RECEPTION THEORY:

Reception theory is a branch of modern literary studies concerned with the ways in which literary works are received by readers. The term has sometimes been used to refer to Reader-Response criticism in general, but it is associated more particularly with the "Reception-aesthetics" (German: Rezeptionsästhetik) outlined by the German literary historian Hans Robert Jauss. In his 1970 article, "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory," Jauss argued that a reader approaches any text with a historically informed "horizon of expectations," which consists of a reader’s knowledge and assumptions about the text and literature in general. This horizon is challenged, affirmed, and changed by the interaction of the reader with the objective, describable features of a text. A "meaning" emerges from this interaction, but the reader’s horizon, because it is historical, is subject to change. Thus, meanings are also subject to the pressures of history as well as to the record of responses by previous readers of the text. Rezeptionsästhetik is much less concerned with the response of a single reader than with the changing responses of readers over time. For Jauss, the process of reading, like Gadamer’s of interpretation, is characterized as a "dialogue" between text and reader--a constant asking affirming, negating, and challenging of questions and presuppositions. (See also Phenemonology, Hermeneutics and the "Hermeneutic Circle").