University Scholars Programme, National University of Singapore

Academic Structure + Modules > First-Tier Modules > Literary Studies > Issues and Theories

Hans Robert Jauss and Literary Horizons of Expectations

Philip Holden, Department of English Language & Literature, National University of Singapore

Jauss introduces the notion of horizon of expectations while discussing the importance of the historical background of a literary text. For Jauss, a frequently-neglected element of the meaning of any narrative is its audience, who already have experience in consuming other narratives:

A literary work, even if it seems new, does not appear as something absolutely new in an informational vacuum, but predisposes its readers to a very definite type of reception by textual strategies, overt and covert signals, familiar characteristics or implicit allusions. It awakens memories of the familiar, stirs particular emotions in the reader and with its 'beginning' arouses expectations for the 'middle and end', which can then be continued intact, changed, re=oriented or even ironically fulfilled in the course of reading according to certain rules of the genre or type of text. . . . The new text evokes for the reader (listener) the horizon of expectations and rules familiar from earlier texts, which are then varied, corrected, changed or just reproduced. Variation and correction determine the scope, alteration and reproduction of the borders and structure of the genre.

Proper study of any narrative, Jauss argues, thus involves a reconstruction of the horizon of expectations of its original audience. Narratives should not be seen as reflections of a historical moment, or imitations of "reality", but as actually intervening in historical struggle, and perhaps changing people's perceptions of the world in which they live:

The reconstruction of the horizon of expectations, on the basis of which a work in the past was created and received, enables us to find the questions to which the text originally answered and thereby to discover how the reader of that day viewed and understood the work. This approach . . . brings out the hermeneutic difference between past and present ways of understanding a work, points up the history of its reception . . . and thereby challenges as patronizing dogma the apparently self-evident dictum that . . . [a literary work] has objective meaning, determined once and or all and directly open to the interpreter at any time . . .

Thus a literary work with an unusual aesthetic form can shatter the expectations of its reader and at the same time confront him with a question which cannot be answered by religiously or publicly sanctioned models. . . . The literary work can also--and in the history of literature this possibility characterizes the most recent period of modernity--reverse the relationship of question and answer and in an artistic medium confront the reader with a new 'opaque' reality which can no longer be understood from the previous horizon of expectations.

Some questions to ponder:

In what ways might the idea of horizon of expectations be applied to genre?
Is it always necessary to know the historical context of a narrative in order to appreciate it?
What kinds of narratives would make reality 'opaque' to a reader? What kinds of narratives would be transparent, reinforcing 'religiously or publicly sanctioned models' and not encouraging critical thought or change? Can you think of concrete examples?

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