Reader-Response Theory and the English Curriculum.

There's something rotten in the state of Denmark, to mix plays, if not metaphors. Perhaps not rotten, but tumultuous, at least, with reader-response advocates, deconstructionists, cultural critics, feminist critics, new historicists, narratologists, and a few die-hard New Critics, all clustered around the cauldron, tossing their newts' eyes, rats' tails, and bats' wings into the tumbling, bubbling theoretical stew. If we aren't careful, when the hurlyburly's done, we may have forgotten that the purpose of literature programs in the elementary and secondary schools is to develop readers, not literary scholars and critics.