Introduction to Reception Aesthetics

Bibliographic Data

ID4752196
AuthorsPeter Uwe Hohendahl, Marc Silberman (0000-0002-0334-3864)
Year1977
Issue10
Pages29
Publication date1977-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueNew German Critique (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0094-033X • E-ISSN: 1558-1462
PublisherJSTOR (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.2307/487671
OpenAlexW2315147894
LanguageEN
Citations received7

and idealistic models in favor of an analysis of communicative processes, despite the fact that he had no theoretical model of communication at his disposal. Although he was not blind the psychological aspects of reading, Schiicking stressed the social basis of the projected history of taste. This means that he demanded the localization of those social strata and groups which, as vehicles of taste, sustain and steer the literary process. Of course, the social history of readers was only one part of Schiicking's program, be supplemented by cultural, geographical and anthropological perspectives. The resulting blur in his focus affected the method adversely and contributed perhaps discredit Schiicking's undertaking. Even in his later works the empirical implementation remained limited; it was left Robert Escarpit and his school extend empirical research beyond Schiicking's attempts. The crisis in literary evaluation motivated early positivistic reader studies. Coinciding with the increasing uncertainty of the literary canon in pluralistic society, these studies attempted at least make visible and thus objectify the process of aesthetic evaluation. The hidden background of the discussion consisted of the metamorphosis of the reader: the evolution of a massified, fragmented reading public, the erosion of the literary public sphere of the bourgeoisie and the transformation of traditional cultural institutions into instruments of culture industry. Scholarly debate reflected this dilemma of the bourgeois public sphere, though sometimes in a distorted form. Schiicking already recognized and described the disintegration of the bourgeois reading public, the dissolution of literary societies and clubs which had served as control points for aesthetic communication in the 19th century. Yet this analysis ignored social and economic causes. Similarly, Robert Escarpit identified later This content downloaded from 157.55.39.177 on Sat, 19 Nov 2016 04:31:59 UTC All use subject http://about.jstor.org/terms RECEPTION AESTHETICS 37 the difference between an educated and a mass public23 and made suggestions for transcending the barriers without however considering the underlying social mechanisms which this separation owes it origins and its perpetuation. Sartre's interest differs from this empirical research in that the social history of writer and reader provides him with material for the political question about the relationship between author and public.24 this relationship is defined as a contract of generosity and freedom in which the completion of the draft is left the reader, then the social history of reading has the task of reconstructing those moments in which the emancipation of author and reader manifests itself. In other words, for Sartre a sociology of the reading public constitutes not only the basis for a history of taste but also serves as the instrument for understanding the contemporary literary and social situation. The central question is: what is the task of the literary producer in an epoch in which the needs of the masses are the issue but where the only recipient is the bourgeois public? Sartre (and later Escarpit) offers some relevant conceptual differentiations for narrative studies by asserting that a work is always directed a reader but that the intended reader is not necessarily indentical with the real public. Earlier theories (Lubbock, Stanzel, Limmert) hardly considered the reader since his function appeared obvious and, therefore, unproblematical. Primary interest revolved around the producer who, as narrator, could employ the most diverse strategies. The discovery by Weinrich, Iser, Harth, Poulet and others of the role of the reader was apparently generated, even forced by structural changes in the modern novel. When the author removes the formerly guaranteed message from the novel and compels the reader first and foremost construct the meaning of the content, then the author-reader relationship and the relationship between the narrator's role and the reader's role in the text become problematical. The question of the reader, which Schiicking and a sociology of the reading public sought anwer primarily in terms of social factors, now enters into the analysis of the text because it has become apparent that the communicative aspect is inherent in the work of art. The phenomenological investigations of Iser25 and Netzer26 aim in the same direction in that they examine the structure of address (Appellstruktur) in the text. Of course, these phenomenological studies lack insight into the connection between the evolving public and the changing degree 23. Robert Escarpit, Das Buch und der Leser: Entwurf einer Literatursoziologie (Cologne, 1961). 24. Jean Paul Sartre, What is Literature? (New York, 1965). 25. Wolfgang Iser, Die Appellstruktur der Texte (Konstanz, 1970). 26. Klaus Netzer, Der Leser des Nouveau Roman (Frankfurt am Main, 1970). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.177 on Sat, 19 Nov 2016 04:31:59 UTC All use subject http://about.jstor.org/terms 38 NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE of indeterminacy. Just as it was possible only in retrospect recognize the indeterminacy resulting from gaps in earlier texts, it would be necessary illuminate simultaneously the position, competence and interest of the addressee group in order avoid postulating an abstract literary change. G6tz Wienold27 has correctly pointed out the weakness of an aesthetics of reception which holds on a traditional concept of literature and thus confines itself textual analysis. Reception cannot be reduced a one-dimensional process (at best with feedback). Rather it must be placed in the broader context of literary, moral and socio-political positions which only permit us decipher the inherited body of reactions and appropriations (in Wienold's sense). This extension implies that scholarly criticism itself becomes part of the field of investigation in that it considers itself a major subject in the study of reception. The results of its systematic and historical work enter into the process of impact, whether this is intended or not. Here we touch on a further perspective: aesthetics of reception as an answer the crisis of literary history. This question was raised explicitly by Jauss in West Germany, with less emphasis by Robert Weimann and Manfred Naumann in East Germany. In a broader context we could also consider the studies of Sartre, Nisin and Picon. The French in this regard were introduced into Germany by the way of German Romance scholarship (Jauss, Weinrich). Whereas in France the positivistic Lanson school played the role of (delayed) opponent, in Germany it was historicism and traditional hermeneutics. In addition, in East Germany a revaluation of the Marxist concept of history began emerge. The return a historical perspective after a phase of predominantly textual analysis in the 1950s made conscious the general crisis without resolving it. But its ties the historicist and hermeneutic models of history (if these two can be separated at all) were not suited for convincing either the formalist or the materialist critics. Jauss, for example, presented his study Literaturgeschichte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft (1967) as a suggestion for salvaging the historicity of literature by radically curtailing event-oriented historiography. His goal was to establish a new relationship between the historical and the aesthetic perspective.28 Jauss' first thesis reads: If literary history is be rejuvenated, the prejudices of historical objectivism must be removed and the traditional approach literature must be replaced by an aesthetics of reception and impact. 27. Gbtz Wienold, Textverarbeitung: Ueberlegungen zu einer Kategorienbildung in einer strukturalen in Peter Uwe Hohendahl, ed., Sozialgeschichte und Wirkungsasthetik (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), pp. 97-134. 28. Jauss, Literaturgeschichte, p. 155. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.177 on Sat, 19 Nov 2016 04:31:59 UTC All use subject http://about.jstor.org/terms RECEPTION AESTHETICS 39 The historical relevance of literature is not based on an organization of literary works which is established post factum but on the reader's past experience of the 'literary data'.29 In 1971 Weimann spoke with more reticence of the tasks [of literary history] which were somewhat different in previous stages of the development of our society.30 The articulation of the principal epistemological goal lead a reorientation in methodological consciousness-more clearly formulated in the West than in the East where scholars had deal with the tradition of Lukics. The model postulates a definition of historicity where (in contrast the history of events) present and past comprise a unity; consequently the mediation of the past and the present becomes the true task of writing history. This shift in perspective places impact studies, which before had been marginal, into the center of the discussion

Aesthetics · Art · Aesthetic Perception and Analysis · Language, Metaphor, and Cognition · Visual Culture and Art Theory

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