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It was an interesting experience, rereading E. B. White’s Here is New York on 9/11. It reminded me how valuable a tool the concept of the horizon of expectations is for literary critics. Coined by the literary historian and reader-response theorist Hans Robert Jauss, the term refers to the set of expectations against which a literary text — indeed any work of art — positions itself when it is conceived and then brought before the public. This horizon is created both by social practice