The fact that a reader of the quatrain might be able to assign "meaning" to each of the verbal symbols and to each of the separate lines did not guarantee that he would be able to organize these into a significant structure of idea and feeling. The reader had to pay attention to much more than the "meanings" of individual words or their syntax before he could relate the four lines meaningfully. He had to respond to many elements, of diction, rhythm, association, possible figures of speech or levels of meaning. In order to sense the particular way of voicing the last line to himself, he had to select a particular implied persona with a particular point of view or tone or attitude toward the subject about which the poem might center.Thus the text, a pattern of signs, is interpreted as a set of linguistic symbols. But the text serves as more than a set of stimuli or a pattern of stimuli; it is also a guide or continuing control during the process by which the reader selects, organizes and synthesizes—in short, interprets—what has emerged from his relationship with the verbal symbols. The text is not simply a fuse that sets off a series of responses. As a pattern of linguistic symbols derived from the signs on the page, the "text" also underwent a series of transformations during the process of arriving at the poem.Moreover, the readers of the quatrain were creating a poem through paying attention to what the stimulus of the text was calling forth within them: attention to the sound of the words in the inner ear, attention to the residue of past experiences with
these words in different contexts, attention to the overtones of feeling and the blendings of attitude and mood. All of these were needed before even a tentative organization of an interpretation was possible. Hence my [Rosenblatt (1968)] continuing insistence on the idea that the poem is what the reader lives through under the guidance of the text and experiences as relevant to the text.
The question remains: Although this view of reading may be important in counteracting the neglect of the reader's contribution and the excessive emphasis on the text of the literary work of art in current criticism and teaching, What light does this throw on the reading process in general? How much of what has been said about "the reading of a poem" applies to the reading of other kinds of texts that do not give rise to works of art but that provide, say, information, logical analysis, scientific formulae, or directions for action?