filrep

filrep

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  Literary History asa Challenge to Literary Theory Hans Robert Jauss
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  Debate: Marxist Literary Theory Formalist Theory • inquires about his [the • reader as a perceiving reader's] social subject who follows position or seeks to the directions in the recognize him in the text in order to structure of a distinguish the form represented society or discover the procedure
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  Both methods lackthe reader in his genuine role...: as the addressee for whom the literary work is primarily destined.
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  The perspective ofthe aesthetics of reception mediates... If the history of literature is viewed in this way...the opposition between its aesthetic and its historical aspects is also continually mediated.
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  Jauss' Seven Theses
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  Thesis 1 A renewalof literary history demands (1) removal of the prejudices of historical objectivism (2) traditional aesthetics of production and representation in an asthetics of reception and influence Historicity of literature rests... on the preceding experience of the literary work by its readers.
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  MEANING Producer's Reader's horizon of perception expectation
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  Thesis 2 The literaryexperience of the reader (takes place)...within the objectifiable system of expectations that arises for each work • preunderstanding of the genre • form and themes of already familiar works • opposition between poetic and practical language
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  Thesis 3 Horizon ofexpectations of a work - determine its artistic character by the kind and the degree of its influence on a presupposed audience. ...reception can result in a "change of horizons"... ...aesthetic distance can be objectified historically along a spectrum of the audience's reactions...
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  Thesis 4 The reconstructionof the horizon of expectations... enables one (1) to pose questions that the text gave an answer to (2) to discover how the contemporary reader could have viewed and understood the work A work sets out to answer a specific question.
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  Thesis 5 The theoryof the aesthetics of reception - allows one to conceive the meaning and form of a literary work in the historical unfolding of its understanding. - demands that one insert the individual work into its "literary series" to recognize its historical position and significance in the context of the experience of literature.
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  Thesis 6 The achievementsmade in linguistics through the distinction and methodological interrelation of diachronic and synchronic analysis are the occasion for overcoming the diachronic perspective-- previously the only one practiced--in literary history as well. ...take a synchronic cross-section of a moment in the development...
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  Thesis 7 The taskof literary history is thus completed when literary production is...also seen as "special history" in its own unique relationship to "general history." The social function of literature manifests itself in its genuine possibility only where the literary experience of the reader enters into the horizon of expectations of his lived praxis, preforms his understanding of the world, and thereby also has an effect on his social behavior.