ABSTRACT
Despite the vogue of Rezeptionsasthetik , reader-response criticism, and other movements emphasizing the role of the reader in literary communication, empirical, data-based studies of literary text comprehension have been relatively rare (cf. e.g. Fairley 1979, Stalker 1982 and van Peer 1986). Indeed the usefulness of such empirical studies has been called in question. They have been characterized, and even dismissed, as a ‘vestige of superannuated scientism1, which ‘will have to assume a more modest and ancillary function1. To go on citing Robert Holub,
Continuing on its present course, empirical reception theory is bound to remain an isolated and ridiculed branch of literary endeavor. Purged of its absolutist notions about objectivity and applied in a judicious manner, on the other hand, empirical studies could become a boon rather than a bane for our understanding of the literary text and its reception.
