<P> Another important German reader - response critic was Hans - Robert Jauss, who defined literature as a dialectic process of production and reception (Rezeption--the term common in Germany for "response"). For Jauss, readers have a certain mental set, a "horizon" of expectations (Erwartungshorizont), from which perspective each reader, at any given time in history, reads . Reader - response criticism establishes these horizons of expectation by reading literary works of the period in question . </P> <P> Both Iser and Jauss, and the Constance School they exemplify, return reader - response criticism to a study of the text by defining readers in terms of the text . In the same way, Gerald Prince posits a "narratee", Michael Riffaterre posits a "superreader", and Stanley Fish an "informed reader ." And many text - oriented critics simply speak of "the" reader who typifies all readers...</P> <P> Reader - response critics hold that in order to understand a text, one must look to the processes readers use to create meaning and experience . Traditional text - oriented schools, such as formalism, often think of reader - response criticism as an anarchic subjectivism, allowing readers to interpret a text any way they want . Text - oriented critics claim that one can understand a text while remaining immune to one's own culture, status, personality, and so on, and hence "objectively ." </P> <P> To reader - response based theorists, however, reading is always both subjective and objective . Some reader - response critics (uniformists) assume a bi-active model of reading: the literary work controls part of the response and the reader controls part . Others, who see that position as internally contradictory, claim that the reader controls the whole transaction (individualists). In such a reader - active model, readers and audiences use amateur or professional procedures for reading (shared by many others) as well as their personal issues and values . </P>

The principal american scholar and researcher behind reader response theory is