Die Gestaltung des sozialen Wandels als Menschenbild in der gegenwärtigen Literatur. Eine rezeptionsästhetische, historische und literatursoziologische Untersuchung in ausgewählten literarischen Werken

Abstract

This research focuses on defining the relationship between the text and the reader through the perspective of Reader-response theory. A comparative method is applied in determining the reception process. This thesis benefits from Iser and Jauss’s perspectives that formulate the basis for interpretation of texts.

Reception process is related to the foundation of the historical, public and sociological elements. It aims at defining the author-text-reader relationship through literary and sociological references.

The selected literary texts are chosen from the works of Christoph Ransmayr, Herta Müller and Bernard Schlink. The historical structure of „MorbusKitahara“ and „DieHeimkehr“ is the World War 2. One encounters the imprints of dictatorship in Romania in Herztier“ novel.

The historical plot is dealt with the readers’ interpretative attitude. The aim of this research is to describe the ways in which the elements of the novels are contextualized in the readers’ conscious.

During the process of interpreting the selected texts, the connection between the reader and the text is revealed only when the reader establishes a sense of sharing and commonality with the protagonists.

It is observed that such an evaluation and also the ethical values that the novel’s characters communicate with the reader is a rather crucial issue. The reader embodies the writers’ intentional gaps by the help of certain motifs. The gaps that are left by the authors and the reader’s intention of achieving the author’s intention are fulfilled through a concretization of subjects and topics that are related with individual, society and the societal structure.

This thesis discovers the ways in which man as an individual is affected by social changes as exemplified in the selected novels.

The study elaborates on the completion of the reception process based on the reader’s own individual social, historical, public and psychological experiences.