The author discusses the theoretical foundations for creative criticism, a term denoting the application of multimodal responses to literature for the construction of meaning. The author develops a theoretical framework from Bakhtin's principles of dialogical interpenetration, internally persuasive discourse, and utterance, as well as Dewey's conceptions of unified aesthetic experiences. The author then uses this framework of transactional processes to illuminate the efficacy of classroom applications of creative criticism. In particular, the author examines two projects from 12th‐grade English language arts classrooms. The first uses musical and visual response to make meaning out of classical literature. The second engages students in annotating literature online through the use of multimodal responses. This research articulates theoretically grounded principles of effective multimodal response to literature.