On Tue, Sep 25, 2001 at 10:34:21PM -0400, DDJ wrote:
Well, literary criticism tends to be rather heedless of the author's conscious intentions.
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Which is why I've never had much respect for Literary Criticism.
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I lost all respect for Literary Criticism when I saw someone try to apply Freud to a work (in the name of Literary Criticism), and claim that it meant something. Discussing the Freudian imagery of a work may be an amusing game, but it can't tell you what it means, any more than phrenology will tell you what a person is like.
But this suggests that what the author intended the work to mean is the only possible meaning -- which seems a bit problematic when one considers that readers/viewers are bringing widely different backgrounds and experiences to a work and that the work itself (assuming it lasts) is being seen in a different time period from that in which it was created. Some of
Bah! Humbug! Read what I *wrote*!
And I quote from myself:
A work has a context, and part of that context is the author. Yes, an author's intended message isn't usually what the audience hears, but it still is an important factor.
Note "*part* of that context" and "still an important *factor*". *Not* the ONLY thing.
Rejecting all but an author's conscious intentions also seems to imply that the unconscious doesn't come into play when writing, yet various authors' comments would suggest otherwise.
I was *not* "rejecting all but an author's concious intentions"!
I *had* intended to rave on a bit in my original post about the interesting and fascinating realm of the author's unconcious, as related to applying psychology (modern psychology, not Freud) to the understanding of literature... but I had second thoughts, and didn't.
The other thing which I obviously didn't make clear enough is... the matter of communication, or communication theory. You have the message, which the author wrote, and you have the message which the audience recieved, and they are not the same thing. But to say that "this message means whatever I decide it means" is pretentious and arrogant. That is to render meaning itself meaningless. If you wish to *only* take the audience into account, then all you can say is, "I, a member of the audience, have percieved this interesting pattern in this work, but I have no way of telling whether that was the message that was intended to be sent."
Like arguing that Deliverance is sexist because a rocket is a phallic symbol. I think one reason why the argument about that was so much at cross-purposes was that one lot were thinking "but it wasn't *intended* to be sexist" and another party was thinking "intent is irrelevant, the only meaning is what I see to be there".
But of course, it's only in the context of a work of literature that you can even talk about it having meaning at all -- if one is wondering about the *internals* of the universe, such as "Why does Blake know about churches and Gan doesn't?" then looking for internal explanations of such things hasn't got anything to do with meaning or authorial intent at all -- because they are external to the B7 universe. If you see what I mean. Which you might not, because I could be botching what I'm saying...
Kathryn Andersen -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bellfriar: H-N, H-N-O ... oh, My God! Blake: Dr. Bellfriar! Dr. Bellfriar!! Bellfriar: I've forgotten how to read. (Blake's 7: Killer [B7])