Reception theory

Martin Middeke

pp. 191-196

in: Martin Middeke, Timo Müller, Christina Wald, Hubert Zapf (eds), English and American studies, Stuttgart, Metzler, 2012

Abstract

We have stated in our "Introduction to Literary Studies' (entry I.1) that what is considered literature, what the subject matter of literary studies is and how we analyse and interpret literature depends upon the methodological approaches we—as interpreters and readers—choose to apply. We have highlighted the interdependence, the dialectical interplay, and the semantic/semiotic oscillation which exists between authors, readers, texts and the world and in which meaning is generated. This communicative interplay has been foregrounded since the 1960s and 1970s in what was from various viewpoints and methodological angles called Rezeptionsästhetik and, in its special American variant, reader-response criticism and reader-response theory. To put the matter more simply, these approaches are here subsumed under the generic heading "reception theory."