Keywords reception aesthetics; Hans Robert Jauss; Ezelle; translate
Hans Robert Jauss, a German professor of literature and art, put forward the concept of reception aesthetics in 1967, which is different from the previous translation. Reception aesthetics is not centered on the author or work, but on the reader or audience to explain the translation phenomenon. Reception aesthetics belongs to the reader's reaction, which is "dialogue between text and translation" (He Wei). Hans Robert Jauss believes that the completion of a work needs readers to read.
The purpose of this paper is to introduce reception aesthetics, so the full text consists of four parts. The first part is a brief introduction to the overall research methods of reception aesthetics; The second part will talk about the background and development of reception aesthetics. The third part will introduce the conceptual theory of reception aesthetics, mainly about the views of Hans Robert Jauss and Ethel; The last part is the conclusion and summary.
I. Historical background
In 1960s and 1970s, German literary aestheticians Hans Robert Jauss and Wolfgang Ezelle put forward reception aesthetics. Under the background of German aesthetics prevailing at that time, Hans Robert Jauss and Ezelle proposed that aesthetic research should focus on readers' reception, reaction, reading process, readers' aesthetic experience and the role of reception effect in the social function of literature, and study creation and reception, authors, works and readers through questioning, answering and explaining. Reception aesthetics emphasizes readers' reaction and opposes historical objectivism. This theory has experienced the development stages of Heidegger, Gadamer and others, and their research is the basis of reception aesthetics. At the same time, Marx's theory also played an auxiliary role in the emergence of reception aesthetics. However, in the later development, Meiyu developed reception aesthetics into "the reader decides everything", which is an extreme result. This statement overemphasizes the status of readers, rather than the dialectical relationship between readers and texts.
Second, the concept introduction
Hans Robert Jauss's reception theory adds the dialectical thought of history to the reader-centered theory, while Russian formalism ignores history and sociological theory ignores text. He hopes to reconcile the contradiction between the two. Drawing on the philosophy of science, Hans Robert Jauss tried to study translation with traditional scientific research methods. He used the formula of "horizon of expectation" to describe the criteria for readers to evaluate literary texts. Hans Robert Jauss believes that the statement that text comes first is wrong, and the readers' horizon of expectation does not mean that all readers have the same reaction in all periods. An article is not isolated, and different periods have different influences on different readers. The correct research method should be historical dialectical and reader-centered.
Yao Si's reception aesthetics is based on Gadamer's hermeneutics. Gadamer once put forward that "all translations of past documents should be caused by the dialogue between the past and the present, the text we are trying to understand should be based on the constraints of cultural environment, and our current" perspective "should include its relationship with history" (seldon Raman). At the same time, our study of the past cannot be divorced from the objective facts of the present. Past and present are dialectical. Hans Robert Jauss thinks that the author should face the "universal expectation" in the living environment at that time. He pointed out that "acceptance" means that readers use their own aesthetic experience to recreate the text, and the text will be accepted by readers of different societies and historical backgrounds. The value of any work lies in being accepted by readers, but readers are restricted by objective historical facts and cannot recreate the text casually. The reason why a work is valuable is that it does not meet the expectations of readers, thus producing aesthetic value or aesthetic value. Wolfgang Ezelle is another representative of German reception theory. He is a member of the constance School. He attaches great importance to aesthetics, but his view is different from that of Hans Robert Jauss. He doesn't look at the text and readers from a historical dialectical point of view, but thinks that the text is a potential structure when it is embodied by readers with literary norms. Ethel assumes that readers are rooted in the structure of the text, and such readers are only a kind of construction, not real readers. What we read does not represent concrete actual objects, but human fictional language. Literary works do not represent the actual object, but they do involve the world outside the text, which is composed of concrete norms and realistic concepts. In real life, we occasionally encounter such a situation that people seem to be able to represent a specific world view, but we will allocate our world view on the basis of accepting this view. If Ethel's theory is applied to literary criticism, we will find that the author's activity lies in adjusting his own point of view. Ethel put forward that "the characteristic of literary works is that there is no clear connection between the things depicted in the works and the objects in the real world."
Three. conclusion
Reception aesthetics is very valuable for translation studies and literary theory studies, but it is very difficult to understand the theory of this school. Moreover, our task is not only to understand this theory, but also to learn to use and reflect. At present, some scholars combine reception theory to study literary and non-literary translation of rhetoric, poetry and advertising language. Some scholars have pointed out the shortcomings of this theory. Only by reading a lot of other people's works or speeches on reception aesthetics can we understand reception aesthetics theory more thoroughly and learn how to use it to analyze practical translation problems. The theory of reception aesthetics opens up a new field of aesthetics. It is our task as translation learners to understand and use it and point out its shortcomings. Although we still have a long way to go, we will continue to work hard and gradually learn and apply the method of accepting aesthetic research.
References:
[1] Fang Jianzhong. On Hans Robert Jauss's Reception Aesthetics [M]. O, 2004(5).
[2] translated by He Wei. Dialogue between the text and the translator [M]. Foreign language, 1999( 1).
[3] Ma Xiao. Reception aesthetics in literary translation [M]. China Translation, 2000(2).
About the author: Yao Yijia, (1987—), female, from Fuling, Chongqing, is a graduate student of Foreign Languages College of Chongqing Normal University, majoring in English linguistics and applied linguistics, and her research direction is translation.