A Reader- Response Approach To Sherwood Anderson: Death In The Woods

Authors : Yasemin Güniz SERTEL

Pages : 183-190

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Publication Date : 2018-08-07

Article Type : Research Paper

Abstract :With its revolutionary new styles, modernist literature assigns to the reader a new role and responsibility which obliges him to be an active participant in the understanding and production of meaning in the text; a role explained mainly by the reader-response theory. The following article entitled “A Reader-Response Approach to Sherwood Anderson: Death in the Woods” presents an interpretation of the American writer Sherwood Anderson‟s short story Death in theWoods in the light of reader-response criticism which prompts the reader for his active participation in reading a text. In general, the short story takes the reader to the insignificant life of a woman victimized by the patriarchal society. However, she does gain significance after her death, when her dead body becomes a text to be perceived and contrastingly interpreted from the different perspectives of different people.
Keywords : Reader response criticism, metafiction