Reader-response criticism

The aesthetics of reception asks for the mental and emotional perception of artistic works and how it is already created in the object or only arises in the process of reception.

First, a sense of literary theory, it is concerned now with all the arts. Reception is derived from the Latin recipere ( receive, take ), aesthetics from the ancient Greek αἴσθησις AISTHESIS ( perception). Occasionally, the aesthetics of reception is also referred to by their place of origin as Constance school.

Several trends can be today as opposed to others. The differentiation is carried out mainly in view of the theoretical concepts with which meaning is produced here. It comes with most of the flows to the understanding, which produces the object itself, in that it starts from a position of understanding and should deliver its information - an "implicit " from the text handles custom reader. The interpretation is to determine what these presumed recipient must understand at full deployment of the text ( or any work of art in its importance offers). In an extension of this approach can record how the understanding unfolded historical research. Research directions that are interested in real " empirical " readers to historically verifiable recipient and their " reception products", to notes in diaries and letters about, from which it can be seen as they read certain books, certain musical saw, saw some pictures are generally already associated with the social history of literature or art, even if they can claim the concept of the interest in his development for themselves.

The main representatives of the Constance school were the Romanist Hans Robert Jauss, the Latinist Manfred Fuhrmann, the Anglist Wolfgang Iser and the German scholar Wolfgang PREISENDANZ.

Problem

The reception aesthetics is a response to the into acting in the 20th century literary interpretation of the 19th century in the larger context. Together, their currents was a strong interest in the author and his intentions and the objective is to interpret the work of art as an artifact of a time and nation, to read it as the key to understanding other eras and cultures.

In the 20th century, especially the text-immanent interpretation approaches presented against this reading offers. In the interest to host the research back to the subject the work of art, was in flows, such as provided to the New Criticism, the question of what this artwork lends its special aesthetic value and what exactly his art lies against less accomplished artifacts.

Not, however, completely - The reception aesthetics breaks with this interpretation approaches. She urges questions about the work back against questions about the perception that triggers it, and it opens up with questions to the process in which the perception takes place, according to the information included in it, even after understanding horizons, which implied the work of art or presupposes in open allusions. The return to the question, according to what the author meant to say is thus ruled out - this question is at best a part of the action that unfolds the text. The question of how the text works, how it works, what makes it interesting to see what he is irritable, what he does with the reader, on the other hand as it is in the text-immanent interpretations, but much clearer in the center. Skepticism remains here compared to the empirically demonstrable readers. According to theory, he uses ideally opportunities that are created in the text. In the worse case, but the text inside out on a meaning of its choice. The literary scholar acts as contrast, readers who investigated theoretically with the text given reading options; the entire " history of reception ," the story of understanding that is a work can be seen at the appropriate understanding of the term as part of the investigation field: Here unfold possible understandings, here is understanding possible horizons in the course of historical exploration of manufacture. Among the representatives of reception aesthetics remained controversial, as is with these extensions that reach into the social history as in the cultural and technical history, deal with it.

Criticism drew the reception aesthetics ultimately unclear positioned on project itself. The understanding horizons to which they asked, could be as straightforward as hoped, not manufacture. Research that contextualizes their items simple compared to other documents, fumbled open here with the problem of the researcher who creates an understanding of position (as with contemporary documents the reception, which were sometimes dismissed in the strict aesthetics of reception as unhelpful, incidental to misleading readings ).

Positions

Both for Jauss and Iser, the text for reader debate the most important point of reference for the constitution of meaning in the act of reading dar.

Hans Robert Jauss states in his famous inaugural lecture the historical course of the reception of a work and thus its importance in the foreground. The view of a work is always initially it from the presence of the reader. However, the work in the sense Jauss ' hermeneutic conception - the Iser does not share, because it is text theoretically interested - to understand, has the reception history, so how the work was what time as understood, are also considered. According to Jauss, the aesthetic content is to be measured by whether a work causes a change in the horizon of the reader (that would be classic, aesthetic value ) or not ( pulp fiction, short, trash ).

After Wolfgang Iser the " aesthetic content " of a text is produced only in the process of reading. He does not make the above distinction, however, is quite different and oriented. Him are the terms: indeterminacy / spaces, schematic view, implied reader, among other things important. Importance of the unfolding text as a communication with a " implied reader " - a text- theoretical, ie created in the instance of the text, if you will, imagined reader.

Fundamentally, the "professional reader " / " ideal reader " for Iser. This is in this sense, the experienced reader who has in-depth literary experience and knowledge and thus is able to recognize the applied signals and cross-references in the text. The aesthetics of reception, respectively, aesthetic effect, proved with these ratios partly as a continuation of existing interpretation practice. Jauss and Iser's investigations were characterized by the communication model ( entschlüsselndem ) receiver. Jauss ' hermeneutic approach, which goes back to Gadamer, strives in the process of understanding of the hermeneutic circle, while Iser himself - as mentioned above - for the text whose nature and structure of interest. By the implicit reader here the meaning of the text is, however, strongly pre-embossed. The literature received with the settlement a privileged position: they can develop meanings, the real reader does not unfolded so far; namely, if they can prove that aesthetic experience of the pre-designed transmitter to the recipient. With poetological expertise and knowledge of time horizons literary studies real readers is here to help. They gained on the other hand, new control. So they may well come to the conclusion that the author was not thinking of a reader who dares this or that new interpretation, and say to this reader so that he plays his own game here - a scientifically durable.

A historical reader research resulted in the work of Constance school most likely due to the resistance that they caused. The question of historical evidence of dealing with texts by actual reception products, according to diary entries from readers, according to letters from which it is apparent how texts were read, far more stood in the sociology of literature and science book. Representatives of the Constance school listed herein an imminent tightening of research, its restriction to random documents and their time -related perspectives. A stoppage of research threatened here, where the exploration not yet realized textual meaning must remain the goal.