Tag Archives: Hans Robert Jauss

Great Literature Shifts Expectations

By Robin Bates | Published: July 11, 2021

In which I sum up Reader Reader Response theory as formulated by Hans Robert Jauss, who believes that great lit expands horizon of expectations.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, Reader Response Theory | Comments closed

Why I Think the Way I Think

By Robin Bates | Published: March 23, 2021

I survey my intellectual history, especially the evolution of my thinking about literature’s impact on human behavior.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Antonio Gramsci, Beowulf, Carl Jung, Carleton College, Harper Lee, Huckleberry Finn, intellectual history, J. Paul Hunter, J. R. R. Tolkien, Jerome Beaty, Karl Marx, Literary Theory, Madame Bovary, Mark Twain, New Criticism, Norman Holland, Percy Bysshe Shelley, racism, Reader Response Theory, reception theory, Sigmund Freud, Terry Eagleton, To Kill a Mockingbird, Tobias Smollett | Comments closed

Lit and Life: My Intellectual Trajectory

By Robin Bates | Published: December 12, 2019

I’ve long held that great literature impacts history harder than lesser literature. I trace the evolution of my ideas in today’s post.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Charles Dickens, Denis Diderot, Discourse on Inequality, Feminism, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Letter on the Blind, Martin Chuzzlewit, Marxism, post-colonialism, queer theory, reception theory | Comments closed

Who Determines What a Work Means?

By Robin Bates | Published: November 23, 2018

I share a copy of a talk I gave on how literary interpretations are decided, focusing on theorists Stanley Fish and Hans Robert Jauss.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Literary Theory, Reader Response Theory, Stanley Fish | Comments closed

Great Lit Changes Expectations Horizons

By Robin Bates | Published: September 1, 2017

Hans Robert Jauss’s believes that great literature changes horizons of expectation whereas lesser lit simply confirms them. If “Madame Bovary” was brought to trial, Jauss says, it is because it charted a new course in literary history that people didn’t understand.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged censorship, Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary, reception theory | Comments closed

Invisible Man & Lolita Changed the ’50s

By Robin Bates | Published: December 13, 2016

Ellison’s “Invisible Man” and Nabokov’s “Lolita” both challenged basic 1950s assumptions. The former changed public perceptions on what it meant to be black while the latter violated a tacit agreement not to go digging under neatly manicured lawns bordered by white picket fences.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged 1950s, aestheticism, formalism, horizon of expectations, Invisible Man, Lolita, modernism, Ralph Ellison, reception theory, Richard Wright, social protest novel, Vladimir Nabokov | Comments closed

A Lit Theory that Affirms Readers

By Robin Bates | Published: May 21, 2012

The students in my “Theories of the Reader ” course found the theorists we read affirming.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged English Education, Literary Theory, Norman Holland, Reader Response Theory, Wayne Booth, Wolfgang Iser | Comments closed

The Reader’s Role in Literature

By Robin Bates | Published: January 11, 2012

Reader Response Theory focuses on the reader’s involvement in literature, opening up avenues untouched by formalist criticism.

Posted in Uncategorized | Also tagged Literary Criticism, Norman Holland, Reader Response Theory, Stanley Fish, Wolfgang Iser | Comments closed