Thinking about Reader-Response Criticism
J. Barton
Feb 1, 2002
Citations
4
Citations
Journal
The Expository Times
Full text
Semantic Scholar
Key Takeaway Key Takeaway: Biblical Studies are often viewed as outdated, but those who dissent from them show a lack of interpretative sophistication and are accused of being unintelligible.
Abstract
/ ~Mreader-response is still considered a fairly hot topic here in Biblical Studies. As Stephen Moore wryly observes, there appears to be something of a ’time-warp factor’ in operation that ’enables readerresponse critics to seem like an exotic new species of scholar to their biblical colleagues long after the last reader-response critic in the far distant galaxy that is literary studies has gratefully closed her book, and then her eyes, and slipped into the slumber from which there is no awakening’., This is a clever postmodern comment on readerresponse criticism; for at the same time as declaring it rather passe (and therefore not worth wasting much time on) it also makes it impossible to attack it as mistaken (because by now all sensible people have assimilated it into their system). Any biblical scholar who actively espouses it is convicted of being out of date, but any who dissent from it are at one and the same time showing their lack of interpretative sophistication, tilting at windmills, and taking themselves too seriously. Reader-response approaches to