Reader’s Response “Horizon of Expectation” by Hans Robert Jauss

Reader response criticism focuses on reader’s response to literary texts. The reader's role in creating the meaning and experience of a literary work, modern reader response criticism began in the 1960s and '70s, particularly in America and Germany, in work by  Louis Rosenblatt , Wolfgang Iser , Hans-Robert Jauss , Roland Barthes , and others. Reader-response theory recognizes the reader as an active agent who imparts real existence to the work and completes its meaning through interpretation. Reader-response criticism argues that literature should be viewed as a performing art in which each reader creates his or her own, possibly unique, text-related performance.

The term “horizon of expectation” used to describe the criteria readers use to judge literary texts in any given period. These criteria will help the reader decide hoe to judge a poem as, foe example, an epic or a tragedy or a pastoral; it will also, in a more general way, cover what is to be regarded as poetic or literary as opposed to unpoetic or non literary uses of languages. Ordinary writing and reading will work within such a horizon.

The original horizon of expectation only tells us how the work was valued and interpreted when it appeared, but does not establish its meaning finally.

In Jauss’s (in Selder Raman, 1993: 53) view, it would be equally wrong to say that a work is universal, that its meaning is fixed forever and open to all readers in any period: “ A literary works is not an object which stands by itself and which offers the same face to each reader in each period. It is no a monument which reveals its timeless essence in a monologue

In other words, Jauss believes that there is no fixed meaning in a literary work. The meaning always develops and changes by the time. The readers in a given time have different interpretations with the readers in other period. Therefore, there will be no final meaning from a literary work.

In Reader Response “ horizon of expectation” by Hans Robert Jauss, uses the term horizon to expectation to describe the criteria readers use to judge literary texts in any given period. We can conclude:

Literary Works    +      Reader                         =          Interpretation

                                 (Expectation)                             Value

                                                                                    Meaningful life

The reader must have education, knowledge and experience. Its means reader response critics the reader’s expectation of the literary works not the literary works directly.

Literary Works    +    Reader = Criticism      +   Researcher = Reader Response critics

                                                   Comments

                                                   Response

So, The Horizon the Expectation is the expectation about literary work that brought by the reader based on education, knowledge and experience with complete the researcher analysis and it complete of the literary works

 

   

 source: berbagai sumber