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 phenomenologi