The Reader the Text the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work

This important new work brings a fresh and carefully elaborated theory of the literary work of art to the current re­discovery of the reader—that of the concept, based on the transactional point of view, of the two-way process involved in eliciting a literary work of art from a text. Dr. Rosenblatt draws on her long experience as a scholar and teacher of English and Comparative Lit­erature. Amply illustrating her theo­retical points, she provides contrasting interpretations of a number of varied texts, discusses other critical ap­proaches, and makes reference to recent philosophical developments.

Louise M. Rosenblatt is a professor emerita of New York University. A graduate of Barnard College, where she taught for some years, she received a doctorate in comparative literature from the Sorbonne. Some of the awards she has received are the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship, the Great Teacher Award from New York University, the Russell Award for Distinguished Research from the National Council of Teachers of English, and Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Arizona. She is a member of the International Reading Association Reading Hall of Fame. Her other publications include Literature as Exploration, L’Idée de l’Art pour l’Art, Reading in an Age of Mass Communication (with W. S. Gray et al.), and numerous chapters and articles on literary theory.