This is an anthology of important papers by hans robert jauss, one of the founders of Reception Aesthetics. It includes five articles in different periods: 1. Literary history is a challenge to literary theory; 2. Art history and pragmatism; Thirdly, genre theory and medieval literature; 4. Goethe's Faust and Valerie's Faust —— Hermeneutics of Question and Answer: 5. Reading Poetry in Changing Vision: A Case Study of Baudelaire's Boring Poems.

The first long article is Hans Robert Jauss's speech when he became a professor at the University of Constance in 1967. When Hans Robert Jauss was a professor of history at the University of Jena in 1789, he copied the title of Schiller's inaugural speech "What are the Intentions and Reasons for Studying World History?" He only changed the word "world" into "literature" and copied Schiller's intention of being unconventional and challenging tradition. This article is "The History of Literature as a Challenge to Literary Theory", which was later recognized as the declaration of the birth of Reception Aesthetics.

In this article, Hans Robert Jauss gives a programmatic overview of reception aesthetics from seven aspects.

First, the history of literature so far is only a chronicle of writers and works. A literary work is not an independent object, it provides the same point of view to every reader in every era. It is not a monument, which shows its transcendental essence metaphysically, but more like an orchestral score, which constantly gets new responses from readers during the performance, liberating this article from the material form of words and becoming a realistic existence. The value of a work can only be reflected through readers' reading activities. The relationship between readers and works is not a causal relationship between cognition and being recognized. Readers are a dynamic factor, and as the only object of literature, they have a direct and decisive influence on the value and status of works in history and reality. Therefore, readers become the starting point of the whole reception aesthetic theory. Hans Robert Jauss believes that the history of literature is a process of aesthetic acceptance and aesthetic production. Aesthetic production is the realization of literary texts among recipients, reflective critics and authors of continuous production. Therefore, the history of literature should be a history of literary acceptance and function, which is determined by the characteristics of the dynamic generation of artistic works.

Second, the reader's horizon of expectation comes from the understanding of types, from the familiarity with the form and theme of works, and from the opposition between poetic language and practical language. Hans Robert Jauss believes that a literary work, even if it appears with a brand-new look, cannot show itself with an absolutely brand-new attitude in the information vacuum. It awakens readers' memories of previous reading and brings them into a specific emotional attitude. At the beginning, readers' expectations of the works will be aroused, and these expectations will be preserved, changed, transferred or disappeared in the reading process according to the specific rules or forms of literary types. In the subjective vision of aesthetic experience, acceptance is not just an arbitrary series based on subjective impressions, but the realization of special instructions in the process of perceptual orientation.

Thirdly, there must be an aesthetic distance between the reader's established horizon of expectation and the new work. The acceptance of new works is realized by denying familiar experience or raising new experience to the level of consciousness, which leads to the change of vision. Hans Robert Jauss believes that a literary work, at the historical moment of its appearance, expects its first reader to be satisfied, surpassed, disappointed or refuted, which obviously provides a standard for determining its aesthetic value. The artistic characteristics of literary works are determined by the distance between the horizon of expectation and the works, and the distance between the aesthetic experience required to accept new works and the change of horizon. Hans Robert Jauss emphasized the dialectic and reversibility of the relationship between works and readers: the works did not point to any specific readers at the beginning of their birth, but completely broke the familiar horizon of literary expectations, and readers had to gradually develop and adapt to the works. However, when readers' experience of successful works in the past is out of date, they lose their appreciation, and the new horizon of expectation reaches more general communication, it will have the power to change aesthetic standards, thus affecting the production of works.

Fourthly, the historical understanding and modern understanding of a work are different in interpretation. Accepting historical consciousness is based on the adjustment of the above two. Hans Robert Jauss described the difference between historical acceptance and realistic acceptance. Historical acceptance method is very important for understanding literature. When we accept an unknown work, we always take it as an unprecedented part and accept it under the background that the author explicitly or implicitly assumes that many works are known to readers of his time. Hans Robert Jauss believes that the judgment of a work's times is not only the cumulative judgment of its readers and critics, but also the continuous display of the potential significance contained in the work, and the realization of the historical acceptance and understanding judgment of the work.

5. Reception aesthetics theory not only allows people to conceive the meaning and form of literary works in their historical understanding, but also requires people to put a single work in their literary series and understand its historical position and significance from the context of literary experience, that is, to understand the diachronic characteristics of the relationship between literary works. Hans Robert Jauss introduced the concept of literary evolution.

Six, from the * * * cross-section of literary development to study the history of literature, arrange the heterogeneity and multiplicity of contemporary works equally, and oppose the hierarchical structure, we can find the main relationship system of literature at a certain historical moment. Hans Robert Jauss believes that the historicity of literature is shown at the intersection of diachronic and * * * temporality, so the literary vision at a specific historical moment can be understood: the * * * temporality system associated with literature at the same time is diachronically accepted in non-simultaneous contact. Starting from the temporality of literary development, the multiplicity of literary phenomena is recombined with their perceived environment, and all works are interrelated and unified in the same vision of literary expectation, memory and the meaning of works' expectation.

7. The history of literature is not only diachronic and temporality, but also related to general history. The answer of reception aesthetics to the social function of literature transcends the concept of traditional reproduction aesthetics. The social function of this kind of literature can only be realized when readers enter the expectation field of their life practice, form an understanding of the world, influence their social behavior and gain literary experience from it. Hans Robert Jauss believes that if the history of literature not only describes the general historical process in the repeated reflection on works, but also discovers the accurate social composition function of literature in the process of literary evolution; Discovering the function of literature, together with other artistic and social forces, liberates human beings from the bondage of nature, religion and society; Only in this way can we bridge the gap between literature and history, aesthetic knowledge and historical knowledge.

The other four articles deepen the theory of reception aesthetics from different angles, or apply reception theory to a certain research. The History of Art and Pragmatism, through the investigation of various viewpoints in history, profoundly shows the connection and difference between the history of art and the history of pragmatism. In particular, the history of art is examined as a history of reception. Genre Theory and Medieval Literature made a pioneering study of western genre theory and medieval literature from the perspective of reception aesthetics. Goethe's Faust and Valerie's Faust use the method of comparative literature, compare the two Faust works from the perspective of question-and-answer hermeneutics and the height of historical adjustment, and criticize the non-temporal bias of traditional comparative literature, thus getting rid of the randomness of choice. Poetry in Reading Horizon is an attempt to criticize poetry by using reception aesthetics theory. Through a critical interpretation of Baudelaire's lyric Tired, the author integrates understanding, interpretation, direct acceptance and reflective annotation, distinguishes the primary aesthetic reading horizon from the secondary reflective interpretation reading horizon, and establishes three levels of historical reading on this basis. This is a typical detail analysis paper, which has the guiding significance of methodology.