Jauss fait remonter la préhistoire de la théorie de la réception à l'époque d'Homère et de la Bible, c'est-à-dire à l'époque des premiers exégètes qui devaient établir une interprétation canonique. «The word receptio appears for the first time in Middle Latin in the context of scholastic theology» (p.56)
«After 1950, a further concept of reception took its place as part of legal hermeneutics: concretization (as opposed to subsumption), seen as a progressive (also legally creative) interpretation of legal norms, which may b required in judging a particular case.» (p.58)
«subsequent to Roman Ingarden, both the Prague literary theories and the Constance School, though in ignorance of legal hermeneutics, made concretization a key concept in literary semiotics and the aesthetics of reception.» (p.58)
«The aim of this School [Constance School] is to describe the nature of aesthetic activity, firstly in the realm of the implicit reader, and secondly in the realm of the historical reader, which involves a continuous change of horizon in and through understanding and interpretation. (This brief formula is intended to indicate to what extent Wolfgang Iser's theoritical approach and my own complement one another.) (p.59)»
«Today, the interaction of effect and reception is commonly defined in such a way that effect is the name given to the element of concretization determined by the text, while reception is the element determined by the person to whom the text is addressed.» (p.60)
Montaigne: «Un suffisant lecteur descouvre souvent ès escrits des perfections autres que celles que l'autheur y a mises et apperceues, et y preste des sens et des visages plus riches.»
«Paul Valéry, who recognized the indispensable gulf between the aesthetics of production and the aesthetics of reception. With his provocative dictum "mes vers ont le sens qu'on leur prête" he promoted the merely contemplative reader of the past to the level of co-creator of the open work in modern literature.» (p.65)
«Umberto Eco who, in Opera aperta (1962), drafted the first theory of an open, constantly progressing constitution of meaning, a theory by which the work of art, seen as an open structure, requires the active co-production of the recipient and brings about a historical variety of concretizations without in the process ceasing to be one work.» (p.66)
«Borges' most important successor, Italo Calvino» (p.68)
Les auteurs de l'École de Constance: «Thus far, the writings of the Constance School have been translated into 15 languages. See the works by Iser, Jauss, Stierle, Warning and Weber» (p.69)