Theory & Criticism
Reception Aesthetics
Reception aesthetics is a movement in literary studies that shifts attention from the author and text to the reader and the process of perceiving (receiving) a work. It formed in the late 1960s in the Constance school (Germany). Hans Robert Jauss introduced the concept of the 'horizon of expectations' — the system of a reader's expectations conditioned by their experience; a work's aesthetic value is measured by the distance between the horizon of expectations and the novelty of the text. Wolfgang Iser developed the theory of the 'implied reader' and of 'blanks' (Leerstellen, a concept that builds on and departs from Roman Ingarden's 'places of indeterminacy') — gaps that the reader fills while reading, actualizing the text. Reception aesthetics is akin to American 'reader-response criticism' (Stanley Fish). It grounds the historical variability of interpretations and the active, co-creative role of the reader, complementing hermeneutics and the theory of interpretation.
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Meaning, origins and distinction — side by side.
Distinction
Two theories of understanding differing in focus. Hermeneutics is a philosophical doctrine of UNDERSTANDING and interpretation itself, of the "hermeneutic circle" and the "fusion of horizons" of text and interpreter (Gadamer). Reception aesthetics is narrower and more concrete: it shifts attention to the READER, their "horizon of expectations" and "places of indeterminacy" that activate perception (Jauss, Iser). Hermeneutics asks how understanding is possible at all; reception aesthetics, how a concrete reader actualises the text.
