There are three responses to literature: emotion, ignorance, and wonder. Surely there are other responses to literature we could discuss, and rarely will someone’s response to a given text will include a degree of each mode, but one of these responses to literature will almost always be significant and dominant.

An emotional (L. e-, “out,” + movere, “to move”) response looks to be moved by the literature and, in its attention on the emotions of the reader, to move a literary work out of the conditions of its composition. The emotional reader identifies with the tensions he or she encounters in a text. The emotional reader “moves” the text to him or her, mobilizing it for therapeutic value by projecting his or her own life crises into the text. The emotional reader uses literature to move toward pleasure.

An ignorant (L. in-, “not” + gnorare, “to know”) response to literature does not know why it matters. The ignorant reader trivializes the tensions of a text. This is not to say that the reader is necessarily antipathetic to the text (though this is often the case), but that the reader feels secure ignoring the text as an important object. The ignorant reader does not know of a use to which literature can be put.

A wonderful (OE wundor, “the object of astonishment”) response to literature looks with marvel at the text. The wonderful reader is curious about the tensions of a text. This reader recognizes a great distance between the language used by a given author to discuss an issue and the language the reader would use were he or she to address that same issue. The wonderful reader discovers the limits of his or her own understanding in literature.

The wonderful reader shares a rejection of the usefulness of a text with the ignorant reader, except in that the wonderful reader’s goal is to have the most complete and accurate understanding of the world in which he or she lives (which means he or she will have to also understand why a given text exists in the way that it does).

The wonderful reader shares a belief in the import of a text with the emotional reader; the wonderful reader seeks intelligence (L. inter-, “between” + legere, “to pick out, choose”).

Where the emotional reader hopes to over-rule the text, the wonderful reader aims to understand (OE under-, “lower, inferior” + L. stare, “stand”) it. To understand an object is to place the importance of its circumstances above the importance of your own.

Only the wonderful reader has an interest in interpreting a text. The emotional reader wants to be moved by the text, while the ignorant reader believes that textual interpretation is not an efficient use of time given his or her priorities.