends to direct the responses of all com- petent readers. To be specific: two or more elements within a text may be amenable to a variety of interpretations, according to the disposition or experience of indi- vidual readers; for example, I may enjoy Donne's attitude toward women, my neighbor may detest it. But if, despite such response differences, inter- pretations of particular elements in the poem show systematic relationships to each other across all readings, it may be argued that the text exhibits an internal structure that is determining response. In studying this question Groeben's (1980) distinction between text mean- ing and text sense is helpful. We may postulate that a given work has a

Art · Epistemology · Linguistics · Literary criticism · Literature · Midnight · Poetry · Point (geometry · Reading (process · Repertory grid · Sociology · Advanced Text Analysis Techniques · Cognitive and psychological constructs research · Mathematics · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology

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