Critic speak is tough, but we've got you covered.
Quote :Literature as Exploration
Through the medium of words, the text brings into the reader's consciousness certain concepts, certain sensuous experiences, certain images of things, people, actions, scenes. The special meanings and, more particularly, the submerged associations that these words have for the individual reader will largely determine what the work communicates to him. The reader brings to the work personality traits, memories of past events, present needs and preoccupations, a particular mood of the moment, and a particular physical condition. These and many other elements in a never-to-be-duplicated combination determine his response to the peculiar contribution of the text.
Let's say you're reading a book. The author's describing a nice house on a lake somewhere: windows, water, trees, the works. Okay, so as you're reading this description, you suddenly remember this vacation you took with your parents to Florida when you were a kid. You remember the house you were staying in by the beach, and you remember how much fun you had there.
Tl;dr: reading some description of a fictional house can totally make you think about things you've experienced yourself.
Okay, great. But when someone else reads that description, that person might have a completely different reaction. Maybe they'll remember their ex's living room, or something like that. Chances are pretty good that they're not going to have the same sense of pleasure reading this as the reader who remembers childhood vacations to Florida.
What Rosenblatt's getting at here is that each reading experience is unique to each reader. Not only that, but the same person can read the same passage twice and have a completely different experience reading it the second time. If you're happy one day, that passage about the beautiful house on the lake might make you feel even happier. If you're sad the next day and reread the same passage, you might feel worse, because you might be thinking: Man, my life is a toilet compared to this pretty book.
Rosenblatt was one of the first theorists to think really hard about how each reader responds differently to the text he or she reads. We're all unique, right? Well, that means that we'll all have different perspectives on the texts we read.