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different opinions when it comes to such questions as what are the primary factors that
shape the reader's response (why does s/he fill the gaps in this particular way and not in
any other?) and where to draw the line between what is objectivelygiven in the text and
what is subjectively put in by the individual reader (How far does the text guide the
reader? Is there a "correct" way to concretise the text and is misreading possible or is the
text a field which is completely open for any interpretation/P'
Norman Holland has a psychoanalytical background and in his view the way how textual
gaps are filled by individual readers is mostly determined by their personality, fantasies,
dreams and private connotations. Every text contains an "unconscious fantasy", aspects
of which appeal to the reader. They appeal, but at the same time (through reading, and
thereby transforming them into conscious, acceptable meanings) the reader can
overcome them. This is of course a very subjective way of regarding the reading process;
it makes reading a private experience influenced only by the personal history of the
person and places an individual therapeutic function on literature.
But there are also approaches in reader response theory that place literature and the
reading process in a wider socio-historical context and regard reading both as a
"collective phenomenon", not merely a subjective chain ofimpressions butguided by a)
literary convention as well as b) the reader's experience of every-day life. Hans Robert
[auss (who, together with Wolfgang Iser, both from the University of Konstanz, refers
back in his work to the German hermeneutic tradition and the phenomenological ideas
of HusserI and Heidegger) coined the term "horizon of expectation"
(Erwartungshorizont) to describe the, at least partly socially determined, background of
familiar themes, allusions and literaryconventions which are evoked by the knowledge of
former texts. Any text can either simply reproduce these expectations or it can vary,
correct and alter them, whereby inJauss' view the ideal and most effective work would
be the one that first evokes this familiarity with its genre, style or form to destroy itlater
step by step. This idea of not-fulfilling our expectations, this aspect of
"defamiliarization" (a term first used by the Russian formalist Victor Shklovsky) might
function as a possible definition of a literary work. Whereas in "ordinary" conversation or
67 see M.H.Abrarns, A Glossary ofLiteraryTerms, 5th editon (Fort Worth et al:Holt, Rhinehartand Winston,
1988),
Chapter 3 -page 119