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representatives. Hans Robert Jauss brought out a massive synthesis of his work in 1982, but since then he has not significantly modified or extended his views.5 Wolfgang Iser, who was Jauss's colleague at Constance, but has also taught in the USA, has moved from his analyses of the reading process in the 1970s to much wider issues of literary anthropology in the 1980s, now crowned by his new book.6 At first sight this state of affairs would seem to fit in with Jauss's view of a 'paradigm shift': the 'revolution' being accomplished, we would now have reached a phase of 'normal science'. But such an account is clearly unsatisfactory, because the advent of reception theory has by no means put an end either to controversy in theory or to divergence in practice. On the contrary, even in Germany and indeed in Constance itself reception theory is in the process of being supplanted by various brands of 'post-structuralism'.7 Should we then conclude that reception theory has not solved its problems as definitively as Jauss believed? If this question is firmly posed, there seems to be still room for more discussion of reception theory and its potential for classical philology. |
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But first a few points of terminology and demarcation have to be settled. It is customary to think of 'reception theory' as a cohesive body of thought in which Jauss and Iser have about equal shares;8 yet Iser has emphatically declared that he did not offer a Rezeptionstheorie, but a Wirkungstheorie, by which he meant that he was concerned with response as pre-structured by the text (Wirkung), not response as realized by the reader (Rezeption).9 Even if Iser is set apart, 'reception theory' still covers a wide array of approaches, including the flourishing empirical (sociological and psychological) study of reception, with which Jauss, however, will have nothing to do.10 It is therefore useful to refer to his theories by a term of its own, and fortunately he himself has coined one: Rezeptionsästhetik, somewhat uneasily anglicized as 'aesthetics of reception'.11 If one needs a label for Iser, one could follow general American practice and reckon him among the 'reader-response |
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5 Jauss (1982); a first instalment had been published a few years earlier: Jauss (1977a). |
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6 Compare Iser (1972) and (1976) with Iser (1991). |
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7 Or so it appeared to me when I spent the academic year 198889 at the University of Constance, on a fellowship from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO); this support is hereby gratefully acknowledged. |
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8 This is true of all the works mentioned in n. 4. Holub (1984) is careful not to merge Iser's thought with Jauss's, but still treats both men together as 'the major theorists' (chapter title) of 'reception theory' (book title). |
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9 Iser (1976) 8. |
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10 See Ibsch and Schram (eds.) (1987). |
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11 I use the term for Jauss's work as a whole, although Jauss himself has not often spoken of Rezeptionsästhetik since 1973, but rather put his work under the heading of 'aesthetic experience and literary hermeneutics', the title of Jauss (1982). |
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