Reception Theory

In modern times, the role of the reader or audience has been given a great importance in analyzing a text— the text may be in written form, creative art or other media types. As a literacy theory having this importance, “Reception-Theory is the historical application of a form of reader-response theory that was proposed by Hans Robert Jauss in “ Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory” (in New Literary History, Vol.  2, 1970-71).”(quoted in Abrams)

The core members frequently mentioned as propounders of this theory are Hans Robert Jauss, Wolfgang Iser, Karlheinz Stierle and Harald Weinrich. Arthur Asa Berger(1995) states, “Reception theorists are vaguely similar in that they focus on the roles that audiences (readers of texts, decoders of texts) play in the scheme of things, and not on texts themselves.”

Wolfgang Iser (1988) suggests that the readers or the audiences of a text play an important role in the “realization” of a text. He writes,

“The phenomenological theory of art lays full stress on the idea that, in considering a literary work, one must take into account not only the actual text but also, and in actual measure, the actions involved in responding to that text.”

However, Iser identifies two polarities of a literary work: “the artistic” referring to the work itself created by the author, and “the aesthetic” referring to the realization of the reader. “From this polarity”, says Iser (ibid), “it follows that the literary work can not be completely identical with the text, but in fact must lie halfway between the two .” Because, Iser believes, literary works  do not exist until they are realized by the reader. Berkeley’s  famous dictum, “To be is to be perceived.”, can be mentioned in this connection. Actually texts have a virtual or immanent reality not actualized until the reader or audience reads or sees or hears them. Therefore, the receiver thus becomes equal to, or equally as important as, the sender of the message. These ideas have been shown in the following table:

Relations Between Text and Reader Text                                  (Work)                                Reader
author artistic plane sender creates a text text a system of signs to be understood	reader, audience aesthetic plane receiver realizes the text text a site for creation of meanings

          

What we mean by the reader’s response is not actually the response of a single reader at a given time, but “the altering responses, interpretive and evaluative, of the general reading public over the course of time”. Jauss proposes that although a text has no “objective meaning”, it contains a variety of objectively describable features. We know that the linguistic and aesthetic expectations of the population of the readers change over time and the critics have access not only to the text but also to the published responses of earlier readers. Therefore, there develops an evolving historical tradition of critical interpretations and evaluations of a given literary work. Thus a literay work possesses no fixed and final meanings or value.  

          This approach to textual analysis focuses on the scope for "negotiation" and "opposition" on the part of the reader or audience. That is, a "text"

is not simply passively accepted by the audience, but the reader or viewer interprets the meanings of the text based on their individual cultural background and life experiences. Therefore, the meaning of the same text may vary from reader to reader. As Iser (1974:282)) argues,

“In the same way two people gazing at the night sky may both be looking at the same collection of stars, but one will see the image of a plaugh, and other will make out a dipper. The ‘stars’ in a literary text are fixed; the lines that join them are variable.”

Jauss(1974:18) singles out three ways in which a writer  can anticipate a reader’s response in relation to his  horizon of expectations:

“first, by the familiar standards or the inherent poetry of the genre; second, by the implicit relationships to familiar works of the literary-historical context; and third, by the contrast  between history and reality.”

          Reception theory argues that we must not privilege, give undue importance to, the text, and that we must take into account “the role of the reader”(Eco, 1984) and the way different readers (or viewers, in the case of visual media) interprete texts.

I would like to ask what is “the point of reception". I claim that it is not within the brain of the reader; it is a mutually constitutive point of contact between reader and text.