Eagleton: Chapter 2 (Part 2): Reception Aesthetics| Literary Theory

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today we will continue our discussion

of chapter two i had left our discussion

somewhere on page 64.

and by that time eagleton has moved us

from a whole range of philosophy

including heidegger cadamer

and brought us through a discussion of

e.d hirsch and question of meanings

to a point where we at least know that

the text exists in history

and that our reading of it is also

a historical process and then we are

moving into what

we what is called the reception theory

or the reader response criticism as it

develops

or the reception aesthetics

okay and uh

the biggest name in the beginning he

starts with

a discussion of roman ingarden and his

very famous idea

of how we construe meanings from the

text

now keep in mind that both wolfgang iser

and roman ingarden even though they are

privileging

the reader in the act of reading

their approach is still text centric

because what the reader does either

concretizes what the text has intended

already

or normalizes by knowing the codes of

the text

as per wolfgang acer we'll get into that

in a minute but the first

part of this discussion is is the act of

reading itself

what does it involve right

and the most important part of it is

that

you know first i mean keep it in your

mind

there is no objective reading of a text

because we bring to a text

our own politics our own location in the

world our gendered identity our sexual

identity

and as roman english would say our

pre-understandings and those

pre-understandings

are our understanding of the convention

itself

right the moment we enter a novel

we already know

that we are entering a novel so our

expectations of a novel will not be

when we enter a romantic poem right

those

are our pre-understandings already in

living in a living culture

then depending on what we do are we

literature scholars are we literature

students if we are that then we are

already bringing that to bear upon a

text our expectations are guided by that

so there is no this unmediated

approach to the act of reading

then as we read and he describes it on

page 65 and 66 you know

we make certain provisional assessments

as soon as we read a few sentences we

fill the gaps

right some of those gaps we fill because

of our cultural knowledge some of those

gaps we fill

because of the convention of reading or

convention of the very genre that we are

reading

right we feel the silences of the text

but the purpose

in roman ingerding in wolfgang easer

is to make the text whole right

and to normalize it according to what it

asks of us it is still text-centric but

here has suddenly

suddenly become an important part

of the value of literature itself right

and that's the entry of the reader

um and then he also goes to hans robert

yost

right and hans robert yost is the one

who theorizes the concept horizon of

expectations

and what that means is that every text

carries in

itself a horizon of expectations and a

reader brings to a text

a certain horizon of expectations now

that horizon of expectations

is socially constructed conventionally

constructed constructed through

education

and then the way we concretize the text

or evaluate a text

depends upon whether or not the text

meets our horizon matches our horizon of

expectation

and sometimes when we misread a text it

is because

according to hans robert yost there is a

horizontal difference

there is a horizontal deficit

and he famously in one of his works

which i have on my shelf somewhere here

he uses the example of the reception of

madame bowery

right and his idea is that since the

text

was far beyond the expected horizon of

expectation at its time when the critics

read it they either didn't get it or

thought it to be a terrible novel

and it took quite a few years for the

critical thought to

catch up and inhabit the horizon of

expectation

that would have rendered that text

really well to them

and i used this concept in one of my

essays which was published a couple of

years ago

in a collection of essays about

pakistani fiction

in trying to understand why is it that

certain pakistanis are suspicious of

pakistani right or in english

writing in english so in one way or the

other in this

discussion towards until the end of the

chapter the reader is entering it

now he cites one work of birth right

which is the hedonistic readings of the

text that

that the reader just enters it playfully

and lets the text disrupt his or her

structural explanation of the truth or

just

enjoy the multiple meanings

that can come out of the text but barth

also has another essay called the death

of the author

which we will be reading and that is

actually a more precise rendering

of when does the author die

and the leader enters the debate right

and that whole debate

now there is also a discussion in these

pages

of of especially

hans robert yost and even wolf gang

eiser as to

because they also assert that the text

can be transformative

right and it can make the reader think

about his or her assumptions right there

is that defamiliarizing effect

but there is an irony involved there and

that irony is

that that you're assuming a liberal

reader a reader which is or who would

already be

in not in argument with the text but in

concert with what the text is trying to

claim

so in the end if the text is going to

have a transformative effect

it will only do that for a liberal

reader and so what the reader would do

is a liberal reader would enter a text

in order to be transformed

and eventually after the act of reading

find his or herself as slightly more

liberal

right if you are not a liberal reader if

you don't believe that you want the text

to have the power to transform

you the text will not be able to do that

absolutely not and now eagleton doesn't

give an answer to that

as what will be the impact of

a text that when we claim that texts can

be transformative

and that literature departments can

matter

and all these cliches that we throw

around that literature can make

us better people and it can make people

into

better people you know and that we can

confront our students

with radical texts and somehow the very

radicality of the text would break their

identities apart and help them reshape

it absolutely doesn't happen okay and

there is research on that

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actually research by people like excel

hornet people

like mark brocker

and quite a few others we all enter

a textual environment or a classroom

with just

one main worry and that is to protect

our identities the biggest

human need is the need to protect our

identity

that's why i mean anytime you're at a

new place

even in a new classroom you feel anxious

right it's not because you don't have

any friends it's because you're at a new

place you don't know

anyone you are not sure whether your

identity

will be under threat there or not so if

five students walk into my

class and i basically start my class by

saying

this is how we will read this text

and i believe in hedonism and i believe

in free love and all that

and six of them are conservative

christians they would immediately

block anything they will stop listening

to me because their energies will be

spent

on offering a stable front because they

are in a power dynamic but

blocking my ideas because those are

threatening to their

very identity right

and then of course people who think

about these things

you know have come up so how would

literature

transform a reader especially if the

reader is

not in agreement with the literature is

that people who've done the research on

consciousness and everything will tell

you that what we believe in

in terms of stories in terms of our own

personal self narratives that underwrite

ourselves

actually literally builds schemas in our

minds

not the schemas that um

romanian guardian talks about but

actually literally

imprints in our mind so in order to

change someone's political opinion

or someone in order for literature to be

transformative those schemas must be

shifted

unless those schemas are shifted the

person

will not be impacted by literature i

don't care how much shakespeare you read

you'll not become a compassionate person

and eagleton has a funny line in the

book somewhere and i will ask you to

find it is where he

is talking about this redemptive aspect

of literature and he gives the example

of a german commandant of a death camp

who would watch opera and cry and had

the entire collected works of quitter

sitting right next to his bed and would

read them

as a highly educated man who appreciated

art

but all of that didn't make into a

person make him into a person who could

look at it and see that what i'm doing

is wrong killing innocent people in gas

chambers

so so that's also further research into

this topic what i'm trying

to highlight is that these things that

we consider

literary theories theories that just

enable us to write a good

essay have deeper implications if you go

into pedagogy

and go into if you think that literature

has an ameliorative function

and and that literally classrooms do

more than just

teach the text right but what we are

learning here is that the reader brings

certain pre-understanding certain

prejudices certain preferences

certain expectations to the text those

can be formally constructed through

education

can be part of their politics can be

part of who they are

right and then interpret the text read

it

and construe meanings from it

good yeah yeah levy then there are quite

a few other such songs which

uh if you abstract them from their

own original context and approach them

with the context of your own

you will certainly find that the text

the intended meaning of the text is no

longer pertinent because what you're

bringing to it

is your own reading of it right

contemporary

now what the literature scholars would

tell you is

especially the new historicist is that

no no no no you can do that

in order to be a good scholar you don't

just read

the words on a page you have to go back

and learn what was happening in 1462

when the play was written and if you

learn that then you will be able to read

shakespeare

as he might have intended and that is

what is scholarship

you know so there are counter arguments

to everything else

right okay oh bottom of 30. good

levy says that that point about goethe

is at bottom of page 30. so if anyone

wants to go and reread it

please read it okay another thing so

towards the end then he's moving to

stanley fish

right and stanley fish is crucial

in reception theory but also in reader

response criticism

because fish tackles these issues so

first thing that

fish asserts and basically puts to rest

is he's like we don't look for meaning

in a text

that's not our job what we should look

for is what the text

does so what the text does within its

own body

you know formalistically speaking and

more importantly

what it does to you as a reader and

role of criticism then is for the critic

to

actually read a text and see what does

it do

what is it trying to accomplish right

so that takes us away from like looking

at

exactly what literally does the text

mean

secondly what he says is okay so the

counter and that that we

readers we are the ones who find out

what a text does

now if that is the point then the

counter question is of

obviously okay then there are 12 of you

in my class

and i give you a poem why aren't there

12 different readings

of the poem why do why can i usually

figure out here are the three ways in

which 12 people have read the poems

and for that what he argues is that we

always inhabit an interpretive community

that's his term right what is an

interpretive community and he discusses

it

in one of his books the idea is that

through our training academic training

or cultural absorption or identity

whatever

we are always part of an interpretive

community

which thinks of texts a certain way

now when we are part of an interpretive

community we are not just

passive parts of it we internalize

what that particular community

privileges in an act of reading

right that becomes our matrix then we

are also privy to

how our opposing interpretive

communities view the text

so every time that we approach a certain

text we approach it not as me myself

alone but as a member of an interpretive

community

and with that i bring those politics and

those methodologies of reading

then i'm also reading in opposition to

whatever

interpretive community i think is

opposed to me

so an act of reading always even though

individual

has the backing of the matrix

produced and perpetuated by a community

think of it this way

if you watch fox news right and believe

everything that they say right

it's not you just sitting on your couch

and believing everything

you're part of an interpretive community

that believes certain things that

believes that there is a liberal

conspiracy that liberalism is a terrible

thing

right you know that

you know capitalism is the best thing in

the world right

and there is a deep state right

all of these things these are not just

your ideas there are millions of people

who inhabit these ideas right and then

when you watch those news everything

that is being profitable to you

is measured through that the only time

fox news gets in trouble with its

viewers is

when it exceeds the horizon of

expectation

right when it says something that could

be construed as liberal

that means that the same people sitting

on their couch watching fox news

are also have a general idea of what

liberals are because without that

they will not be able to define who

themselves are so

they have to be aware of the general

principles

that a so-called liberal constituency

would have

same applies to liberals right

if you're watching cnn or if you so if

you're entering a text

right with your own liberal expectations

of a text

you that is the reference through which

you assign meaning to a text

and you you see what it does right

so what by the time stanley fish is done

with literary

readings right we have now entered the

word of the reader

okay but we have not entered the word of

private readings

reading is still a recursive act we move

from one part of the text to another

but what we are not looking for is what

things mean

but what does the text do in the world

right or

what does the text do within the body of

the text itself

and then how do we come to it now

this concept is further complicated not

covered by

eagleton but by saeed

in his book the text the word and the

critic he's talking about

reading literary tests right and he

talks about

the first argument that he gives is that

there is no text that is detached from

the world

i mean if i'm i'm quoting him correctly

he says that

that the text even in their most

verified forms

are in the word enhanced worldly right

and when we reach them we read them

we approach them in a worldly manner

that's the concept of worldliness right

by saying

and then he says is that when we read a

text

there is a certain way we approach

anything in life

right but let's say an act of reading

there is one mode which he calls

affiliated

right and the other is affiliated so as

we move into the word

whatever is affiliative is what we bring

from our family

like whatever politics our family had

whatever values they teach us

that's the affiliative structure of the

meaning making processes that take into

the world

then we go into academia or into a

college or

universities

and we affiliate ourselves with a school

of thought

or with a way of doing literary studies

or with a way of

you know doing anything and that is when

we make this transition from the heart

affiliative structures of ourself

to the affiliative structures of the

identity as a scholar that we form

because of who we studied with what we

study

right now one would assume that that

would be a more progressive way of doing

scholarship or teaching

right but another thing ends up

happening

and that is that when we become part of

an affiliative community

that community itself takes on

affiliative structure

because we start believing in the

principles of that community so

strongly that that is the mode with

which we read that is the mode with

which we

interpret that is the mode with which we

confront the word

so the structure of our affiliative

learning and affiliative identity

formation

then takes on the hold

as if it is what we got from our family

and so the role of critic or a good

critic

would then be aware of that right at

least

if not defy that at least know that

wherever i am coming from is not natural

is discursively produced and can have a

different

point of view than other than my own

right

that too then is

geared towards what do i do when i

perform a reading right what do i bring

to a text

actually my forthcoming book

if it comes out soon enough has a whole

chapter on it the question of the reader

right and i've read all these people and

then

kind of crafted my own chapter on that

so pretty soon masood raja would be a

big name i'm just

just kidding okay all right so this is

to me is the crux of the chapter we have

covered it

we started with you know new criticism

uh we still haven't gone into

new criticism deeply and we still

haven't discussed

north top fry and certain other bridge

figures right

but we are now moving into

not the premises of the text but

kind of the emergence of the reader as

the

as as someone who construes meanings

so to reception theory now there is a

only one really good collection of

reception theory essays

uh edited by jane tompkins i think

it's on my shelf somewhere i highly

recommend it

you all should read it and

and then you know we can talk more about

it so this is where uh

you know the lecture stops right

and then i i'm gonna stop here

because i think i have concluded the

discussion of the chapter

and that's really good and

not my discussion of it i mean that that

i've reached kind of the end

and the part one of this lecture that

is already available and this one then

constitutes kind of

a hole which has the discussion of

chapter two

and now i'm hoping that you'll have some

good questions

and and we can kind of build a little

more on it

right