Established in the late 1970s and still active today, Reader-Response criticism interprets literature as an author's tool for manipulating the expectations of readers. Authors encourage readers to speculate forward from current to foreseen plot events, and to imagine from small details the inner motivations of characters. All this work is possible because of two kinds of semiotic codes we learn to "read" when growing up literate: the codes of culture, itself (signs of status, signs of gender, signs of power, etc.); and the codes of literature (plot conventions, character conventions, rhetorical devices like metaphor, irony, paradox).
R-R critics look for early passages in which authors "train" readers to expect certain rules will govern a narrative ("Knowing that Mrs. Mallard was afflicted with a heart trouble, great care was taken to break to her as gently as possible the news of her husband's death."--the dénouement will involve a health surprise). They also look for cultural or literary conventions authors may be manipulating without even having to "explain the rule" ("Once upon a time..."--it's a fairy tale and magic is allowed; rhyme--it's a poem and rhymed words matter to each other's meaning). For instance, if a character sings a love song in Act I, erotic behavior might be expected to follow in Acts II-V, but if the song is sung to stacks of gold, the "eros" might be satiric, ironic, tragic, or somehow twisted by the contextual impropriety of its initial sign.
