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How Novel and Radical Do You Think Jausss Attempt to Write Literary History Is? Substantiate.

Jausss views incorporated fresh ideas in the realms of literary history in many ways. To explore his ideas in this term paper, wed first try to define, rather explain literary history and briefly explain the working of the Marxist and the Formalist schools of literary history. Then we go on to Jausss views, especially those from his essay Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory and draw on the later developed reception theory, to conclude. Jerzy Pelc comments that "literary history" has been variously used to mean "'pure' literary history, literary theory, the sociology of literature, the psychology of literature, the semiotics of literature, the methodology of literary history, the methodology of literary theory, elements of aesthetics, elements of the history of culture, elements of the philosophy of culture, elements of ethics, elements of such disciplines as sociology, linguistics, psychology, political and economic history, etc."1 Jauss points out that literary history is neither a chronological list of the life and works of authors, nor is it only the study of the development of the genre and the form. Even the word

Wendell V. Harris, What Is Literary "History"?, College English, Vol. 56

literary can be misleading, as the definition of what is literature varies vastly over time and space. However, to begin, one might generally consider an elementary definition: The "history" of literature is the multiple and complex histories of its production, but also of its reception.2 In this essay, we will see how the last part of this definition came to being. In the nineteenth century and early twentieth century, two common ways to deal with literary history: the historical approach and the physiological approach. However, since 1920s until 1960s, the new criticism (UK, USA) provided a methodological way of text interpretation. Simultaneously, another group started developing at Russia- the Formalists. Formalism, as initially developed, was the application of linguistics, in the study of literature. Formalism deals with the structural form of a work rather than its background. Formalists believe that form and meaning are related- rather, the form is an expression of the content. The formalist school needs the reader only as a perceiving subject who follows the directions in the text in order to perceive its form or discover its techniques of procedure. It assumes that the reader has the theoretical knowledge of a philologist3 Marxist literary history overemphasizes on the dependence of the literature produced upon the social and economic structure. It bases on the view that literature is a reproduction of the

Mario J. Va1ds, Linda Hutcheon Rethinking Literary History: Comparatvely, ACLS Occassional Paper, No. 27
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Hans Robert Jauss, Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory

reality. It treats the author and the reader in the same fashion, i.e., according to their social and financial positions. Jausss theory offers to bridge between these two views. His thesis chalks out a framework of literary history, where the position of the reader is completely different and more important than in the above two schools. A brief account of these will further substantiate the point. The crux of Jausss theory is as follows the quality and rank of a literary work result neither from the biographical conditions of its origin, nor from its place in the sequence of the development of a genre alone, but rather from the criteria of influence, reception, and posthumous fame. 4

The life of a work depends not on its production, but its reception and the response to it by readers. Each time a work is read- it is like a performance. The literary body remaining the same, the perspective of the reader changes and with each serious reading, a new synthesis occurs. This is, in other words, the first thesis of Jauss, which states that it is necessary to remove the prejudices of historical objectivism and prescribes a transition from the traditional aesthetics of production and representation to aesthetics of reception and influence. Literature can hardly ever be treated as a disjoint factor. Each word written down requires at least one person to read and understand it in order to be complete. And as this understanding varies through ages, so does the essence of the work. A literary work or event can continue to be relevant only as long as the newer generations receive and realize it. This process depends on the horizon of expectations of readers, critics and authors through time.

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Horizon of expectations is a key concept in Jausss ideas. According to Holub, horizon of expectations refers to an inter-subjective system or structure of expectations, a system of references or a mind-set that a hypothetical individual might bring to any text. It is formed by a readers scrutiny and experience or previous literary events. The first thesis immediately poses a basic question, whether, and to what extent the horizon of expectations can be objectified. The second thesis follows. It is possible, argues Jauss, to avoid the flaws arising out of the subjectivism of the individual reception by clarifying the horizons of expectations. These expectations, according to Jauss, are not individual, subjective decisions, rather specific instructions in a process of directed perception, which can be understood and described by a textual linguistics. These expectations are constantly varied, altered, reviewed and reformed, as the newer texts are studied, but the expectations are not arbitrary. The third thesis deals with the expansion of the horizons of expectations. A work may be such that it is impossible to judge by the extents of the preformed expectations of the works preceding it. It may just negate the previously familiar experiences and/or form new experiences. This aesthetic distance can be objectified historically as per the audience reaction and the critics judgments. After a breakthrough of the existing expectationboundaries, a work may be an immediate success; it may be rejected altogether, or accepted slowly and scatteredly. For example, we might consider Samaresh Basus Projapoti, which raised moral questions and did take a long time to be accepted. In his fourth thesis, Jauss postulates that for a very old literary work, reconstruction of the horizons would allow the contemporary reader to perceive the text anew. This approach, while

emphasizing the difference between previous and present interpretations, also brings to light the history of reception that mediates these two positions. Jauss draws on Gadamers Truth and Method to argue that all judgments are inevitably influenced by the tradition within which one stands. Gadamer expands upon Collingwood's thesis that "one can only understand a text when one has understood the question to which it is an answer", and the questions raised today have to be included in the present horizon, but it may as well lie outside the realms of the previous horizons. In any case, the past horizons are al subsets of the new! Understanding is the process, comments Jauss, by which these boundaries keep merging and reforming. The fifth thesis argues that the aesthetics of reception, apart from allowing the scope to conceive the meaning of a literary work through history, demands that each individual work is viewed as a part of a literary series. This eventful history of literature would be of much importance to understand the level of reception on the art of the authors. In fact, one literary work can pose questions which are chronologically answered by its following works. One can observe this as a continuous pattern. The formalist approach would explain this as literary evolution. Instead of individual disjoint works, with this interpretation, we have an interrelated chain of works through the divisions of form and genre, each feeding on the others, reforming and evolving thus. The proposition opens up the Formalist view of evolution of literary history by incorporating in it the aesthetics of reception, and including the stand point of the literary historian. The sixth thesis deals with the synchronic and diachronic analysis of literary history and stresses on the less explored synchronic aspect. Jauss encourages the consideration of synchronic cross sections at different historical moments and their chronological representation and analysis in

order to better identify the change in literary structure in its epoch-making moments. The incorporation of proper structural analysis in the synchronical cross-secton would lead to the emergence of genres as as the literary system of a definite historical situation, rather than a logical classification. The problem of selecting that which is important for a new history of literature can be solved with the help of the synchronic perspective in a manner that has not yet been attempted...Representation of literature in the historical succession of such systems would be possible through a series of arbitrary points of intersection between diachrony and synchrony. 5 The seventh thesis further prescribes, that the synchronic and diachronic representations do not really complete the task o literary history. A literary production should be seen as special history in its unique relationship with general history. This can be restored by restored by emphasizing literature's social function rather than its origin. The gap between literary history and sociological research is made easier and approachable by the concept of horizons of expectations. The reception or receptive capacity of an individual has everything to do with the general or more specifically, the social scenario of a time. The chasm between literature and history, between aesthetic and historical knowledge, can be bridged if literary history does not simply once again describe literary works as a reflection of the process of general history, but rather discovers in the course of "literary evolution" that truly socially formative function which belongs to literature as it

Hans Robert Jauss, Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory

competes with other arts and social forces in the emancipation of man from his natural, religious, and social ties.6 The most important contribution of Jauss to the literary history remains to be the incorporation of the reader from a completely different angle. Jausss ideas on reception, combined with Wolfgang Isers projects and some empirical research, accrue under the umbrella term Reception Theory. According to Holub, Reception Theory is a general shift in concern from the author and the work to the text and the reader. 7 Holub argues that Reception Theory was a revolutionary approach to contemporary literary criticism. Jauss considers the philosophy of hermeneutics with great emphasis on the importance of history and incorporates the philosophical hermeneutics of Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2002), who was a follower of Martin Heidegger. The concept of hermeneutics is a very important component of the horizons of interpretations. Literary hermeunitics is largely responsible for the creation of the literary canon. Going through Jausss thesis and the reception theory, we point out three basic key concepts. First comes the novel idea of reception- a breakthrough from the production and epresentation based studies and analysis, which quite revolutionized the traditional concepts of literary history. Second: the importance of synchronic analysis of literary history and the intersection of diachronic and synchronic cross-sections, leading to new ideas regarding genres and selection of literary works. Third: the connection between general history and social history with literary history, again, a link provided by the theory of reception.

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Hans Robert Jauss, Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory Robert C. Holub, Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction.

The radical part of Jausss ideas is necessarily his concept of treating the literary work as a literary event and the audience/ reader as a part-and-parcel of the event, which remains incomplete unless it is received. It is a breakthrough from the traditional objectivist, formalist and Marxist views of literary history and this dimension has been largely used ever since in the field of literary history. Though the question of objectivity of the horizons of expectation remains somewhat ambiguous, the concept opens up many avenues to explore.

Bibliography Essyas I. Jauss, Hans Robert and Benzinger, Elizabeth, Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory, New Literary History, Vol. 2, No. 1, A Symposium on Literary History (Autumn, 1970), pp. 7-37 II. Harris, Wendell V. , What Is Literary "History"?, College English, Vol. 56, No. 4 (Apr., 1994), pp. 434-451, Published by: National Council of Teachers of English III. Valds, Mario J. and Hutcheon, Linda, Rethinking Literary History-Comparatively, ACLS Occassional Paper No. 27 IV. Hujelan, Naser, Formalism and Early Strusturalism (1914-1960) V. Kinoshita, Yumi, Reception Theory