The Remedy for Reception Aesthetics in Interpreting Istanbul: Memories and the City

Abstract

Istanbul by the Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk accumulated his popularity before his winning of the Noble Prize for Literature in 2006. The unique genre of autobiographic city annal challenges the reception aesthetics interpretation advocated by Jauss and Iser and evermore widely accepted as an effective way of interpreting literary works. The theory emphasizes that the reader enjoys the most important role in the literature interpretation whose embodiment of the “indeterminacies” in the text schema is the source of the text meaning, without which the literary work is incomplete. However, how does this theory apply to Chinese readers in their interpretation of Istanbul, a foreign experimental work of unprecedented genre? According to the concept of “expected vision” of Gadaner, the reader needs to construct a new “expected vision” by reading the extensive knowledge of the social factor—the city of Istanbul, and the ideological factor—the life of the author. It is a remedy for reception aesthetics in interpreting Istanbul. In this way, the “expected vision” accords to the text. An accurate and comprehensive interpretation is likely to be achieved.