Biography Louise M. Rosenblatt was born in Atlantic City to first-generation European Jewish immigrants of modest means. In 1925, she received her undergraduate degree at Barnard College. Her best friend at Barnard College was anthropologist Margaret Mead.
After graduation, she thought about going to Samoa with one of her best friends at Barnard, anthropologist Margaret Mead, but decided instead to go to France. In 1926, she received the certitude d'etudes Français from France's University of Grenoble. She received a doctorate in comparative literature from the Sorbonne in 1931. At age 27, she published her first book, in French, on the ''art for art's sake" movement in England.
In the 1930s she began teaching literature to college students and developing her theories on reading. Her seminal book on reading theory was ''Literature as Exploration," published in 1938 and reissued for several decades thereafter. In addition to numerous scholarly articles, she also wrote ''Making Meaning With Texts: Selected Essays" (2005).
During World War II, she worked for the Office of War Information, analyzing information from Nazi-occupied France.
She was an instructor at Barnard from 1927 to 1938, assistant professor at Brooklyn College from 1938 to 1948 and a professor of English education at New York University's School of Education (now the Steinhardt School of Education) from 1948 until her retirement in 1972, when she received NYU's Great Teacher Award.
She was elected to the International Reading Association Hall of Fame in 1992 and received the John Dewey Society Lifetime Achievement Award in 2001.
MAJOR THEORIES
The Reader, the Text, the Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work (1978) - the act of reading literature involves a transaction between the reader and the text. Each "transaction" is a unique experience in which the reader and text continuously act and are acted upon by each other. A written work (often referred to as a "poem" in her writing) does not have the same meaning for everyone, as each reader brings individual background knowledge, beliefs, and context into the reading act.
BELIEF ABOUT LITERACY INSTRUCTION
Rosenblatt focused specifically on promoting aesthetic experiences for students that can foster a critical “linkage between intellectual perception and emotional drive that is essential for any vital learning process”. Literature as Exploration (1938)- was written as a practical handbook for classroom teachers.
SEMINAL WORKS
· Literature as Exploration (1938). Literature as Exploration. New York: Appleton-Century; (1968). New York: Noble and Noble; (1976). New York: Noble and Noble; (1983). New York: Modern Language Association; (1995). New York: Modern Language Association · "Toward a cultural approach to literature", in College English, 7, 459-466. (1946) · "The enriching values of reading". In W. Gray (Ed.), Reading in an age of mass communication (pp. 19–38). Freeport, NY: Books for Libraries. (1949) · "The acid test in the teaching of literature". English Journal, 45, 66-74. (1956) · Research development seminar in the teaching of English. New York: New York University Press. (1963) · "The poem as event" in College English, 26, 123-8. (1964) · "A way of happening", in Educational Record, 49, 339-346. (1968) · "Towards a transactional theory of reading", in Journal of Reading Behavior, 1(1), 31-51. (1969) · "Literature and the invisible reader", in The Promise of English: NCTE 1970 distinguished lectures. Champaign, IL: National Council of Teachers of English. (1970) · The Reader, The Text, The Poem: The Transactional Theory of the Literary Work, Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press (1978). Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press (reprint 1994) · "What facts does this poem teach you?", in Language Arts, 57, 386-94. (1980) · "The transactional theory of the literary work: Implications for research", in Charles Cooper. (Ed.), Researching response to literature and the teaching of literature. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. (1985) · "Viewpoints: Transaction versus interaction — a terminological rescue operation", in Research in the Teaching of English, 19, 96-107. (1985) · "The aesthetic transaction", in Journal of Aesthetic Education, 20 (4), 122-128. (1986) · "Literary Theory", in J. Flood, J. Jensen, D. Lapp, & J. Squire (Eds.), Handbook of research on teaching the English language arts (pp. 57–62). New York: Macmillan. (1991) · Making Meaning with Texts: Selected Essays (2005)
AWARDS
Rosenblatt’s many awards included a Guggenheim fellowship (1942), NCTE’s Distinguished Service Award (1973), NCTE’s David H. Russell Award for Distinguished Research in English Teaching (1980), Columbia University’s Leland Jacobs Award for Literature (1981), NCTE’s Assembly for Literature Award (1984), National Conference on Research in English Lifetime Research Award (1990), Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Arizona (1992), the International Reading Association’s Reading Hall of Fame Award (1992), the NCTE Award for Outstanding Educator in Language Arts (1999).