“The reader draws on his own internalized culture in order to elicit form the text this world which may differ from his own in many respect. Moreover, the text may yield glimpses of the personality and codes of the author. The literary transaction may thus embody, and probably to some degree always embodies, an interplay between at least two sets of codes, two sets of values. Even when author and reader share the same culture – – – that is, when they live in the same social group at the same time and the text directly reflects that culture, their uniqueness as individual human beings would insure this interplay” (Rosenblatt 1978, p. 56).

Meaning happens in a space between the text, the author and the reader, kind of like Bhabha’s ‘third space.’ The space created by what the author brought to the text, the text as object in a specific time and place, and the unique vision and experience of the reader come together in a new experience of the text.

“. . .during the reading the reader keeps alive what he has already elicited from the text. At any point, he b rings a state of mind, a penumbra of ‘memories’ of what has preceded, ready to be activated by what follows, and providing the context from which further meaning will be derived” (Rosenblatt 1978, p.57).

The process of reading itself , even when staying within the text for prior knowledge, reflects the overall process of living and making meaning of the world. We are constantly reevaluating our thinking based upon the interplay of the past, present and future. We are making it up as we go, by ourselves and with others.

“What each reader makes of the text is, indeed, for him, the poem, in the sense that this is his only direct perception of it. No one else can read it for him. He may learn indirectly about other’s experiences with the text; he may come to see that his own was confused or impoverished, and he may then be stimulated to attempt to call forth from the text a better poem. But this he must do himself, and only what he himself experiences in relation to the text is – – again let us underline – – for him, the work (Rosenblatt 1978, p. 105).

It is the constant reevaluation of experience, brought about by the text, one’s response to the text and the response of others to the text and to the reader’s response, which causes a reader to evoke deeper and different meanings from the text. Yet even with this seemingly social construct of the text occurring the ultimate meaning a reader takes from a text belongs solely to him, even if the reader parrots back the response of another, it is still an interpretation the reader has presented as his own, and he takes what he wills from this interpretation, understanding it on his own.

“In contrast to Saussure’s , Peirce’s formulation is triadic: ‘A sign is in conjoint relation to the thing denoted and to the mind . . . . The sign is related to its object only in consequence of a mental association, and depends on habit’ (3.360). Since Peirce evidently did not want to reinforce the notion that ‘mind’ was an entity, he typically phrased the conjoint linkage as among sign, object, and ‘interpretant,’ which should be understood as an aspect of a triadic mental operation(Rosenblatt 1978, p. 182).

My first class in my Master’s program taught by Courtney Cazden, was called “Forms of thinking, speaking, and writing.” Over the course of that summer I came to an understanding that these three aspects of language were simultaneously influencing and shaping each other in the creation of a text. I imagined a spinning triad where one part of the triangle never became predominate over the others. I see the same interplay between reader, text, and author that Rosenblatt describes.

“One of the banes of educational systems today is the pressure on the teacher to work out neat outlines of the ideas about literature that his students are to acquire. Once such a plan is made, there is a great temptation to impose it arbitrarily. The teacher becomes impatient of the the trial-and-error groping of the students. It seems so much easier all around if the teacher cuts the Gordian knot and gives the students the tidy set of conclusions and labels he has worked out. Yet this does not necessarily give them new insights. Hence the emphasis throughout this book on the teacher’s role in initiating and guiding a process of inductive learning” (Rosenblatt 1995, p. 232).

It is easier to simply tell the students what I think. It is harder to listen to what the students are saying about the text and help them make the connections go a bit further. It is tempting to make their statements, force their statements, into forms which I saw before they started to talk about the text. I have discovered (originally through teaching “Twelfth Night” using performance) that if I allow the students to learn the text with me, rather than from me, then I will come to a better understanding of the text: a social construction if you will. Thereby we both gain in the extension of our knowledge about and around a text. Last Monday I suggested to my UTeach student that she watch what I did in second period, then make an attempt on her own during third. Yes, kind of a sink or swim method, but I provided lots of water wings, and I was there if she started to drown. What was interesting, and what relates to the quote from Rosenblatt, was rather than listen to what the students were saying, and letting/allowing them to go where their conversation about the poem led them, she tried to force them down the same path my second period students travelled. Not to say that my second period did not discover something about the poem, but third period were finding something else out. And that is hard to do; I think, like all humans, we get trapped by the first thought we have about something. We tend not to look for alternatives: why should we, we have an answer that works, which is why I think we are so easily trapped by our tacit ideologies. It is easier not to think. “The first man to see an illusion by which men have flourished for decades surely stands in a lonely place,” wrote Gary Zukav according to my daily quote calender a few days ago.