Personal history, gender, past reading experiences, and exposure to adaptations (e.g., films) shape how readers interpret a text.

They help shape expectations, emotional engagement, and ethical judgments.

Rip Van Winkle's wife-Dame Van Winkle, as she is described as stereotyped "nagging shrew".

By analyzing unconscious desires and personal experiences that shape the reader’s interpretation.

Stenley Fish.

Norman Holland used Freudian psychoanalysis to explain how readers unconsciously transform literary texts into psychological experiences.

"People that are from the same interpretive community share common ways of interpreting" Stenley Fish

One of them deals with a text, another one with a reader.

Wolfgang Iser introduced the idea that literary texts contain "gaps" (Leerstellen) that require readers to actively participate in creating meaning.

Leads to wrong belief that every reading is valid.

R. Barthes, D. Bleich, S. Booth, Jonathan Culler, J. Fetterley, S. Fish, others.

Different critics define the reader in various ways: Culler’s "competent reader" understands literary structures, Iser’s "participating reader"