·life
Hans Robert Jauss was a German academic, notable for his work in receptiontheory and medieval and modern French literature. Together with his colleagueWolfgang Iser, he is the founder of the Konstanz School, which has had asignificant influence on Anglo-American reader-response criticism. Born inGöppingen, Germany, Jauss studied in Esslingen and Geislingen. In 1939 hejoined the army and saw service on the Russian Front. He was briefly imprisonedat the end of the war as an enemy combatant, thus delaying his university studiesuntil 1948. He completed his undergraduate and postgraduate degrees at theUniversity of Heidelberg, graduating in 1957 with a dissertation on MarcelProust. Between 1959 and 1966, Jauss held jobs in Münster and Giessen. In 1966,he was invited to join the newly established University of Konstanz to set upthe subject area of literary studies. He did this in collaboration with severalcolleagues and the end result became known as the Konstanz School. Jauss's owninaugural lecture in 1967, entitled ‘Literary History as a Challenge toLiterary Theory’, was seminal in launching what he describes as ReceptionAesthetics, which is a mode of literary history interested in the interactionbetween readers and writers. His most important works include: Toward anAesthetic of Reception (1982) and Aesthetic Experience and LiteraryHermeneutics (1982).
Hans Robert Jauss is a little off the critical grid, but if you're intoreception theory—and who isn't?—he's your man. In fact, he invented the term"reception theory" way back in the days of polyester slacks andCharlie's Angels (the real one, with Farrah Fawcett). Plus, he's on yourside—the reader's, that is. How the reader "receives" a text is aquestion that really floated this guy's boat.
With Jauss, it's not allabout close reading a text. It's not about the historical and cultural andbiographical context in which a text was written. It's not even about what theauthor may or may not have meant. It's about how a reader experiences a text.
Jauss got all fancy pantswith a three-part "how-to" to help the author anticipate the reader'sreception of a book: in this theory, the reader has a general awareness ofliterary history, historical context, and ideas about fiction and reality. Butall you need to worry about right now is that this theory is about you. ForJauss, you matter more than the text. And the way all of your friends read thetext matters, too.
Jauss wasn't a solo flyer.He had a bunch of pals who partied with him over reception theory (more on thatcrew later). In a world that overplayed the importance 
of a text's context(don't even get started on the New Historicists), these folks carried thebanner for "Horizons of Expectation," which has everything to do witha reader's position and nothing to do with projected sunset and sunrise times.
"Horizons ofExpectation" simply means that what the reader "expects" of thetext will change according to the time and place of the reader, so a readerfrom ancient Rome reading Cicero's Tusculanae Disputationes (TusculanDisputations), for example, will have a different experience from today'sundergraduate reading the same text. We can only read books within our ownsocial and cultural contexts.
P.S. In theinterest of full disclosure, we will tell you that Jauss was a member of theSS. Yep, that means he was a Nazi at one time... which may have to do with hisplace at the margins of criticism. Even more problematic is the fact that Jausshimself was totally not about full disclosure: he tried to hide the full extentof his involvement, and it's only recently that the full story has come tolight. Even so, Reception Theory's not Reception Theory without Jauss, soyou'll have to give him a gander if you want to know what that's all about.
