readerly text

is a text that allows the passive reader to consume. Writerly tasks are a form of 'work' in that they make the reader, through the act of reading, also a producer of the text.

readerly texts are texts that allow the reader to passively consume them as products. They do not invite meaning-making, instead, acting 'like a cupboard where meanings are shelved, stacked, [and] safeguarded' (200). The 'writerly text, by comparison, aims to make the reader, through the act of reading, also a producer of the text. It 'is ourselves writing, before the infinite play of the world is traversed, intersected, stopped, plasticized by some singular system (Ideology, Genus, Criticism) which reduces the plurality of entrances, the opening of networks, the infinity of languages' (5). Thus reading becomes for Barthes 'not a parasitical act, the reactive complement of a writing,' but rather a 'form of work' (10).

readerly text, n.All

readerly text