Toward an Aesthetic of Reception

1982
•
Author:

Hans Robert Jauss
Translated by Timothy Bahti
Introduction by Paul de Man

This volume presents for the first time in English the foundational writings of the leading proponent of the aesthetic of reception. Jauss here attempts to develop categories to channel conventional literary history into a history of aesthetic experience. These essays explore the relation of art history to social history, the nature of genres in the middle ages, and provide exemplary readings in the comparative analysis of literature.

This volume presents for the first time in English the foundational writings of the leading proponent of the aesthetic of reception. Jauss here attempts to develop categories to channel conventional literary history into a history of aesthetic experience. These essays explore the relation of art history to social history, the nature of genres in the middle ages, and provide exemplary readings in the comparative analysis of literature.

This book sows the seeds of an exciting new hermeneutical program with a heavy emphasis on historical and social scientific inquiry.

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Journal of Religion

In the last forty years, the reputation of the aesthetic of reception has spread throughout continental Europe and North America. Jauss, the most prolific proponent of the aesthetic of reception, has attempted to develop categories to channel conventional literary history into a history of aesthetic experience. In these collected essays, he explores the relation of art history to social history, the nature of genres in the middle ages, and gives exemplary readings in the comparative analysis of literature.

Hans Robert Jauss was professor of literary criticism and romance philology at the University of Konstanz, Germany and also taught at Columbia, Yale, and the Sorbonne.
Timothy Bahti is professor of German at the University of Michigan.
Paul de Man held appointments at Cornell, Johns Hopkins, the University of Zurich, and Yale.

This book sows the seeds of an exciting new hermeneutical program with a heavy emphasis on historical and social scientific inquiry.

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Journal of Religion

The question concerning aesthetic praxis which has underlain all art as productive, receptive, and communicative activity remains unclarified and deserves to be asked anew. This volume covers questions about aesthetic praxis and about the contiguous relationship between aesthetic experience and other provinces of meaning in the world of everyday reality.

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Journal of Film and Video

Jauss is one of those courageous pioneers who not only aspire to fathom the nature of aesthetic experience in its various historical manifestations, but also ask with great intensity and sincerity how we today can be interested in art at all, how aesthetic communication is still possible in our present day consumer society.

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Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism