The Study On Jonathan Culler’s Reader Theory

Jonathan culler is a famous American scholar and theorist, who has a wide range of research areas and has achieved a lot of academic achievements. Generally, the theoretical critics divided his achievements into three periods:structuralism, deconstruction, the after-theory. In this paper, the main research object is to find the clues about reading. Based on the clues of reader description, this paper is trying to reveal the changes of readers in Culler’s achievements, which helps to expand and further expansion of the academic research.The first chapter mainly introduces Culler’s poetic theory, so as to lay the foundation of the understanding of the reader’s changes in the poetic. The first section introduces the theory background of putting forward structural poetics and the readers under the dual influence of the New Criticism and the Structuralism; Second, the paper analyze the sources of the core concept "literary competence" of structuralist poetics and compared to "linguistic competence"; finally, introduce some specific interpretation of Culler’s reader model, which is qualified, individual, not actual, and an ideal reader.The second chapter mainly put Culler’s deconstruction theory as research object, inspecting the Culler’s thoughts about readers and reading. During this period, being influenced by the interaction of deconstruction and the feminist criticism, the status of readers changed in Culler’s thoughts. For starters, the background of this change would be introduced briefly. Secondly, Culler found that women as a reading subject always have the inner blank and division. Finally, Culler discussed the relationship between readers, reading and text in the reader response criticism, and set up a more complete readers idea.The third chapter mainly talks about Culler’s academic thoughts under the after-theory background. During this period, Culler experienced from the "literary studies" to "cultural studies". The first section introduces the steering and Culler’s defending for the cultural studies. Second, under the background of cultural studies, the reader won’t have the decisive influence to the text meaning any more, it drops in Culler’s theory. Finally, the chapter shows the discussion of Culler’s views and actions about the after-theory, in order to have a more clear understanding of Culler’s academic pursuit.