Events, Facts, and Power: A Comparative Study of Reception Aesthetics and New Historicism

Yingting  Diao

doi:10.54691/0ya8w867

Authors

Yingting Diao

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.54691/0ya8w867

Keywords:

Reception Aesthetics; New Historicism; event; fact.

Abstract

fact. It argues that their difference lies not only in method, but also in ontology and epistemology. Reception Aesthetics sees the event as realized in the interaction between text and reader, and understands facts as formed through the accumulation of reception and interpretive continuity. New Historicism, by contrast, treats the event as historically situated and materially embedded, and regards facts as discursive effects produced within networks of power, archive, and institution. By comparing these two paradigms, the essay shows that literary meaning is shaped by both reception and history, and that literary history is constructed through the tension between interpretive openness and historical constraint.

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