A mode of literary criticism that prioritizes the role of the reader (rather than the author’s intentions or the text’s actual structure) in both establishing the meaning of a text and evaluating its critical worth. It grew out of a dissatisfaction with New Criticism and Practical Criticism (which operate on the assumption that it is only the text that matters), and the recognition that all writers respond to what readers say about their work and modify their future writing accordingly. The theoretical core of this mode is derived from both Jauss, Hans Robert’s Reception Aesthetics and Iser, Wolfgang’s Reception Theory. Hence reader-response criticism also starts from the ontological premise that the text does not have full existence until it is read and that as a consequence its meaning cannot be deduced in isolation from a community of readers. It differs from Reception Aesthetics and Reception Theory in that it gives much greater emphasis to the difference between actual readers. It is much more politically aware in this sense, in that it recognizes that factors like gender, race, class, and ethnicity have a necessary influence on the way readers respond to texts. See also interpretive community. Further Reading: J. Tompkins (ed.) Reader-response Criticism: From Formalism to Post-structuralism (1980).