Q15

[zhwpaul67]

Answer E: how does a director changing the setting of a classical work will have sympathy of reader-response?

[bbirdwell]

The fundamental ideas behind reader-response theory are that the text alone has no meaning, and that readers bring new interpretations and wide perspectives to a work.

(A), (B), and (D) all use "original" meanings, which is what the formalists are all about. And (C) is about the text itself, the novelist, which is also something from formalism.

(E) takes an old work and puts a new twist on it, revealing a "new perspective." This is reader-response.

[MosheA726]

Putting a new twist on a play, as choice E suggests, doesn't seem to be consistent with the views of the reader-response theory as explained in the passage. Changing the setting of a play is modifying the work of the composer i.e. Shakespeare, which is not at all inferred in the passage as being sympathetic with the principles of that theory. Can you clarify please?