Empirical Studies of Literature --

Rose, 1992

Rose, Jonathan. "Rereading the English Common Reader: A Preface to the History of Audiences." Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992): 47-70.
index

Summary

According to Jonathan Rose, the basic question posed by Richard Altick in The English Common Reader, "How do texts change the minds and lives of common (i.e. nonprofessional) readers?" (48), has not been systematically addressed. This is in large part because researchers commit at least one of five "common fallacies of reader response" (48), all of which are rooted in "the receptive fallacy" (49), where "the critic assumes that whatever the author put into a text - or whatever the critic chooses to read into that text - is the message the common reader receives" (49). Rose argues, on the contrary, that "all readers are editors - often ruthless and insensitive editors" (66). The failure of reader-response theorists to recognize the editorial power of real readers has led to their speculating widely about idealized hypothetical readers. This approach has actively discouraged researchers from, as Jonathan Culler puts it, rushing out "armed with questionnaires to interview the reader in the street" (49). It is this anti-empirical bias that Rose sets out to challenge. Culler, 54

After distinguishing between the old book history, which tried to determine "which books a given body of readers owned or read" (47), and the new book history, which focuses on the act or process of reading, Rose suggests that the study of the autobiographies of common historical readers will initiate "a third generation of reading history - a history of audiences" (51). He claims that this research could test various literary theories, because some will simply not be compatible with the way common readers read (52). He questions assertions made by theorists like Barbara Herrnstein Smith, that common readers receive no value from canonical works of literature, by citing examples of autodidacts who came to these works without being guided to them by members of "high" culture. Indeed, Rose suggests that the "great books" (57) had more influence on the reading members of the working class than "popular" (or lowbrow) literature. Further, a study by William Gilmore shows that the dissemination of reading did not proceed "from elites to masses and from 'high' to 'popular' culture" (55), but "through a web of cultural institutions and personal networks that were often created and controlled by common readers" (55).
Autobiographies: a sampling -- see Native Readers

Smith, e.g., 53

Gilmore, 163

Rose's own research has exposed several common fallacies of response: for example, "high" and "popular" culture are not confined to given classes, as many Marxists critics have claimed (58), and some texts are "politically innocuous" to those who read them, having no effect on the values and opinions of their readers, while others have profound effects on readers' lives. Rose points out that even literature that was "deliberately written as propaganda" often had "an impact entirely different from what the author or publisher intended" (48). Readers resist didactic and moralistic impositions. Rose also refuses the cultural limitations suggested by other researchers, claiming that his essay's principles are applicable to "the study of common readers in all classes and all nations" (51).

Critique

In a manner similar to Robert Darnton in The Kiss of Lamourette, Jonathan Rose presents an entertaining series of anecdotes and cases which illustrate the experiences of many historical readers. Where Rose surpasses Darnton, however, is in the systematic unification of disparate cases into a compelling central thesis about historical readers. Rose does a good job of adducing empirical evidence to show that his five fallacies of reader response are indeed fallacies, but falls short in his attempt to reduce them all to "the receptive fallacy" (49), which is the assumption that what the author or critic puts or reads into a text is what the reader takes out of it. This seems to be too narrow a definition to contain the others, but if we read between the lines of Rose's essay, we can remold his simple definition around the axis of ideology. After all, what the author puts into a text, and what the critic reads into it, are often products of ideological concerns which are more or less obvious depending on the intended effect of the text or the critical work. Marxist critics, for example, would be likely to commit all five of Rose's fallacies, because they are so conscious of the ideological framework within which they operate. All of the fallacies save the second quite evidently show a high focus on class consciousness and manipulative ideological indoctrination, and even the second is informed by these concerns, though not as apparently. The second fallacy, that "the influence of a given text is directly proportional to its circulation" (48), assumes that "popular texts" (lowbrow and widely circulated), since they were circulated most widely amongst common readers, would be the most influential. This is followed by the ideological assumption that "low" readers were likely to enjoy this literature more because it was reflective of their base intellects and appealed to their primitive desires. Once the "masses" are equated with the mass press of low fiction with no evidence to support the link, it is obvious that ideological assumptions have come to the fore.

Rose does well to interrogate the use of the word "popular culture," going as far as to suggest it be abolished because it is "a vague and misleading term" (57). He notes that the tendency to sort all culture into the "high" and the "popular" categories creates a binary system which artificially ties together elements that do not necessarily come as a package. For example, high culture encompasses both the social elites, who are often rich and powerful, and the intellectuals, who may be neither rich nor powerful. The canon is formed by this group in order to exclude the lower classes, who supposedly do not have the education nor the intelligence to approach it. "Popular culture" consists of all those who are not in the "high" category, and popular works are poor ones which have a mass appeal (58). However, as Rose notes, it is possible for a work to be both "high" in the sense that it has a place in the canon, and "popular" in the sense that it is widely circulated. Rather than abolish these binaries, however, it might be more useful to develop a vocabulary that separates the axes of quantity (common vs. rare), from quality (high vs. low). In this way, though critics may disagree about which works fall under the "high" and "low" designations, they will at least be making their qualitative evaluations explicitly separate from their quantitative claims.

This question of quality is a vexed one that Rose boldly (though far too briefly) engages near the end of his essay (70). He does not seem to be making an argument for evaluating texts hierarchically, but his essay does provide some definite criteria upon which such an evaluation could be made. The emotional response a text elicits from readers, its ability to captivate, and its power to influence readers' lives are all aspects of response Rose explores, and these areas seem like an excellent place to begin the search for what it is that makes a text better or worse, higher or lower, than its peers.

References

Culler, Jonathan. "Prolegomena to a Theory of Reading." The Reader in the Text. Eds. Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crossman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. 46-66.

Gilmore, William J. Reading Becomes a Necessity of Life: Material and Cultural Life in Rural New England 1780-1835. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989.

Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. "Contingencies of Value." Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. 30-53.

Document created March 4th 2005

Rose, 1992
Rose, Jonathan. "Rereading the English Common Reader: A Preface to the History of Audiences." Journal of the History of Ideas 53 (1992): 47-70.	index
Summary
According to Jonathan Rose, the basic question posed by Richard Altick in The English Common Reader, "How do texts change the minds and lives of common (i.e. nonprofessional) readers?" (48), has not been systematically addressed. This is in large part because researchers commit at least one of five "common fallacies of reader response" (48), all of which are rooted in "the receptive fallacy" (49), where "the critic assumes that whatever the author put into a text - or whatever the critic chooses to read into that text - is the message the common reader receives" (49). Rose argues, on the contrary, that "all readers are editors - often ruthless and insensitive editors" (66). The failure of reader-response theorists to recognize the editorial power of real readers has led to their speculating widely about idealized hypothetical readers. This approach has actively discouraged researchers from, as Jonathan Culler puts it, rushing out "armed with questionnaires to interview the reader in the street" (49). It is this anti-empirical bias that Rose sets out to challenge.	Culler, 54
After distinguishing between the old book history, which tried to determine "which books a given body of readers owned or read" (47), and the new book history, which focuses on the act or process of reading, Rose suggests that the study of the autobiographies of common historical readers will initiate "a third generation of reading history - a history of audiences" (51). He claims that this research could test various literary theories, because some will simply not be compatible with the way common readers read (52). He questions assertions made by theorists like Barbara Herrnstein Smith, that common readers receive no value from canonical works of literature, by citing examples of autodidacts who came to these works without being guided to them by members of "high" culture. Indeed, Rose suggests that the "great books" (57) had more influence on the reading members of the working class than "popular" (or lowbrow) literature. Further, a study by William Gilmore shows that the dissemination of reading did not proceed "from elites to masses and from 'high' to 'popular' culture" (55), but "through a web of cultural institutions and personal networks that were often created and controlled by common readers" (55).	Autobiographies: a sampling -- see Native Readers Smith, e.g., 53 Gilmore, 163
Rose's own research has exposed several common fallacies of response: for example, "high" and "popular" culture are not confined to given classes, as many Marxists critics have claimed (58), and some texts are "politically innocuous" to those who read them, having no effect on the values and opinions of their readers, while others have profound effects on readers' lives. Rose points out that even literature that was "deliberately written as propaganda" often had "an impact entirely different from what the author or publisher intended" (48). Readers resist didactic and moralistic impositions. Rose also refuses the cultural limitations suggested by other researchers, claiming that his essay's principles are applicable to "the study of common readers in all classes and all nations" (51).
Critique
In a manner similar to Robert Darnton in The Kiss of Lamourette, Jonathan Rose presents an entertaining series of anecdotes and cases which illustrate the experiences of many historical readers. Where Rose surpasses Darnton, however, is in the systematic unification of disparate cases into a compelling central thesis about historical readers. Rose does a good job of adducing empirical evidence to show that his five fallacies of reader response are indeed fallacies, but falls short in his attempt to reduce them all to "the receptive fallacy" (49), which is the assumption that what the author or critic puts or reads into a text is what the reader takes out of it. This seems to be too narrow a definition to contain the others, but if we read between the lines of Rose's essay, we can remold his simple definition around the axis of ideology. After all, what the author puts into a text, and what the critic reads into it, are often products of ideological concerns which are more or less obvious depending on the intended effect of the text or the critical work. Marxist critics, for example, would be likely to commit all five of Rose's fallacies, because they are so conscious of the ideological framework within which they operate. All of the fallacies save the second quite evidently show a high focus on class consciousness and manipulative ideological indoctrination, and even the second is informed by these concerns, though not as apparently. The second fallacy, that "the influence of a given text is directly proportional to its circulation" (48), assumes that "popular texts" (lowbrow and widely circulated), since they were circulated most widely amongst common readers, would be the most influential. This is followed by the ideological assumption that "low" readers were likely to enjoy this literature more because it was reflective of their base intellects and appealed to their primitive desires. Once the "masses" are equated with the mass press of low fiction with no evidence to support the link, it is obvious that ideological assumptions have come to the fore.
Rose does well to interrogate the use of the word "popular culture," going as far as to suggest it be abolished because it is "a vague and misleading term" (57). He notes that the tendency to sort all culture into the "high" and the "popular" categories creates a binary system which artificially ties together elements that do not necessarily come as a package. For example, high culture encompasses both the social elites, who are often rich and powerful, and the intellectuals, who may be neither rich nor powerful. The canon is formed by this group in order to exclude the lower classes, who supposedly do not have the education nor the intelligence to approach it. "Popular culture" consists of all those who are not in the "high" category, and popular works are poor ones which have a mass appeal (58). However, as Rose notes, it is possible for a work to be both "high" in the sense that it has a place in the canon, and "popular" in the sense that it is widely circulated. Rather than abolish these binaries, however, it might be more useful to develop a vocabulary that separates the axes of quantity (common vs. rare), from quality (high vs. low). In this way, though critics may disagree about which works fall under the "high" and "low" designations, they will at least be making their qualitative evaluations explicitly separate from their quantitative claims.
This question of quality is a vexed one that Rose boldly (though far too briefly) engages near the end of his essay (70). He does not seem to be making an argument for evaluating texts hierarchically, but his essay does provide some definite criteria upon which such an evaluation could be made. The emotional response a text elicits from readers, its ability to captivate, and its power to influence readers' lives are all aspects of response Rose explores, and these areas seem like an excellent place to begin the search for what it is that makes a text better or worse, higher or lower, than its peers.
References
Culler, Jonathan. "Prolegomena to a Theory of Reading." The Reader in the Text. Eds. Susan R. Suleiman and Inge Crossman. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. 46-66. Gilmore, William J. Reading Becomes a Necessity of Life: Material and Cultural Life in Rural New England 1780-1835. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1989. Smith, Barbara Herrnstein. "Contingencies of Value." Contingencies of Value: Alternative Perspectives for Critical Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988. 30-53.