Abstract
ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to examine childrens’ responses to a literary work from a reader response perspective, specifically the concepts of stance and personal meaningfulness drawn from Rosenblatt's (1978) transactional theory. Data were the free, written responses of 38 fifth‐grade children to nine works of realistic literature and film. Classification systems were developed to characterize stance on an efferent to aesthetic continuum, and level of personal understanding reached. Results revealed 1) between‐text differences for stance and understanding, 2) book and film differences for stance, but not for understanding, 3) the majority of responses were written from an aesthetic stance, and also went beyond the simplest literal level of understanding, and 4) the use of an aesthetic stance ‐ when responders focused on the lived‐through experience of the work ‐ was associated with significantly higher levels of understanding, clearly providing empirical support for the theories of Rosenblatt...
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