Reader Response Theory between Cognitive Foundations and Modernist Trends

Abstract

The research studies the cognitive foundations and modernist trends of the reader response theory, based on the descriptive and analytical approach, by monitoring these cognitive foundations from their manifold aspects; to reveal its foundations in reading literary texts and analyzing them based on the reader. The research concluded that the reader response theory flowed from the multiple cognitive foundations according to a progressive evolutionary framework, leading to an integrated theory in the study of literary discourse, it benefited from the contents of the external and textual curricula in the analysis of literature, such as the historical and psychological approaches, and the textual linguistic approaches in the so-called modern approaches, such as formalism and structuralism, as well as postmodern approaches, which provided broad prospects for the reader in analyzing literary texts.