Dr. Katherine D. Harris
English 201 (Fall 2007)

Textual History Group Project:
Reception
 

For larger projects, like an MA thesis or a PhD disseration, you would want to look at everything that someone said about the work you are examining. For this project, we'll take a small chunk of that terrain and focus on what contemporary readers and reviewers thought of a particular text.

The term we use for this kind of study is "reception": how have readers responded to this text over time? The Steinbeck Center holds many reviews of Steinbeck's works, even the adaptations of his novels.  However, the holdings are often uneven.  We're concerned primarily here with reviews of the novel's original publication.

To help with track this information, you may want to use a review information form.  The reviews information form will help you to look past some often-fabulous rhetoric (and frequently vitriol) to focus on the main points of the reviews. Ask yourself, "by what criteria is the reviewer judging this piece?" A good related question is this: "does the reviewer follow those criteria? meaning does the reviewer say, "I'm going to consider X," but then spend most of the review complaining about (or lauding) Y.

Pay close attention to these main points, to where the reviewer supports and diverges from them. Use the information on your reviews form here.

Watch the dates of the reviews. In fact, read them in chronological order. Ask yourself questions about how the reviews relate to one another. Remember that reviewers read each others's work.

• Do some reviewers late in the game simply reassert what earlier reviews have said?
• Do some reviewers late in the game take objection to a trend in the earlier reviews?
• Which reviews seem to be most influential on later reviews?
• For how long a period do reviews of the poem come out?
• Is there any (or significant) difference between the first review and the last?
• Is there a break in the reviews--a spot where the tide turns to a new position?
• If there is a break or change in response, is there some clear reason for that change?

Once you have read some reviews individually and have a good sense of what they find laudable and objectionable, think about them as a group. Think in terms of trends:

• how many reviews were wholly positive?
• how many were wholly negative?
• how many were mixed?
• Did the negative reviews agree on what was bad about the poem?
• Likewise did the positive reviews agree on what was good?
• Do the mixed reviews comment on the same set of issues, or do they offer idiosyncratic commentary?

Now look back at your biographical information from the letters and journals.

• Does Steinbeck record reading any of the reviews?
• If so, which ones?
• How does he respond?
• How long does it take before he reads it?
• Does he read them immediately?
• If there's a lag, what can account for that?

Now place the information from those reviews, and from the letters and journals, in the context of the biographical information you have discovered. Are there important relations you should notice?

If you were doing that bigger project, I mentioned at the top of the page, you would next want to look at whether these contemporary reviews were influential on later readers and critics. You'd want to see if recent criticism mirrors those reviews in any way. But we'll leave those questions for another project.