Reception Aesthetics (Rezeptionsästhetik) German literary theorist Jauss, Hans Robert’s term for his theory that the history of literature can only be fully understood as a dialectic relationship between the production of texts and their reception by readers. It is readers, Jauss argues, that determine the aesthetic value of a work and it is the accumulated responses of readers across time that constitutes the aesthetic itself. Jauss was particularly interested in the influence of readers on writers and the more or less unspoken interaction between the two which transforms history into aesthetics. Influenced by Russian Formalism as well as phenomenology critics like Gadamer, Hans-Georg, Jauss uses the notion of ‘horizon of expectation’ (Erwartungshorizont) to characterize the status quo in literature and suggests that readers respond most favourably to works whose novelty (which he defines in terms very similar to ostranenie) challenges that status quo and thereby creates a new horizon of expectation. The rapid evolution of magical realism offers an excellent and recent case in point: the publication of Gabriel García Márquez’s novel, Cien años de soledad (1967), translated as One Hundred Years of Solitude (1970), created the possibility for Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children (1981), which in turn led to a popular appetite for literature of this type. See also reader-response criticism; reception theory. Further Reading: R. Holub Reception Theory: A Critical Introduction (1984).