Hans Robert Jauss
Hans Robert Jauss (1921-1997) was a prominent German literary theorist known for developing reception theory, a critical approach emphasizing the role of readers in interpreting texts. Born in Göppingen, Germany, Jauss had a complex and controversial past, having served in the Waffen-SS during World War II. After the war, he became a key figure at the University of Konstanz, where he taught literary criticism, linguistics, and aesthetic theory. Jauss’s work highlighted the importance of the "horizon of expectations" that both original and contemporary audiences bring to literary texts, arguing that meaning is not fixed but varies based on cultural context.
His ideas gained traction in Europe during the 1970s and 1980s, particularly through his publications like "Toward an Aesthetic of Reception" and "Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics." Despite his academic contributions, Jauss faced significant scrutiny regarding his past affiliations, which affected his reputation later in his career. He maintained that he was not a Nazi and expressed regret for his wartime involvement. Jauss's influence extends into various fields, including theology, where the concept of reception is applied to community understanding of doctrine, reflecting the broader implications of his literary theories.
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Hans Robert Jauss
Writer
- Born: December 12, 1921
- Birthplace: Göppingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
- Died: 1997
- Place of death: Konstanz, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Biography
Hans Robert Jauss is best remembered as the originator of reception theory, a form of literary criticism. Jauss was born on December 12, 1921, in Göppingen, Baden-Württemberg, Germany. At the age of seventeen, he joined the Waffen-SS, the combat arm of the Schutzstaffel, the Nazi Party’s military and security organization. He served as a soldier in World War II from 1939 until 1945, rising to the rank of captain.
After the war, Jauss began his extended association with the University of Konstanz in Baden-Württemberg, teaching courses in literary criticism, linguistics, and aesthetic theory. Jauss met and befriended literary theorist and philosopher Paul de Man at a Zurich University symposium in 1968. Although the two argued extensively over linguistic theory, it was largely through de Man’s recommendation that Jauss was invited to Yale University in 1976 to serve as a visiting professor.
Like Stanley Fish in his concept of interpretive communities, Jauss held that the most frequently neglected aspect of any literary text is the text’s reception by its audience. In his opinion, the proper study of literature must involve a reconstruction of the “horizon of expectations” of its original audience and a construction of a new horizon of expectations by the contemporary audience. Jauss therefore denied that a literary work possesses any “once and for all” objectively determined meaning. The reading of a literary work is not autonomous but is collectively framed by the shared conventions or expectations of the work’s audience. Readers engaged in “negotiation” and “opposition” with a creative work rather than passively accepting the work’s “meaning,” and readings of a work therefore varied widely based on the readers’ varying cultural backgrounds.
Jauss presented these ideas in the 1960’s and 1970’s in a German publication, Reception Theory, and his conception of reader-response criticism was dubbed “the Konstanz school,” after the university in which he taught. His ideas became influential throughout Europe, particularly in the 1970’s and 1980’s. His books include two works of literary theory that were translated into English: Kleine Apologie der ästhetischen Erfahrung, Rezeptionsästhetik, und Literaturgeschichte als Provokation (1972: Toward an Aesthetic of Reception, 1982) and Ästhetische Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik (1977; Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics, 1982).
In the 1980’s, Jauss’s career was clouded as his activities during World War II became public knowledge, and he was linked with de Man’s newly discovered ideological loyalty to Nazi principles. The Modern Language Association thereupon canceled its plans to make Jauss an honorary member. However, Jauss steadfastly maintained that he had never been a Nazi, despite his wartime membership in the Waffen-SS, and that a 1948 tribunal under American auspices had found no incriminating evidence against him. In a letter to The Nation, published on June 4, 1988, he wrote, “I deeply regret my involvement with an organization that was responsible for so much suffering and such unspeakable crimes.”
Jauss died in 1997 in Konstanz. His work remains influential in various contexts and applications, especially in theology, in which the reception, understanding, and application of doctrine by a spiritual community is seen by some as analogous to the reception of a work of literature by its audience.