Summing Up of Jauss' Reception Aesthetic

JAUSS VIEWS: A SUMMING UP OF HIS RECEPTION-AESTHETICS Hans Robert Jauss, the significant German proponent of reception-aesthetics provided a historical vantage point to reader oriented criticism. His historical dimension commingled the two seeming oppositions – Russian Formalism and Social Theory. Jauss borrows the term ‘paradigm’ from Science, which for him is the scientific skeleton formed of the hypotheses and ideas that function in an aeon. If someone, in accordance with Einstein’s theory travels through a time-portal from the time-frame 1980 to 1780, he will find himself in a different paradigm. Objective knowledge is not simply a progressive accumulation of facts; therefore older paradigms are replaced by new ones. Jauss coins the term ‘horizon of expectations’ to denote that which limits the judgment, valuation and interpretation of literary texts in a particular age – regarding genre or the extent of being literary. The original horizon of expectations does not establish the final meaning of a text. According to Jauss, one’s historical, sociological and demographical scenario ought not to be ignored. Therefore a work is not a timeless monument akin to a platinum-amalgam sculpture; rather it lays out different facets in different ages like a kaleidoscope. It is close to impossible to view the perpetual flow of chronological horizons with a Herculean detached contemplation and to realize the concerned work’s final value or meaning. The change in the outlooks from Ptolemy to Galileo to Newton to Einstein certifies the meandering and relentless course of horizons. Even Jauss recognizes that an author might choose to go beyond the predispositions of his day and emerge as an