There are about six jillion schools of literary criticism in vogue (or on the way into vogue or on the way out of being in vogue). One of them is called Reader-Response Criticism.

RRC is distinguished from the other 5.99 jillion schools of literary criticism by its focus on the interaction between the reader and the text. One might even say that, for the RRC critic, the audience of a work is its context. Pushed to its extreme, RRC would hold that a work has no meaning apart from that created by the individual reader out of the sum of the text and what the reader brings to the experience of reading it.

PS: My darling daughter was an English major; can you tell?