The Impact Of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s Effect-history View On Literature Reading Theory

In the Truth and Method, the principle of effect-history is closely related to the core concepts of philosophical hermeneutics such as time span, tradition, prejudice, pre-understanding, the hermeneutic circle, fusion of horizons. The consciousness of effect-history is connected with the important issues such as artistic experience, hermeneutic experience, ontology of language, logic of question and answer. Thus the consciousness of effect-history connects with three fields of philosophical hermeneutics-art, history and language. Hence, effect-history view is deemed as the core concept of philosophical hermeneutics. The study of effect-history view is constantly intensifying in domestic, but most essays mainly focus on the concept definition. The studies on theoretical influence or application are thin on the ground. Unlike the previous academic research, this thesis attempts to get rid of the limition of purely academic concept and expands the perspective of research to the theoretical application, that is, the field of literary theory study. Based on overview and detailed analysis of Gadamer’s effect-history view, this thesie emphaizes the analysis about the impact of effect-history view on literature reading theory.Literature reading is indispensable and essential part of the literary activities, and is the basis and premise of realizing the function of literature. But in the study of the traditional literary theory, especially before Receptional Aesthetic Theory, literature reading theory is the least systematically studied field. Therefore, this thesis embarks from Gadamer’s effect-history view and extends to the literature reading theory. The purpose of this thesie is to deeply analyze the impact of effect-history view on literature reading theory from the perspectives of text, reader, meaning interpretation and historicality.The main body of this thesis includes five chapters. Introduction part mainly introducts the role of effect-history view in the philosophical hermeneutics, combs the domestic research status about Gadamer’s effect-history view, illuminates the study significance, the innovation and the structure of this thesis. The first chapter systematically investigates Gadamer’s effect-history view. On the basis of the theoretical resources of historical philosophy, this chaper combs the changed context of Western historical philosophy from objective history view to effect-history view and elaborates the origin of Gadamer’s effect-history view, and then deeply explains the meaning of effect-history view from the aspects of the principle of effect-history and the consciousness of effect-history. The second chaper mainly investigates the impact of effect-history view on text theory. By the analysis of theory of play and effect-history view, Gadamer considers literary text as the existence of ontological sense. The transformation of the existing mode of literary text causes the text concept from "text" to "literary works". At the same time, the view of effect-history is introduced into the language theory. Gadamer’s emphasis on the historicality of language transcends traditional view of language as a tool and completes ontological shift of language, then brings out new changes about the theory of textual language and provides profound reference for dialogue theory and communication theory. The third chaper turns the open-minded of effect-history to readers and mainly investigates the impact of effect-history on reader theory. This part explores Gadamer’s cognition on the role of reader and compares the connections and differences with "the reader-centered theory", then intensely discusses the two reading model influenced by effect-history view. The fourth chaper mainly explores the impact of effect-history view on meaning interpretation theory. By comparing the theory among Gadamer, Betty, Hirsch, and Eco, this part explains the impact of effect-history view on the crietria of meaning interpretation, then makes generalization and summary about the value of meaning interpretation. The last chaper of this thesis mainly discusses the effect-history view and the historical dimension of literature. This part begins with temporality and historicality of effect-history consciousness and introduces Gadamer’s elaboration on the historicality of literature, and then explores the impact of effect-history view on literary history view.