Introduction to Reception Studies

Introduction to Reception AestheticsAuthor(s): Peter Uwe Hohendahl and Marc SilbermanSource: New German Critique, No. 10 (Winter, 1977), pp. 29-63Published by: New German CritiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/487671 .

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Introduction to Reception Aesthetics

by Peter Uwe Hohendahl*

The judgment of history that will one day become the last Judgment on an author and his work, is already prejudiced with the judgment of the first reader, and posterity will have to take into consideration the public meaning which contemporaries have attributed to the work.1

The study of literary reception is both an old and a new discipline: old insofar as theoretical interest in the impact of literature began with a philosophically oriented poetics established in classical times and has played an important role since then in the European literary tradition; new insofar as only the last decades have witnessed a critical discussion about the fundamental theoretical questions of reception. While we shall examine reasons for this delay, let us first emphasize that it is a simplification to speak of one discipline. The term "reception" comprises a number of research areas, each with its own method and epistemological framework. Although overlapping is visible everywhere, no theoretical integration has yet been achieved. Two reasons may be cited for this: first, there is the immense growth within the field of reader analysis; second, the great variation in methodological premises simply precludes any additive summa- tion of research results. An extensive analytical study would be necessary just to clarify at which level the linguistic and the socio-historical or the phenomenological and the materialist approaches could mutually interrelate. An introduc- tory presentation can obviously not satisfy such demands. Our goal, therefore, is a kind of "statement of accounts" which will critically outline the present state of the discussion and at the same time reconstruct the historical background of its changing paradigms.

Any attempt to understand the hesitancy and even resistance to the study of reception among literary critics must first consider the methodological obstacles inherent within the dominant schools of literary criticism. Neither historicism nor textual criticism, or even Critical Theory (Adorno), could concede more than a marginal position to the study of reception. Empirical investigations,

* This article was first published as an introduction to Peter Uwe Hohendahl, ed., Sozial- geschichte und Wirkungsdsthetik: Dokumente zur empirischen und marxistischen Rezep- tionsforschung (Frankfurt am Main, 1974). It appears here for the first time in English. 1. Pierre Bourdieu, Zur Soziologie der symbolischen Formen (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), p. 102.



30 NEW GERMAN CRITIQUE

whether of a sociological or of a psychological nature, were accepted as useful preliminary studies (extrinsic approach) but their literary and aesthetic relevancy was unanimously questioned, even if for very different reasons. Karl Robert Mandelkow has rightly pointed out that in Germany the obstacles were especially great so that not even a historically grounded sociology of readers could develop, such as evolved in other Western European countries since the 19th century.2 To name just one example, only recently have studies comparable to Beljame's books appeared within Germanistics. Because of its fixation on the genetic method, historicism can do no more than supplement traditional historical writing oriented toward producer and text when encountering reception and response processes. The history of impact is dissolved into an epic construction of cultural history: the ups and downs of popularity are seen as an index of reader competency vis-a-vis the absolute value of the text in question. The disadvantage of such reputation studies is that they do not question the relationship between text and concretization, which, of course, should be the main object of analysis. Reponse processes congeal into a series of facts whose van- ishing point remains the autonomous text and not its actualization. We can easily recognize why. Actualization is blasphemy for historicism which aims at an identification with a given historical period. Since historicism eliminates the idea of totality and thus progress, history can only partially be reconstructed, namely from the middle of the past epoch. Hans Robert Jauss' critique of this view is convincing: "Ranke's solution for the inherited problem of the philosophy of history was purchased at the price of cutting the thread between the past and the present of history, i.e., between the epoch 'as it actually was' and 'that which evolved from it'."3 Walter Benjamin's Theses on the Philosophy of History, which Jauss cites, express it even more clearly: "To articulate the past historically..,. means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger.... In every era the attempt must be made to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it."4

2. Karl Robert Mandelkow, "Probleme der Wirkungsgeschichte," Jabrbucb fiir Internatio- nale Germanistik, 2:1 (1970), 71-84. 3. Hans Robert Jauss, Literaturgescbicbte als Provokation der Literaturwissenschaft (Frank- furt am Main, 1970), p. 151. The second part (chs. V-XII) of the title essay of this book has been published in English as "Literary History as a Challenge to Literary Theory," New Literary History, 2:1 (Autumn 1970), 7-37. 4. Walter Benjamin, "Theses on the Philosophy of History," Illuminations (New York, 1968), p. 257.



RECEPTION AESTHETICS 31

The untouchable postulate of historicism that the present can be eliminated from historical construction, i.e., the principle of forgetting one's own situation, devalues reception study because the communicative processes registered are once more regarded as past and not brought into relation with the present. Finally, the epicizing tendency inherent in historicism also controls the history of impact. The latter can be experienced as a history of suffering of authors and their works, whereas it should be used as a critical instrument "to brush history against the grain."5

If the study of reception remains an embarrassment for historicism, which can at least integrate it by neutralizing its methodological implications, then for textual criticism, the older phenomenological school and Critical Theory the rejection of reception studies reflects an inherent necessity. The antipathy toward impact studies, which Adorno expressed several times, is closely related to his critique of a type of sociology of art which reduces the social aspect of the work of art to the recording of artistic appreciations. Adorno rightly objects to this form of sociologizing which reifies as psychological reaction that which is inherent in the work of art and can only be derived from it. In his Theses on the Sociology of Art, directed primarily against Alphons Silbermann and his school, Adorno justifies his reservations about impact studies. In the first thesis he states, "response is itself only one moment in the totality of those relations (between art and society). To separate it out and define it as the only worthy object for a sociology of art would substitute a methodological preference for an objective interest which forbids any prejudicial definition. In this case, the preference reflects the procedures of empirical social research, which claim to be able to ascertain and quantify the reception of works."6 As Adorno has explained in referring to Paul F. Lazarfeld, this objective interest in impact cannot ignore the social mechanisms and the deeper social structures that form the context of reception processes. Thus, it may appear as though Adorno's objection to empirical impact studies is only aimed at procedures that are based on experiences as primary and indisputable data. In fact, his objection has deeper causes. The sociology of art as conceptually postulated by Critical Theory has little use for the reception (the communicative aspect) of the work of art, in that it grasps the social relevance of a text primarily in the work itself. Adorno's emphatic concept of the work of art, sustained through all his writings, decrees its autonomy from socially determined communication. According to Adorno, the sociology of art focuses on the immanent social content which can be

5. Ibid., p. 259. 6. Theodor W. Adorno, "Thesen zur Kunstsoziologie," Ohne Leitbild: Parva Aesthetica (Frankfurt am Main, 1967), p. 94.




deciphered from the form and technique of the work. Hence it need not have recourse to the empirically derived or contingent reactions of reader or audience. The reader, spectator or listener does not appear as an independent category determining the work because Adorno never questions the hermeneutic act of understanding. Competence is assumed; the recipient is always an ideal construction which thus cannot violate the text. If this is not the case-as in the relationship between avant-garde art and the mass public-then the blame for this incompatibility lies with the public. Critical Theory mistrusts for good reason socially acceptable communication and its institutions; they are suspected of regression. In this way the reception process is tied to the work and not vice versa. Insofar as Adorno insists on the social content of artistic structure, he upholds the principles of representational aesthetics. The work of art, especially that of the avant-garde, is conceived as a monad that foregoes communication with reality and at the same time correlates with this reality. "Communication of the work of art with the external, with the world, to which blissfully or miserably it closes itself off, happens through non-communication. Here then it proves itself fragmented."7 Adorno's Aesthetic Theory only intensifies, the verdict of his Theses: "The study of impact neither touches art as a social phenomenon nor should it be allowed to dictate norms to art, a position it has usurped in the spirit of positivism."8 In other words, impact is only seen as external, and it is assumed that the authentic work of art is not produced with a view toward concrete expectations but, as it were, blindly. Adorno neglects to consider that the critical tendency attributed to the authentic work is itself only imaginable within the framework of a specific, socially mediated literary system. Because Critical Theory always views this system as alienated, however, it negates the relevancy of the system and substitutes for it the truth content of the authentic work. In the work lies the final authority and corresponding to it is "an objective faculty of perception which important autonomous works of art expect as the adequate attitude on the part of the observer, listener or reader."9 It follows from this that the freedom of the recipient is necessarily limited to a certain point of view if the aesthetic and social content is to mani- fest itself fully.10 Thus, Adorno's prejudice against reception studies has deeper roots than the justified mistrust toward a reduction of the sociology of art to

7. Adorno, Aesthetische Theorie, Gesammelte Schriften, 7 (Frankfurt am Main, 1970), p. 15. 8. Ibid., p. 339. 9. Ibid., p. 360. 10. See Adorno, "Typen des musikalischen Verhaltens," Einleitung in die Musiksoziologie (Frankfurt am Main, 1962), pp. 13-31.



RECEPTION, AES THE TICS 33

artistic experiences. Adorno's resistance is closely tied to his concept of the monadic work of art, on the one hand, and to his understanding of commercial- ized aesthetic communication under the conditions of advanced capitalism, on the other hand. This is also the source of Adorno's reservations toward Walter Benjamin's attempt to place reception at the center of artistic criticism and to choose the needs of the masses as the point of departure.

Mandelkow has shown clearly the obstacles toward reception studies that exist in New Criticism.11 Reader studies are classified as extrinsic in contrast to the intrinsic approach which focuses on the literary-aesthetic phenomenon itself. The same may be said of textual criticism. For Wolfgang Kayser and Emil Staiger the reader is always a well-informed interpretor of art who intuits the text. His subjectivity, which Staiger stresses explicitly as part of the hermeneutic process, only serves to comprehend the text, according to the assumptions of this school. It is always the individual reader who is confronted with the work of art. His concrete situation is irrelevant for the act of perceiving and evaluating; his activity is not decisive for the history of literature. Characteristically, Staiger again professes to historicism in his later studies,12 expecting from it a remedy for impressionistic subjectivism. Phenomenology (Ingarden) demands a more extensive examination, especially since it has become the point of departure for Wolfgang Iser's methodological reflections. As with Adorno, it is possible to identify an obvious reason for Ingarden's rejection of response studies: investigation of the reader and his reactions is suspected of psychologizing. If the reader's experience provided the key to the work or if this experience were even identical with the work, then the unity of the work of art would not be guaranteed: "For there would then have to be very many different Hamlets.... Every new reading would produce an entirely new work."13 Since such a conclusion seems absurd, a reception oriented approach is rejected from the outset. In formulating a generalized attack against empirical psychologizing, Ingarden apodictically cuts off the question whether (and to what extent) the reader

participates in constituting a text. Since he attempts to prove phenomenologi- cally that the work of art is an autonomous object, he isolates the question of

structuring and eliminates the impact caused by a work of art, i.e., the matrix of the recipient. This objectification, however, is then partially cancelled out.

According to Ingarden, the literary text is open vis-i-vis the recipient; it is a schematic structure requiring completion. It is a matter of "indeterminate spots"

11. Cf. Mandelkow, "Probleme,' 73f. 12. Cf. Staiger, Die Kunst der Interpretation (Zurich, 1955). 13. Roman Ingarden, The Literary Work of Art, transl. by George G. Grabowicz (Evan- ston, 1973), p. 15.




and "schematized views" which offer the reader the possibility of participating. "These concretizations are precisely what is constituted during the reading and what, in a manner of speaking, forms the mode of appearance of a work, the concrete form in which the work itself is apprehended."'14 Ingarden attempts to protect himself against all forms of psychological interpretation by carefully differentiating between concretization and psychic experience. The complex psychic processes in the reading act appear as a necessary condition of concretization but are not identical with it. For concretization depends precisely on the work itself and is determined by its structure. Therefore, it is grounded twice over. The ideal reader-who is not historically defined-participates only in a limited way in constituting a work. While the skeleton is an objective given, the reader is responsible for its completion. "We can deal aesthetically with a literary work and apprehend it live only in the form of one of its possible concretizations."15 At the same time, the objectivity of the work of art remains inviolable for Ingarden. The irritating question as to what happens when the concretizations deviate significantly from each other is repressed and Ingarden points to the possibility that the real work may be concealed by a reception that has severed its ties to the work: "A literary work can be expressed for centuries in such a masked, falsifying concretization until finally someone is found who understands it correctly, who sees it adequately and who in one way or another shows its true form to others."16 In other words, Ingarden too conceives of the changing actualization as something basically separate from the work, as he explicitly states: "There is nothing in the essence of the literary work itself that would necessitate change." 7 Ingarden does not fully develop the possibilities of a reception-oriented literary criticism and literary history implied in the concept of concretization because ultimately it is the static, idealistic view of the literary work which dominates. The initial question for reception studies as well as for structuralism (Barthes)-how can we reconstruct the meaning of a literary text-remains unproblematical for Ingarden. The changes which the work under- goes through external "subjective operations,"18 have to do only with the attitude toward the work, not with its substance, which is fixed with its being written. Thus, literary history can be represented in a twofold way: on the one hand, as the sum of unchanging literary objects, and on the other, as the variety

14. Ibid., p. 332. 15. Ibid., p. 336. 16. Ibid., p. 340. 17. Ibid., p. 345. 18. Ibid., p. 346.




of concretizations related to these objects ("articles, essays, discussions, attempts at interpretation"19). This view, to be sure, is not far removed from historicism.

The recent interest in the reader (recipient, addressee and consumer), the increasing attention paid to processes of literary communication, and the turn from representational aesthetics of reception (all developing in West and East Germany at about the same time) are contingent on complex causes of a theoretical, ideological and socio-historical nature. Because of these various motivations, the goals of reception studies can hardly be defined in a unified manner. All these differing trends, however, undermine the traditional concept of the work accepted by hermeneutics as well as by Marxist and Critical Theory. No matter how unrelated the projected models and theorems may seem or how much they even contradict one another, they must be understood as attempts and suggestions for transcending the familiar concept of literature. The fact that earlier answers (Schiicking, Sartre, Escarpit, Russian Formalism) have also been invoked only demonstrates that the problem is not a new one. Impact studies have become the focus of literary criticism because they offer new formulations for the problems of evaluation and history. Mandelkow notes that earlier studies in the history of impact leave something to be desired as far as methodological reflection is concerned,20 but this view must be qualified. Such studies usually conceal their epistemological goal rather than emphasizing it explicitly. Yet the motives are accessible. Both Julian Hirsch21 and Levin L. Schiicking's early essay (1913)22 underplay the question as to the possibility of an objective evaluation. The strict differentiation between descriptive and evaluative judgments leads positivistic literary criticism to the dilemma of relativism. If, under the premise of strict objectivity, evaluative judgments are separated in principle from factual judgments, then the former become a matter merely of taste, which in its turn achieves dignity as it comes to be considered as a material object. Literature dissolves into two related but not necessarily connected series of

19. Ibid., p. 349. 20. Mandelkow, "Probleme," 72. 21. Julian Hirsch, Die Genesis des Rubmes: Ein Beitrag zurMetbodenlebre der Gescbicbte (Leipzig, 1914). 22. Levin L. Schiicking, "Literaturgeschichte und Geschmacksgeschichte," GRM, 5 (1913), 561-577.




facts: the history of works (as a register of chronologically ordered texts) and the history of taste. The traditional literary canon, which earlier criticism had completely mythicized, reveals itself to the skeptical positivist as the result of complex socio-historically determined changes in taste which even the recognized masterpiece and the genius cannot escape. Upon acknowledging the illusion of a permanent literary value which, as it were, levels out after initial fluctuations, all that could be done given the assumptions of positivism was to study the evolution of taste. Reader history joined the history of works, or, in the case of Schiicking, the investigation of literary taste was declared the true goal of literary history. Except for the technical and methodological procedures necessary to implement the program, much of what later made its way into the program of an empirical sociology of audiences can already be found in Schiick- ing's 1913 essay. Taking obvious aim at the then current fashion of intellectual history (Geistesgeschichte), Schiicking demanded the abandonment of all abstract 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 to 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, to be supple- mented by cultural, geographical and anthropological perspectives. The resulting blur in his focus affected the method adversely and contributed perhaps to discredit Schiicking's undertaking. Even in his later works the empirical imple- mentation remained limited; it was left to Robert Escarpit and his school to 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 to at least make visible and thus to 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




the difference between an educated and a mass public23 and made suggestions for transcending the barriers without however considering the underlying social mechanisms to which this separation owes it origins and its perpetuation. Sar-

tre'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 If this relationship is defined as a contract of generosity and freedom in which the completion of the draft is left to 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 understand-

ing 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 to 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 to 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 to 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).




of indeterminacy. Just as it was possible only in retrospect to recognize the indeterminacy resulting from gaps in earlier texts, it would be necessary to illuminate simultaneously the position, competence and interest of the addressee group in order to avoid postulating an abstract literary change. G6tz Wienold27 has correctly pointed out the weakness of an aesthetics of reception which holds on to a traditional concept of literature and thus confines itself to textual analysis. Reception cannot be reduced to 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 to 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 to 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 to emerge. The return to a historical perspective after a phase of predominantly textual analysis in the 1950s made conscious the general crisis without resolving it. But its ties to 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 to be rejuvenated, the prejudices of historical objectivism must be removed and the traditional approach to literature must be replaced by an aesthetics of reception and impact.

27. Gbtz Wienold, "Textverarbeitung: Ueberlegungen zu einer Kategorienbildung in einer strukturalen Literaturgeschichte," in Peter Uwe Hohendahl, ed., Sozialgeschichte und

Wirkungsasthetik (Frankfurt am Main, 1974), pp. 97-134. 28. Jauss, Literaturgeschichte, p. 155.




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 to a reorientation in methodological consciousness-more clearly formulated in the West than in the East where scholars had to deal with the tradition of Lukics. The model postulates a definition of historicity where (in contrast to 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.

III

Empirical reception studies are a product of late 19th-century bourgeois literary scholarship. One of the reasons why reader studies receded and were even condemned between 1930 and 1960 is that they were closely associated with traditional positivism. For those positivist scholars following Taine's lead, literary history consisted of a process of production and consumption determined by a series of fundamental factors. The factors introduced by Taine (race, milieu, temps) remained vague and demanded empirical elucidation. The next generation, lead by Wilhelm Scherer in Germany and Gustave Lanson in France, assumed this task. In attempting to conceive literature as a system and to describe it in terms of its mechanisms, they both encountered the role of the reader and the literary public. Besides the Taine-tradition, the influence of Durkheim was also important for Lanson, since it prompted him to overcome the historian's aversion toward generalizing. Similarly, Scherer dissociated himself from the individualizing perspective of the Historical School in his later Lecture on Poetics (published posthumously in 1888) and moved toward a systematic analysis of literary structures. His early death prevented its completion so that German positivism in literary scholarship was relegated to source studies, and Schiicking was no longer aware of Scherer's preliminary studies. Under Durkheim's influence, Lanson, however, formulated already in 1904 a

29. Jauss, "Literary History," 9. 30. Robert Weimann, "Gegenwart und Vergangenheit in der Literaturgeschichte," second revised version in V. ?mega?, ed., Methoden der deutschen Literaturwissenschaft (Frankfurt am Main, 1971), p. 340.




socio-literary model in which the relation of author, text and reader was taken into account.31 Of his six theses, three dealt explicitly with processes of literary impact. The recognized formal possibilities and stylistic regularities of genres are understood as sedimentations of audience taste from the previous generation with which the producer must come to terms. In this way Lanson considers even the masterpiece as a collective achievement constituted by the author, the literary situation (i.e., literary tradition) and the public. The reverse is also true, namely, that a work of art determined in this way intervenes actively in the social structure and elicits reactions which can change the social system. Thus, Lanson conceives of literature as a web of mediations inside and outside of the work. Two directions must be differentiated. The literary system, determined by traditions such as stylistic conventions, genres, prevailing aesthetic norms, etc., influences society; literary communication translates into social action (in the form of discussions, critique, etc.). In reverse, the social system conditions the literary system by defining the goals of literary activity. This projected model was still far removed from an empirical operational procedure, but nonetheless it presented a theoretically articulated beginning. French literary scholarship has profited from it. For instance, Robert Escarpit, with Henri Peyre's encourage- ment, pursued Lanson's program while explicitly rejecting the earlier positivism which he accused of transposing methods of natural science onto cultural studies. Escarpit considers reader studies in connection with an empirically operative sociology of literature. It is based on literary facts such as book, reading habit, author and text. Literature represents for Escarpit a multi-dimensional frame of reference in which factors interact aesthetically, socially and economically. According to Escarpit, literary sociology (including reader studies) is concerned with such interactions and their constitutive institutions but not with textual structure itself. Sociology oriented toward texts or generic history (Luk~cs, Adorno) is typically rejected. The interest in reception is defined in conformance with this categorical pre-judgment: the reader appears as part of a socially stratified public, as buyer and consumer of books and as recipient who permits literary works to affect him. The work appears as a message directed at a public known to the author and as a commodity produced for a specific market. As a result, there arises an extensive field of study for reception scholarship for which Escarpit can hardly do more than present an outline. A few tasks may be mentioned:

31. Gustave Lanson, "L'histoire litteraire et la sociologie," Revue de Metaphysique et de Morale, 12 (1904), 621-642.




(1) a study of the reading habits of different groups in a society, as represented by purchasing and borrowing of books, literary preferences and educational background;

(2) statistically supported analyses of the literary market (economic base, estimates, selling techniques, distribution mechanisms);

(3) motivation and reading conditions; (4) determination of the author by his public or by various

sub-groups.

Some of those categories suggested by Escarpit could indeed be further differentiated in light of more recent investigations. Thus, the division of the public based on the French situation into an educated and a mass public is not only too crude but also too specific. For Escarpit assumes that the educated public represents a relatively homogeneous unity. He presupposes the unbroken influence of bourgeois cultural standards which hardly exist any longer in other advanced capitalist countries (USA, Germany, England). It would be necessary to examine whether the process of standardization which Escarpit identifies for the mass public has not already permeated the whole market by means of the capitalist book industry.

Escarpit's method is descriptive; it operates with a (partially formulated) model of socio-literary structures from which specific approaches and research projects can then be derived. Its ideal is a complete representation of all factors determining literary life; but the inner literary factors play a subordinate role. The relationship between external and internal aspects needs further clarifica- tion, for example, the differentiation between addressee and real public adopted by Sartre. Gotz Wienold32 has justifiably objected to research in literary communication because neither linguistic formalism nor empiricism have so far adequately defined the elementary communicative processes. His critique that reader studies limit themselves too frequently to the text-reader relation and utilize too narrow a definition of literature is least tenable in the case of Escarpit and Schiicking. They had already considered many problems mentioned by Wienold, even though they had not fully developed them theoretically. It may be that Wienold does not consider earlier empirico-historical research as a fore- runner of his own studies due to its lack of operative hypotheses, which is especially characteristic in Schiicking's work (first edition 1923).

32. Wienold, "Empirie in der Erforschung literarischer Kommunikation," in J. Ihwe, ed., Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik (Frankfurt am Main, 1972), pp. 311-322.




Nevertheless, Schiicking certainly would agree with Wienold's objection to the dogmatic separation of inner and extra-literary aspects and the subsequent reduction of reception studies to the text and the role of the reader. Schiicking considers literary taste a social phenomenon. In effect, the subjective reactions of readers are based on social circumstances such as belonging to a social group, etc. Thus, literature is understood as an open, non-autonomous system causally connected to the social infrastructure. In the same way, literary change cannot be described as an immanent process; rather it is only conceivable as the relation between production and change in taste which in turn originates from changes in the social structure. Method and research program are deduced from these fundamental assumptions: the correlation between social group and taste as well as between taste and production must be examined methodologically. In other

words, the central question is in what form social and behavioral ideals deter-

mining literary taste are constituted in a group and in what manner this taste influences literary production thereby causing changes in form and content. The

concept of taste is obviously no longer normative but descriptive. Norms of taste are variables, valid in the framework of concrete social strata and groups. Thus, the question of taste implies the other question about the advocates of taste. For

Schiicking its typical form (the type of advocate) becomes the key to a literary history of the reader. Advocates of taste are the connecting link between social and literary processes. Whether a work or a literary movement is successful will

depend on the strength and influence of this bearer of taste. Reader groups determine the popularity of literature and consequently the direction of the

literary dynamic. Should new reader groups emerge or establish themselves beside the older ones, then new norms will arise to satisfy their specific needs and these norms will in turn stimulate and control the producers. Therefore

Schiicking says provocatively: "What happens is not as a rule that a taste is modified, but that other persons become the advocates of a new taste."33 For this reason literary production seems, for Schiicking, to be exclusively determined by consumption, in contrast to traditional views. Taste is an indication of what the public (in each case understood as a social group) will expec~t and

support. This confined sociological focus permits Schiicking to offer an inter-

pretation of literary pluralism which was not accessible to the emanation theory developed by the history of ideas. The convergence and opposition of different reader groups and strata can explain the diverging literary movements within a

given period as well as radical literary change. Of course, it is apparent that the

concept of typical advocates of taste lends itself better to describing than to

33. Schuicking, The Sociology of Literary Taste (Chicago, 1966), p. 82.




explaining such changes. If the typical advocate of taste is defined as the expo- nent of the social group, then this construction has no more than heuristic value. It would be more useful to identify the material conditions from which specific cultural needs emerge which then result in taste. Schiucking has more in common here with intellectual history than he might assume, since occasionally he accepts literary ideals and preferences (in other words, cultural values) without questioning their basis. Yet his model stipulates social groups and classes as the active forces organizing literary production. This explanation ignores the dialectic of production and reception. Schiicking's theoretical model insists on a rigid causal nexus which does not fit the presented material. Although his historical outline encompasses the various spheres of literary life and as a result investigates the respective correlations (author-public-critic-publisher-distribu- tor), his theory offers a literary history which sets the aspect of group reception as absolute. The totality of social processes is not adequately heeded. Schiick- ing's perspective is limited to social groups and strata; these are treated as the infrastructure. Therefore, he is forced to ascribe literary shifts and changes in taste to particular units (bourgeoisie, women, etc.). Because literature since the 18th century can no longer be pressed into this mold, Schiicking occasionally must resort to secondary constructions which contradict his model. He explains the phenomenon of literary schools, for example, by pointing out that art is engendered by art-a formalistic interpretation incompatible with his theory.

There was little response to Schiicking's investigation in 1923, and even the second edition of 1931 could make no headway in scholarly circles because it ran counter to Geistesgeschichte as well as to volkisch tendencies. Objections were raised to the comparatively simple model as well as to the sketchy historical outline; they were directed at details, but in fact aimed at the whole approach. It is not accidental that the third edition appeared as late as 1961 (in the same year as the German translation of Escarpit's book). For it was not until the crisis of textual criticism was acknowledged that the socio-historical approach and reader studies again became acceptable. The postulated methodological pluralism of the early 1960s (basically itself a part of that crisis) facilitated the rise of empirical reception studies. They were understood as complementing established methods. Hans Norbert Fiigen's introduction to the sociology of literature (1964)34 provided the theoretical legitimation for this pluralism. The infringement of sociology on the work of art itself is rejected and the sociology of literature is reduced to the study of relations between the communicators

34. Hans Norbert Fiigen, Die Hauptrichtungen der Literatursoziologie und ibre Metboden, third edition (Bonn, 1968).




participating in literary life.35 In this kind of empirical literary sociology the connection between the social and literary aspect of the reader's role is severed. Audience sociology, according to Fiigen, must limit itself to social factors, whereas phenomenology is called upon to illuminate inner aspects of the work of art. Even Schiicking's and Escarpit's works would not have satisfied this rigorous separation. Inner-literary aspects are considered relevant in the social sphere only to the extent that a specific literary attitude between author and reader is assumed which eliminates any confusion between fictive and non- fictive statements. The correct perception that in literature the social is not exhausted by the representation of social relations36 becomes, by a slight of hand, a dogmatic barrier confining reception studies to the sphere of statistical verification. Since Filgen respects literary attitudes as an objective cultural paradigm preceding the sociology of literature, he avoids the significant question as to how literary attitudes are constituted under particular social conditions, how they change, etc. The assumption that literature can always be recognized as literature and, thus, that the attitude toward it comprises a constant is the sociological counterpart to that form of textual interpretation which ascribes an eternal nature to the work of art.

Intensified methodological reflection has generated empirical reception research but has also presented it with larger theoretical problems. Despite the growing number of specialized investigations, fundamental questions have still been left unanswered. Wienold, for instance, noted recently: "The image that arises from empiricism in the study of literary communication is scanty and dismal."37 The high expectations of understanding reception and impact processes with the aid of linguistic models have not been wholly fulfilled. The most concrete and acceptable results have emerged from the evaluations of question- naires handed out to selective groups, for example, by Eberhard Frey.38 In order to obtain information about reader reactions and evaluation processes, Frey presented his test subjects with excerpts from texts written by various authors and asked them for criticism. The results indicate that language competence and literary training significantly influence reactions and evaluations.

35. For Filgen, the subject matter of a sociology of literature is that "human activity which deals with literature and tries to further it and which, on close examination, reveals itself as a complex of forms of interhuman behavior." Ibid., p. 106. 36. Ibid., p. 115. 37. Wienold, "Empirie," p. 320. 38. Eberhard Frey, "What is Good Style? Reader Reactions to German Text Samples," Modern Language Journal, 56 (1972), 310-323.




Consensus about the aesthetic quality of a text increases if the test subjects come from a similar literary environment. Naturally linguistic and stylistic theories of communication ask mainly about the poetic qualities of literature and introduce, therefore, a normative and selective element, abridging the empirical investigation. Wienold has legitimately criticized this, reconsidering Adorno's question as to whether and how empirical procedures can apprehend literary communication (taken for granted by literary scholarship). Yet he avoids Adorno's agnosticism and recommends a semiological definition of literary processes of communication which introduces a broader concept of text and breaks with the traditional view of literature.39 Wienold suggests a general model which could preserve both the positivistic and phenomenological approaches. He is right in noting that reception studies can hardly be reduced to examining the author-reader relation; his charge that such a reduction underlies most of the previous studies is more questionable. This critique does not do

justice even to phenomenological reception studies, let alone to audience sociol-

ogy (Attick, Ford, Haferkorn, Engelsing). Conceptual obscurity can be held in

part responsible for this misunderstanding-Jauss, for instance, speaks of the reader, but his idealistic construct of the typical reader circumscribes a literary and social situation with a broad framework of communication. The horizon of

expectation postulated by Jauss implies agreement among the participants in

literary life. In this sense genre expectations are socially conditioned. Wienold's suggestion of 1971 aims at a general model of literary communica-

tion applicable to any situation. This explains its abstractness. It distinguishes point of departure, direction and kind of appropriation (e.g., simple and com-

plex feedback processes, multimedia processes, transitions from one medium to another). In this way an understanding of the complete breadth of reception processes is insured. The model could be concretized in an actual situation, that is, by means of a specific text or set of texts at a certain historical point in time. Specifically, Wienold demands of an empirical method that it develop procedures to elaborate objectively both the qualitative and quantitative aspects of appropriation. Thus he noted skeptically in 1972: "We lack not only valid

descriptions for the operations but also an appropriate methodology for examin-

ing reactions."40 Yet we should first ask whether the model does not require certain additions to enable it to encompass the totality of literary life. Wienold restricts his concept to communicative acts determined by a point of departure, a goal and a carrier of communication (adaptor). Literary life consists then of

39. Wienold, "Textverarbeitung," p. 97. 40. Wienold, "Empirie," p. 321.




the ensemble of such communicative acts (translations, discussions, reviews, paraphrases, productions, etc.). The institutional basis of such communicative processes is implicitly accepted-press, academe, theatre, which codetermine the form and content of communicative structures. Scholarship cannot succeed without confronting these institutional foundations because the self-image as well as the objective situation of communicators is usually prejudiced by the institutional framework. Especially in the case of diachronic investigations the explicit disclosure of the institutional basis is indispensable. To name but one example, an 18th-century literary debate follows different "laws" than a debate in the 20th century. 17th-century translations are bound by different prerequisites than those of the 19th century. Communications theory needs to be embedded in investigations about sustaining institutions and their social and economic backgrounds.

This is the point where sociological and psychological research in communication would coincide with literary reception studies. Wienold is right in identifying Roland Barthes' distinction between the institutional and the psychological side of literature as unsatisfactory. Yet, it is not enough simply to point out that, e.g., the normative suppositions of literary criticism are part of the literary system under question. The emergence and ideological justification of such norms can only be discussed with reference to the institutions which make them feasible. Wienold rightfully insists on regarding codifications and changes in evaluation as parts of literature, and as such accessible to systematic and historical analysis. Yet, it will not suffice to simply register them, but rather it will be necessary to clarify the institutional context. Only such a broadening of perspective will allow "a structuring of evaluative formulations [andj norms in such a way that a description of change will become possible."41 Wienold indicates an institutional approach with his suggestion to consider literary evaluation as a game in which literary partners participate according to standardized (yet changeable) rules. It remains to be seen whether game theory can provide an important contribution, but it is certain that the specific needs of participants must be taken into account. It is not a question of an abstract process of aesthetic evaluation but rather, due to real interests, usually a question of complex (and ideological) decisions. Who has the right to judge literature and who is supposed to accept these judgments in a communicative system? Those are problems to be investigated immediately, but a descriptive model will hardly explain their practical implications if it does not reflect on the interests of those investigating. It must not be forgotten that the questioning subject is itself a part

41. Wienold, "Textverarbeitung," p. 115.




of literary life, and that his perceptions and assumptions act upon literary life and influence it. The meta-language of scholarship cannot be excluded as neu- tral. For example, it would be possible given a sufficiently sophisticated model, to describe the mechanisms which play a role in formulating the literary canon (predominance of reader groups, preferences, repression, control exercised by criticism), but it would not be possible to comprehend whether the conditions so described are justified or not. Unacknowledged pre-dispositions can distort a problem already in its formulation, as in the case of research on popular literature. On the basis of stratifications found in literary life the sphere of popular (i.e., bad) literature is supposedly defined objectively, although it would make more sense to reveal the hidden norms behind such distinctions in order to identify popular literature as a special case of canonization. However, it is not

permitted to separate clarifying a subject matter from taking a position on it. When Wienold demands of reception studies: "Canons of all kinds, codifications, repertoires, text selections in programs of institutions disseminating texts such as press, radio, television, videotape, should be analyzed specifically from a perspective sensitive to participation in structuring opportunities of stratified, non-homogeneous communicative systems,"42 then the question again arises as to how this participation might be evaluated.

IV

The present state of empirico-analytical reception research can be adequately summarized in the following way: the juxtaposition of representational and reception aesthetics becomes increasingly meaningless as a more complete model emerges which takes both production and consumption into consideration. In this respect, we can identify a convergence with East German attempts in the field of literary scholarship. From the outset Marxist scholars were interested in integrating the reception model into the dominant aesthetics of representation.43 Against the background of the authoritative view oriented toward the base/superstructure relation, their attitude wavers between intensive, although critical interest and relative tolerance of an area of scholarship considered secondary. Although it was seldom admitted, the theoretical stimuli for revalu- ating the Marxist position came undeniably from the West. Especially the work of Weinrich, Jauss and Escarpit provoked a response, as has become clear from

42. Ibzd., p. 132. 43. Cf. Mandelkow, "Rezeptionsiisthetik und marxistische Literaturtheorie," in Histori- zitdt in Sprach- und Literaturwissenschaft, ed. by Walter Miiller Seidel (Munich, 1974), pp. 379-388.




the reactions. Moreover, the growing scholarly exchange in the field of linguistics in the 1960s undoubtedly benefited reception theory indirectly. The new contacts gave rise to questions which had not been foreseen by orthodoxy. For example, in literary history influenced as it was by Georg Lukaics the reader as a problematical category was non-existent. Lukics' late interest in questions concerning the aesthetics of impact in his Aesthetik (1963) only confirms this state of affairs. Here too the priority of production over reception is assumed. Independent Marxist views from the 1920s and 1930s (Brecht, Benjamin) were for the most part overlooked, and the relevant comments in Marx's and Engels' writings were not taken up until later. Nonetheless, by the 1960s the confronta- tion with aesthetics of reception could no longer be avoided in East Germany on theoretical and practical grounds. In 1970 Robert Weimann openly pointed to the cultural-political interest: "Whereas during the postwar years the historical materialist prerequisites first had to be acquired and the irrational and national- istic falsification of German literary history rejected, in the following years it was possible to consider not only the historical genesis of literature but also more consistently its contemporary impact in forming personality and con- sciousne ss. ,43 a

The discussion of Russian Formalism and its concept of literary history, which had been cut off earlier in the Soviet Union, reentered East German scholarship in the 1960s by way of Czech and French variants of structuralism (West Germany had already treated the subject). This explains why East German scholarship appropriated reception theory primarily from the perspective of the history of philosophy, whereas other aspects such as communications theory and semiotics have remained in the background. Jauss' study was considered a challenge not only because of its critique of Marxist literary theory. Even objectively it had to be the center of the debate because Jauss, more than Iser, Weinrich and the empirical theorists, took up the problem of historicity with the question of hermeneutics. Fundamental theoretical decisions were at stake, as can also be seen in Bernd Jiirgen Warneken's (West German) critique of Jauss' model.44 Closely connected to this theoretical interest is the wish for more empirical information about the new socialist literary public. The critique of bourgeois reading culture, such as Klaus Ziermann offered,45 should be complemented by an inventory of reader attitudes in East Germany. Characteristically the discussion in this research area has been influenced by positivistic-empirical methods

43a. Weimann, "Gegenwart," p. 340f. 44. Bernd Jiirgen Warneken, "Zu Hans Robert Jauss' Programm einer Rezeptionsiisthetik," in Peter Uwe Hohendahl, ed., Sozialgeschichte und Wirkungsdsthetik (Frankfurt am Main,

1974), pp. 290-296. 45. Klaus Ziermann, Romane vom Fliessband (Berlin Ost, 1969).




(Escarpit, Hofstitter). East German scholars seem to find empirical approaches more tolerable than the Marxist theorists in West Germany. (Warneken's harsh critique of Fiigen may serve as an example.46) Naturally they do not accept the

methodological axiom that research must be value-free; empirical investigations clearly serve the cultural-political goals of strengthening the socialist literary public. Achim Walter's essay on socially conditioned reader motivation47 makes it obvious that there is more to empirical reader studies in East Germany than the simple working through of a new research object. First, the position and function of an empirically operating sociology had to be secured. Manfred Naumann's critique of empirical methods,48 which Walter alludes to, demonstrates all too clearly how narrow the range is for developing an empirical descriptive model. By labeling all empirical, statistical work as bourgeois, Naumann indirectly places East German sociology under suspicion of revision- ism. Walter tries to extricate East German empirical reader studies from this reproach. He is right in differentiating between positivistic empiricism and descriptive procedures which can be integrated into materialism. Walter then demands to investigate subjective processes of consciousness which occur in literary life. For according to him, insight into these processes will lead to understanding how and to what extent literature as part ot the superstructure affects the social infrastructure. Walter stresses here the formative effect of literature on community and personality in contrast to its reflective (wider- spiegelnd) character, emphasized by Lukics in his aesthetics. Correspondingly, subjective motivations (unlike statistically registered facts about selling and borrowing) necessitate more exhaustive examination. But by relating his analysis to the social structure Walter avoids separating the subjective-psychical from the objective-social processes.

Taken literally, the goal is not to illuminate individual reading experiences but rather to understand that which may generally be expected and demanded. Motivational research is concerned at the same time with shaping motivations. The reader as partner is not only to be questioned but also to be exhorted. Because the habitual dispositions of social behavior can be learned, the discussion revolves around the optimal conditions under which "individual aspects in

46. Warneken, "Zur Kritik der positivistischen Literatursoziologie," in Literaturwissen- schaft und Sozialwissenschaft, I, second edition (Stuttgart, 1972), pp. 81-150. 47. Achim Walter, "Sozial bedingte Lesemotivation," in Hohendahl, Sozialgeschichte, pp. 269-289. 48. Manfred Naumann, "Literatur und Leser," Weimarer Beitrdge, 16:5 (1970), 95.




shaping motivations can be [incorporatedj into socially desirable and necessary behavior without limiting their subjective side."49 Impact studies imply, therefore, interest in specific responses, namely in the functions of cognition, enjoyment, and experience which together constitute an adequate aesthetic experience. In this spirit Dietrich Sommer and Dietrich Loffler tried to describe and evaluate reader behavior in East German society using the example of Hermann Kant's novel Die Aula (The School Auditorium). Just as Walter, they integrate into their empirical investigation the presumption that even in reading behavior socialist society must differ fundamentally from capitalist society. The split between an educated and a popular public, introduced as a matter of course by Escarpit and others into their investigations, is considered untenable for socialist

society, as the authors assert in their preliminary remarks: "Marxist-Leninist

impact studies contribute to an optimal shaping of the revolutionary social function of our literature which promotes increasingly the development of a unified aesthetic culture in socialist society."50 In this respect, empirical reception studies in East Germany are responsible for projecting patterns of literary communication which guarantee a maximal impact for realistic literature. In the search for literary experiences which would have an immediate impact on the

community, interest has focused on the identification of the reader with the

positive hero. Bernhard Zimmerman has noted that methodologically the authors are not so far removed from Escarpit, for they share the view that ade-

quate reception is characterized by recognition and acceptance of the author's intention.51 This means that deviant readings are registered but finally disquali- fied. Thus, Sommer/Loffler indicate in their interpretation of readers' responses to Kant's novel "that, despite the differences expressing the special interests of

specific groups and individuals, the general public is potentially united in its

opinion.''52 In order to measure the correspondance of intended textual mean-

ing and actual reader reaction, they introduce Peter R. Hofstitter's polarity profile. The semantic differential indicates the preference of the reader for the

positive hero of socialist realism. Because the norm of the socialist hero is

already written into the questionnaire, the expected and actual (i.e., tested) reactions are identical. Such impact studies assume the role of a mediating corrective between the aesthetic and socializing content of the works and the

49. Walter, "Lesemotivation," p. 276. 50. Dietrich Sommer/Dietrich Loffler, "Soziologische Probleme der literarischen Wirkungs- forschung," Wiemarer Beitrage, 16:8 (1970), 51. 51. Bernhard Zimmerman, unpublished paper, February, 1972. 52. Sommer/L6ffler, "Soziologische Probleme," 57.




reading behavior of the public, i.e., the totality of recipients. And indeed in both directions: questioning and testing are supposed to illuminate what society expects from the reader (identification with the exemplary intention of the work), and they also serve to criticize the work if the latter fails to provoke a widespread popular impact. East German impact research has distanced itself from the tendency inherent in formalistic reception studies to critically dismiss the fixation on content and its meaning and to put all the emphasis on individual actualizations. The East German critics continue to postulate the existence of an objective meaning as well as the possibility of its correct reconstruction. Conse- quently reception studies assume the function of examining whether the concretization has realized or missed this meaning. Viewed schematically, misinterpre- tation may arise for two reasons: lack of training on the reader's part or insufficient clarity of the message in the work itself. In the first case, research takes on a didactic role by offering instruments for improving the level _- aesthetic education; in the second case, it indicates to the author why his literary communication is insufficient. Production and consumption begin to approach each other in such a way that "the tendency toward a unity of ideational content and artistic quality on the one hand and their correspondance to the growing social needs and to the recipients' relatively adequate ability to enjoy on the other hand" must become apparent.53 Such reception studies are critical in respect to specific moments in literary life (such as representation and understanding) but not, however, in relation to the theory of socialist realism. Reader participation means that the reader realizes a pre-established ideal (the socialist image of man). The narrow orientation of empirical research to specific aesthetic norms limits the correct insight that in the long run impact cannot be explained by a cybernetic model but rather only by an analysis of the totality of social inter- dependencies.54

The practical interest of East German empirical research in defining the mechanisms of the literary public corresponds to the theoretical interest of methodologists in clarifying the relationship between the present and literary tradition. GDR research adheres to the Marxist-Leninist theorem that bourgeois literature, as long as it was progressive, can be considered the predecessor of socialist culture. Georg Lukics wrote mainly about bourgeois literature and rejected the experiments of proletarian writers in the 1920s and early 1930s.55

53. Ibid., 71. 54. Ibid., 74. 55. Cf. Georg Lukiics, "Reportage oder Gestaltung? Kritische Bemerkungen anlisslich des Romans von Ottwalt," Literatursoziologie (Neuwied, 1961), pp. 122-156. Also Helga Gallas,

Marxistischbe Literaturtheorie (Neuwied and Berlin, 1971), pp. 119-130.




According to Lukaics, as long as no independent socialist culture existed, only the progressive traditions in bourgeois literature could serve as model. The canon of classical realists from Goethe to Thomas Mann has a direct, binding value. Only those aspects in works of art are historically relativized which link them to their period of genesis. For any reading experience, however, the objective meaning must be presumed. In Lukics' aesthetics, then, the problem of appropriation appears from the outset as a question of correct reading and critical understanding of the form-content relation. For Lukics, reception is a gradual process extending from a naive familiarization with the fictive world to a reflective differentiation of elements of form and content. Passive moments predomi- nate: in contrast to the author, the reader assumes primarily a contemplative role. In Lukaics system reception and impact are successive processes. Passive reception is followed by the "ensuing impact"56 in which the experience of art is transferred into social activity. Aristotelian theory obviously provides the model for this definition. The mediating concept is Aristotelian catharsis; it connects inner experience with social action. The fundamental relationship between productivity and receptivity indicated here delineates the conception of the reception process. When the work of art represents the unity of a homogeneous diversity (microcosm), then the recipient enters at least temporarily into this second reality. To experience art means to appropriate the previously alien into the self from which the recipient then goes forth thinking and acting in new and changed ways. Lukaics refuses, however, to derive this action directly from the work of art or to place the work of art exclusively at its service. He defines impact as the transformation of cognitive and emotional experience into social behavior in general. "'Naturally the individuality of one single work can often mean a complete change in someone's life."57 In contrast to Sartre, who sees the act of writing as an appeal to the reader to complete the work by concre- tizing it, Lukaics tends to underemphasize the socially constructive aspect of literature. The active character of literature appears mediated through individual literary experiences. The addressee is the individual, not the group or the mass, and surprisingly it is an abstract individual. Lukics pays even less attention to the socio-cultural conditions which structure the reader's reception competence. He acknowledges such factors but does not develop them.

This may be the reason why reception theory in the GDR derives little inspira- tion from Lukics but rather seeks discussion with the phenomenological and

56. Lukics, Aesthetik, vol. 1, part 1 (Neuwied/Berlin, 1963), p. 809. See also Werner Mittenzwei, "Die Brecht-Lukaics-Debatte," Argument, 10:1/2 (1968), 12-43, esp. 33ff. 57. Lukacs, "Das Nachher des rezeptiven Erlebnisses," reprinted in Hohendahl, Sozial- geschichte, p. 196.




structural approaches in the West. The provocation lay in Jauss' claim to reveal the social function of literature by means of reception aesthetics-in effect, to reveal the socially constructive function by not focusing on reality as the determining factor but by investigating the power of change generated by literature itself. Jauss directs his central criticism of Marxist theory (still present in the third edition) at its alleged adherence to the "mimetic function" (abbildende Funktion) of art rather than seeing the possibility implied by Marx of considering literature in the context of the concept of labor. According to Jauss, the sociologizing which he ascribes to Marxist theory in general (i.e., the direct derivation of artistic production from specific socio-economic conditions) would deny any active role of literature. "Whoever restricts art to reflection also limits its impact to the recognition of that which has already been comprehended-the renounced heritage of Platonic mimesis avenges itself here."58 The transformation of Marxist theory which Jauss suggests in the third edition of his book (following Werner Krauss, Karel Kosfk and Roger Garaudy) would interpret the relationship of art and reality onesidedly in the sense that art influences social action-a bias which Marxist theorists have rejected with good reason because it is incompatible with a materialist position. Warneken rightly objects to Jauss' critique: "For Jauss genesis, structure and function disjoin to the disadvantage of the first two factors; he can only conceive of these in terms of a sociology of knowledge or an intrinsic criticism, thus isolating either the genesis or the work."59 Consequently, the framework for a theory of reception in the GDR can be formulated in the following manner: the formalistic problematization of history and the question about the possibility of actualizing the literary heritage for the East German literary public suggest a shift in theory. In 1970 Naumann and Weimann took up the discussion in the pages of Weimarer Beitrdge. They admitted the significance of Jauss' question while rejecting the idea that his suggestions could eliminate the dilemma of literary history. Naumann is cogent in arguing that only to a limited degree can the potential of literature to change consciousness be regarded as a socially constructive force. In other words, new perception of circumstances hardly implies by necessity a change in social praxis. Naumann, therefore, even prefers the empiricist Escarpit because he takes into consideration what phenomenological reception aesthetics does actually overlook: that the reader is a member of a real society that determines in many ways his scope of consciousness and action. Of course, Marxist theory cannot stagnate at the level of an analysis of literary facts. Marx's introduction to the Critique of

58. Jauss, Literaturgeschichte, p. 162. 59. Warneken, "Zu Hans Robert Jauss," p. 293.




Political Economy (185 7) offers the point of departure. Any theory of reception based on Marx's authority cannot ignore his comment on the genesis and function of classical art: "But the difficulty is not in grasping the idea that Greek art and epos are bound up with certain forms of social development. It lies rather in understanding why they still constitute for us a source of aesthetic enjoyment and in certain respects prevail as the standard and model beyond attainment."60 Karel Kosik has pointed out that this remark transcends its specific meaning as related to classical art and that it indicates the fundamental problem of historicity.61 Experience tells us that works of art do not disappear with the relations of production from which they have originated. For the many variants of historical determinism this experience is inexplicable. For, if one assumes that social relations condition the work of art and that consequently it is to be understood as the unique expression of these special relations, then it would be condemned to disappear as soon as the situation changes. Its truth content would be reduced to the period of genesis, and its contemporary public would become the only relevant recipient. The experience, however, that past works of art "live," that-as Marx claims-they still "afford us aesthetic enjoyment" although they have been historically superceded, demands a non-reductive historical model which can do justice to the posteriority of works of art. Naumann speaks of a reappropriation out of the diachronic process in which the work of art is situated "as a product. Reappropriation can then raise the work of art to the synchronic level of a present where it functions and lives."62 Here he approaches Kosik's hypothesis that historicity is not unique and unrepeatable, but rather that it includes the possibility of functioning in concretizations beyond its own period of genesis.6 3 According to this view, history is construed as a sequence of events in which human subjects (acting within extant relations) produce processes, which they then recognize as their past. These processes are not only markings in the current of history but also results that must be reappro- priated. Therefore, it is not necessary to ascribe a transcendent character in the Platonic sense to the work of art, for the Absolute and Universal "is reproduced in every epoch as a particular result and as something specific."64 The product entering into history can be utilized by later generations. Thus, the present, as a

60. Karl Marx, The Grundrisse, ed. and transl. by David McLellan (New York, 1971), p. 45. 61. Karel Kosik, "Historism and Historicism," chapter from Die Dialektik des Konkreten (Frankfurt am Main, 1967). Reprinted in this issue. 62. Naumann, "Literatur und Leser," 94. 63. Kosik, in this issue on page 67. 64. Ibid., 71.




permanently shifting horizon, does not face a past devoid of life but confronts results which are indelibly integrated into the present. Works of art live because they have "permanently enriched the human subject."65 In this sense Weimann speaks of the changed task of literary history to reconstruct its historicity out of its present relationship to past literature. The intention of reconsideration cannot be simply a renewal of literary history, as von Wiese, Sengle and others have demanded, but must be-and this is where the history of impact establishes its paradigmatic importance-a redefining of the concept of history which informs the representation of literary history. Weimann then concludes that reception research has a function of opening up problems. However, it can offer no valid solutions as long as it isolates the history of genesis from that of impact. Literature is at once the reflex of the period of genesis and of posteriority (as a process of concretization). Past and present are not to be separated. If, according to Marx, the "historical development amounts in the last analysis to this, that the last form considers its predecessors as stages leading up to itself and always perceives them from a single point of view, since it is very seldom and only under certain conditions that it is capable of self-criticism,"66 then historical reconstruction of the past cannot ignore the present and must consider preceding forms in the light shed on them by the last one. Command of the past assumes command of the present rather than excluding it, as historicism would have it. In this sense, it would be necessary to reverse what Weimann says about the relationship of the history of genesis to that of impact. While he postulates that consciousness of historical impact must draw on genetic history, it would be more reasonable to assume that genetic history becomes sensible only when it draws on the history of impact. "For it is not a question of presenting literary works in the context of their time, but rather of describing the time which

recognizes them, i.e., our own time, by evolving the time that gave rise to them."67 Therefore, making available the literary heritage to the masses is no solution as long as they cannot grasp these traditions.

The reader as a member of contemporary society stands at the end of a communicative chain, but in the process of appropriating the literature of the

past he produces his literary history. Weimann, however, emphasizes rightly that this contemporary consciousness is once again the product of impact derived from past literature. In other words, the recipient's consciousness is to a certain extent pre-structured by whatever he has acquired and made into his own

65. Ibid., 74. 66. Marx, The Grundrisse, p. 40. 67. Benjamin, "Literaturgeschichte und Literaturwissenschaft," Angelus Novus (Frankfurt am Main, 1966), p. 456.




product. Here positivistic empiricism falls behind the goal of historiography because it lets literary life congeal into facts from which the subject has been eliminated. Fiigen's suggestion to separate literary criticism and literary sociology breaks up the dialectical unity of production and reception, and as a result suppresses the critical cognitive value of reception studies. Marx's Critique of Political Economy describes the manner in which production relates to consumption. Consumption determines production (including works of art) in two ways: only consumption makes the product into a useful object ("a garment becomes a real garment only through the act of being worn,"68 the novel really becomes a novel through the act of being read); and moreover, actual consumption becomes an indicator of needs to be filled by new production. In reverse, production determines consumption in three ways: in terms of content by delivering the object (the novel which can be read); formally, by influencing the ways and means of consuming (e.g., by influencing the specific attitude appropriate to the consumption of the literary work); and, finally, by determining the consumer whose attitude and needs are formed by the product ("The object of art... creates an artistic public, appreciative of beauty"69). For this reason, Marx speaks of "consumptive production" and "productive consumption." Literary reception, as a special case of consumption, is then the key to understanding literary production, of course, not in the sense of a deterministic external factor but rather as part of the dialectical relationship indicated above. Thus outside interference aimed at politically manipulating consumption can do justice to this relationship only if production has already created the conditions. Otherwise production would become one-sidely constrained. Assuming a fully developed socialist literary public implies the danger of stipulating the antici- pated ideal conditions of reception as given and then decreeing what shall be read. In this capacity reception studies would evolve as control mechanisms whereas they are intended as a critical instrument for historical understanding. As a result, the production norm would be derived from the assumed needs of the readers. This variant of impact theory which would treat the reader as a stencil would be the matching opposite of that abstract aesthetics of reception, rightly criticized by Naumann, which transfers the concept of the reader entirely into the text and thus eliminates the concrete addressee and his needs as derived from the fundamental social relations.

68. Marx, The Grundrisse, p. 24f. 69. Ibid., p. 26.




V

We cannot ignore the question as to why Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history-which could make an essential contribution to a materialistic theory of reception-has scarcely been absorbed by literary scholarship in East Germany. One reason may be that Benjamin's literary remains were controlled primarily by the Frankfurt School, and under Adorno's influence reception of the later writings was delayed. Probably more important is the fact that these later writings (having produced such an explosive effect in West Germany after 1965) did not coincide with the fundamental cultural policies in East German literary scholarship. Their attempt to integrate the bourgeois-humanistic tradition into contemporary socialism would have found a critical observer in Benjamin. In an essay on Eduard Fuchs he commented skeptically on the idea of cultural history: "Cultural history, to be sure, enlarges the weight of the treasure which accumulates on the back of humanity. Yet cultural history does not provide the strength to shake off this burden in order to be able to take control of it. The same is true for the socialist educational efforts at the turn of the century which were guided by the star of cultural history."70 Benjamin views critically any faith in continuity or belief in development and progress. His reflections on history defy basic hermeneutic categories; the process of cognition is understood as an intervention that recovers from the past what the present situation demands. Benjamin's comments on the importance of reception, as presented in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, cannot be

separated from the related and interpenetrating thoughts on history. They are useless for empirical positivism because they remain essentially speculative, but neither can they be easily assimilated into an orthodox Marxist position. Helmut Lethen has attempted to claim them for Marxist theory.71 Despite his justified critique of the Frankfurt School and its suppression of materialist aspects in Benjamin's writings, his undertaking was not without its own limitations. In order to establish parallels with Brecht, Lethen excludes, for instance, the theological, messianic motifs as explicated in the Theses on the Philosophy of History. But it is only by recognizing the interaction of these motifs with the materialist postulates that one can comprehend the direction and singularity of Benjamin's comments on the history of reception. Lethen and Habermas have

70. Benjamin, "Eduard Fuchs: Collector and Historian," New German Critique, 5 (Spring 1975), 36. 71. Helmut Lethen, "Zur materialistischen Kunsttheorie Benjamins," alternative, 56/7 (1967), 225-234.




demonstrated that they cannot be integrated into the formulations of Critical Theory.72 Benjamin's critique follows the twofold goal of explaining the bourgeois concept of art with its inherent mode of reception, and of differentiating mass reception from the fascist misuse of art for mass suggestion. The concept of aura, which points to the traditional relationship between the work of art and the observer, assumes a central critical function because it helps to describe the radical change in the historical context of art. By identifying the loss of aura in the 19th century as the disappearance of the traditionally established cultic relationship, Benjamin exposes the problem of bourgeois aesthetic enjoyment which once more, though in vain, attempted to stop qualitative change by stressing the autonomy of art. The present situation which Adorno conceives primarily as manipulation of the masses under the culture industry provides the possibility of emancipation for the masses in Benjamin's historical construction. The deritualization of art, which in the early modern period made its autonomy possible and then later undermined precisely this autonomy, requires art's use by the masses who are unfamiliar with the contemplative attitude demanded by auratic art. Benjamin casually registers the shock of the art connoisseur confronted by this process: "The greatly increased mass of participants has produced a change in the mode of participation. The fact that the new mode of participation first appeared in a disreputable form must not confuse the spectator.,73 Not concentration but distraction is expected from the mass public, that is, critical distraction. Thus, according to Benjamin, collective reception becomes an instrument of political praxis, a dimension which is eliminated from advanced bourgeois dealings with art characterized by a cultivation of private contempla- tion. It becomes such an instrument due to the technical means of production enabling the mass reproduction of works of art. As Benjamin suggests, that such products may be art is a function which "later may be recognized as incidental."74

If the aura disappears, that is, if the distance of the authentic disappears and the reproduced object comes into the hands of the masses, then the question of the relationship between producer and recipient must be reformulated. Benjamin's hope to overcome the "disreputable form" of mass consumption rests on the assumption that under the conditions of modern technology the receivers can at any time become authors. For instance, the public would enter

72. Jurgen Habermas, "Bewusstmachende oder rettende Kritik-die Aktualitiit Walter Benjamins," in Zur Aktualitiit Walter Benjamins, ed. by S. Unseld (Frankfurt am Main, 1972), pp. 173-223. 73. Benjamin, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction," in Illumina- tions, p. 241. 74. Ibid., p. 227.




into a permanent critical dialogue with itself by extending its work to the new media of film, etc. Benjamin credits the masses with the ability to unite (without external assistance) aesthetic pleasure and scientific knowledge-separate foci in the advanced bourgeois culture industry. Benjamin's confidence (not shared by Adorno) that the obvious manipulation of the masses in advanced capitalism can be liquidated derives from his examination of tendencies both on the level of the infrastructure and superstructure. Associated with the mechanical repro- ducibility of art is a change in perception which releases new energies and can no longer be retracted. This means: the products resulting from technology mediate the changed form of consumption (mass reception through distraction), and the new consumption in turn mediates needs as well as production. Insofar as photography and film cannot be subsumed under the traditional concept of art, they reach the masses. The masses begin to develop a critical perception, not by means of cultural training but merely by living with the works. It is a matter of changing experience, but not necessarily of crippling it, as Critical Theory has suggested (Adorno, Tiedemann). "The deritualization of art contains the risk that the work of art will surrender its experiential content with its aura and become no more than banal; on the other hand, the disintegration of aura introduces the possibility of generalizing and making permanent the experience of happiness."75 Breaking with the cultic basis of art must have repercussions on our relationship to ancient art and literature. The historicist position of identification which affirms tradition and presumes "the values of eternity and mys- tery" becomes impossible. If the past is to be reconstructed, then it must be salvaged from the spell of historical ruins, for "the true picture of the past flits by. The past can be seized only as an image which flashes up at the instant when it can be recognized and is never seen again."7 Benjamin's attempt at rescue relies on materialism because materialism alone possesses the ability "to brush history against the grain."77 The historian must protest the appropriation of history by the ruling class: he must attempt "to wrest tradition away from... conformism."78

There is a controversy as to whether Marxist materialism and the messianic construction of history are integrated in Benjamin's later writings. Jilrgen Habermas considers the attempt unsuccessful: "This attempt had to fail because the anarchic conception of present times-which virtually penetrate destiny

75. Habermas, "Bewusstmachende oder rettende Kritik," p. 199. 76. Benjamin, "Theses," p. 257. 77. Ibid., p. 259. 78. Ibid., p. 257.




intermittently from above-cannot be easily assimilated into the materialist theory of social development."79 The discussion of this point has undoubtedly not yet come to an end. One would have to consider, for example, that Benja- min's objection to historical continuity as perceived by historicism dissolves the process-like character of history based on human labor. In Benjamin's words: "In this structure [the historical materialist] recognizes the sign of a Messianic cessation of happening, or put differently, a revolutionary chance in the fight for the oppressed past."80 Here we find the reasons why orthodox Marxism has been hesitant in allowing Benjamin's thoughts to enter into its system. Historical experience which pierces conformity and frees the past from the rubble of tradition (the continuity of eternal sameness) is-for Benjamin-insepa- rable from messianic detemporalization.

The orthodoxy raises similar objections to Sartre's analysis of the relationship between author and reader. In the East they are mentioned with reserve, in the West the Frankfurt School, especially Adorno, has countered them: the central idea of commitment seemed a reduction of the problem of art and society in the

period of advanced capitalism. Thus, Sartre's thoughts played a relatively minor role among German leftists although they demonstrably influenced historical

literary criticism in France. French theory of reception is strongly indebted to the study What is Literature?81 Only through the mediation of German Roman- ists (Weinrich, Jauss) was its importance recognized in Germany, even though the socially critical element was retained only in the watered-down form of literature's socially constructive force. For Sartre, addressing the reader was

something much more concrete, namely an emancipatory pact between author and the respective progressive segment of recipients. Whereas in the 17th century the leading reader stratum was a parasitic social group urging the author to confirm its belief in the permanence of its social order, the rise of the initially unpolitical bourgeosie in the 18th century gave to the homme de lettres for the first time an opportunity to emancipate himself from his public. The author raised himself to guardian of that which still waited to be realized, interpreting his work, thus, as a force for changing society. No matter how abstract this address remained, it did evolve from the unreflected interests of a rising class; moreover, it encompassed a concrete addressee. In contrast, the situation in the 19th century, after the bourgeoisie had established itself, saw the writer once

again in the service of a class expecting ideological legitimation of the social status quo. He had to surrender or write against his public. In the latter case,

79. Habermas, "Bewusstmachende oder rettende Kritik," p. 207. 80. Benjamin, "Theses," p. 265. 81. Cf. Sartre, What is Literature? (New York, 1965).




he lost his concrete addressee, since the proletariat had not yet been recognized as a literary partner. Sartre concurs with Benjamin: analyses of the relationship between author and public-meaning analyses of the function of art-are rooted in social praxis. After World War II Sartre confronted the dilemma explicated by Benjamin in The Author as Producer: intellectuals, usually of bourgeois origins, are by conviction lefists although they share no more than peripheral contact with the proletarian masses. How can the proletariat reach them? Sartre notes: "One cannot write without a public and without a myth-without a certain public which historical circumstances have made, without a certain myth of literature which depends to a very great extent upon the demand of this public."82 If a writer tries to write for everyone, he must necessarily remain abstract because he wants to satisfy different and diverging needs. On the other hand, if he focuses on one particular group, then he conceals the interests of the others. For Sartre, then, "actual literature can only realize its full essence in a classless society."83 For in classless society the interests and needs of the producers and recipients are identical. The road to that goal leads through the proletarian reading public: "The fate of literature is bound up with that of the working class."84 Thus, the possibility of access becomes the decisive problem: conquering the apparatus which can reach the masses. "[The mass media] are the real resources at our disposal for conquering the virtual public-the newspaper, the radio, and the movies. . ... We must learn to speak in images, to transpose the ideas of our books into these new languages."85 Sartre is aware that the means of production are controlled by industrial capital or its State and sees the only possibility in subversion. Yet, he still clings to the traditional concept of literature-and here his analysis falls short of Benjamin's-and he considers new media primarily as tactical instruments.

VI

Obviously the debate on reception theory has not come to an end. The sign- posts of those methodological schools participating in the discussion (Empiri- cism, Formalism, Marxism) point in different directions. Their results, however, converge at certain junctures. The fact that the catalog of questions and problems has been expanded in each camp indicates how important and productive

82. Ibid., p. 144. 83. Ibid., p. 150. 84. Ibid., p. 247. 85. Ibid., p. 262.




the on-going discussion can become. For example, Manfred Naumann addressed at length the question of the role of the reader in his most recent work and relied here on Herbert Dieckmann and Weinrich.86 And on the other side, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht expanded the formalistic approach by referring to theorems of ideological criticism and sociology of knowledge.87 It would be a mistake to present finally the obligatory catalog of problems to be solved which generally tends to be more restrictive than beneficial. We will only mention several of the more important concerns of the present discussion. Having fulfilled its polemical function, the rigid opposition between aesthetics of reception and representation which characterized the initial situation is now being resolved. It derived from an unjustified reduction of the concept of literature. More important is the effort to engage the dialectic of production and consumption. It is not enough to devalue the problematization of the relationship between art and reality as "traditional" (Gumbrecht); similarly restrictive is a critique which rejects a priori an aesthetics of reception, as is the case with Critical Theory. Reception studies can hardly be relegated to the position of an appendix for the capitalist market, as Warneken suggests when he writes: "Even when sociological studies of reception intend a critical perspective, they put the cart before the horse by commencing with and not going beyond the observation of the consumer."88 Nothing indicates that a critical audience sociology, even if it begins with the consumer, must limit itself to describing artistic experiences and processes of distribution and remain blind to the conditions of production. If, according to Marx, production and consumption mediate each other, then it is the whole analysis rather than simply the initial step which decides the adequacy of the procedure. Textual analysis and reception studies are not opposed to one another or separated by a gulf. By using Werther as an example Klaus R. Scherpe has clearly proven this inner relationship.89 Contrasting objective textual structure and subjective reactions, as Adorno does in his aesthetics, violates the dialectic of production and consumption. Just as production mediates consumption-in the area of supply, distribution and formation of attitudes in the recipient-so does consumption mediate production: the reader's concretization transforms a model into a living work, and those needs of the public articulated in the reception condition the direction and extent of literary production. Phenomeno-

86. Naumann, "Autor-Adressat-Leser," Weimarer Beitrage, 17:11 (1971), 163-169. 87. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, "Soziologie und Rezeptionsisthetik: Ueber Gegenstand und Chance interdisziplinirer Zusammenarbeit," in J. Kolbe, ed., Neue Ansichten einer kiinfti- gen Germanistik (Munich, 1973), pp. 48-74. 88. Warneken, "Zur Kritik," p. 105. 89. Klaus R. Scherpe, Werther und Wertherwirkung (Bad Homburg, 1970).




logical reception aesthetics did not overlook this dialectical relationship but interpreted it as and reduced it to an inner-literary question. It regards this mediation only on the level of reader attitudes and textual structure which are both conjoined in the concept of the expectation horizon. The socio-economic level, however, is repressed.

Reception theory, however, can hardly do without a sociological basis. Thus, Bernhard Zimmerman convincingly postulates: "In contrast to methods of reception where the concept of public remains abstract and does not divulge any sociological interest, a sociologically and historically based theory of reception questions the social structure of the literary public and examines the genesis and formation of receptive attitudes in the framework of this structural analysis by evaluating the knowledge it generates."90 Reconstructing the stratification of attitudes we necessarily would have to take into account that under the conditions created by the culture industry in advanced capitalism social stratification and the ability to respond to literature do not regularly coincide. Here an important task falls to empirical research which it has not yet fulfilled satisfactorily in creating differentiated descriptive models. (Descriptions of professional, age and income groups in relation to geographical localization do not provide an adequately precise picture of the interdependence between reader groups and social groups.) Not until the literary needs and aesthetic competence of participating strata have been sufficiently studied will it be possible to formulate the specific expectation horizon in a way that allows a sensible comparison to be drawn with the expectations and signals inherent in the work. Such a descriptive model would also offset the preference for high literature (innovative literature) inherent in reception aesthetics. But even this method will lead to more general conclusions only when the cultural system (together with its social basis) con- trolling needs and competence is considered from the outset as part of the model. In that way the notion of participating in literary life loses its abstract character. In this connection, special attention should be paid to the transition from theory to actual case studies emerging since 1971 (reception protocols, documentations about individual works, authors and periods). Such studies probably will not only fill out the prevailing theorems but also correct them. We may expect conclusions from investigations which introduce the textual approach into a broader context of communications theory and ideological criticism.

Translated by Marc Silberman

90. Zimmerman, "Der Leser als Produzent: Zur Problematik der rezeptionsiisthetischen Methode," LILI, 15 (1974), 12-26.



Introduction to Reception Studies

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