Reader Response, Contemporary Aesthetics, and the Adolescent Reader

Abstract

The research and theory on literary reading presents as a multilayered, many-sided picture when studied through the lenses of both reader-response criticism and contemporary aesthetics. Reader-response criticism is exclusively centered on the process of literary reading, whereas the field of aesthetics embraces diverse artistic phenomena, including literary works of art and the dynamics of engaging them. Initial research frameworks within reader response have become overlaid with multifaceted representations of literary processing. Alan Purves and V. Rippere, for example, established a preliminary research structure and findings that many other researchers then replicated in various ways.' More recent studies have brought into focus broader contours of perspective that include attention to social influences on the literary reading process; the intricacies of readers' engagements with popular literature; and complexities related to gender and reading.2 Amid all of the stratums of research and theory that comprise readerresponse criticism of and work within the field of aesthetics and popular culture, can we add a dimension that more fully and explicitly colors our consideration of aesthetic elements of the literary response process for adolescent readers? This reflection prompted me to design a series of studies over a three-year period with seventy-five different adolescent readers. As a result of this research, I present six essential elements that characterize adolescents' aesthetic engagements with literature.