Literary history as a challenge to literary theory

Conceptualized by Hans Robert Jauss in his Toward an Aesthetic of Reception in the late 1960s, Reception Theory refers to a historical application of the Reader Response theory, emphasizing altering interpretive and evaluative responses of generations of readers to a text. It focuses on the scope for negotiation and opposition on the part of the general public, over a period of time in history, as they interpret the meanings of a text based on their respective cultural background and life experiences. A reader’s response to a text is the joint product of the reader’s own horizon of expectations and the confirmations, disappointments, refutations and reformulations of these expectations. Since the linguistic and aesthetic expectation of readers change over the course of time, and since later readers and critics have access to the text as well as its criticisms, there develops an evolving hi

Horizon of expectations meaning

Hans robert jauss horizon of expectations definition sociology

Horizon of expectations