Background: Reader-oriented approach met its climax in cultural and literary theory in the late 1970s. Its origins could be traced back to the early 1930s when attention to the reading process emerged as a reaction against the rejection of the reader’s role in creating meaning. From a philosophical view, reader-oriented criticism has its roots in Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology and Hans-Georg Gadamer’s hermeneutics. As with Husserl’s ‘bracketing’ of the real object, the actual historical context of the text, its author, conditions of production and readership are ignored; however, phenomenological criticism aims at a wholly ‘immanent’ reading of the text, thoroughly unaffected by anything outside it. Purpose: The present study, while demonstrating the critical concepts and methodology of the reception theory, seeks to shed light on the significant role played by the reader in the corresponding approaches. Method: The present study compatibly provides a close analysis which consists of selection and discussion of theoretical and descriptive material as well as a detailed comparison of theories in terms of their applicability. The research method of the present paper is thus library-based and categorized as theoretical study; correspondingly, the present paper will be entirely literature-based in that, in the academic library research, the conclusions are based on the analysis of data of a particular area. Findings: Louise M. Rosenblatt’s categorization of Efferent and Aesthetic Readings, and her concepts of Determinate and Indeterminate Meanings proved to be of central significance to the reader-oriented approach. Similarly, Hans Robert Juass’s ‘Horizons of Expectation’ and his idea concerning three ways of reaction to the texts including Negation, Assimilation, and Creation, together with Wolfgang Iser’s dichotomy of the Implied and Actual Reader and his innovative concepts of Concretization and Gaps played a highly influential role in the development of this approac
