RE: Try listening to the real ideas and ignore vitriolic attacks

Here is a glimpse of the feet. The method of reasoning looks at the whole
process of literature from one side, the receiving end. The process has a
giving end. The modern view assumes that the only observable or accessible
part of the black box is the receiving end. Yes we may not ever get to know
exactly what an author means but when he wrote he usually meant something or
somethings. I as a writer and a reader am acutely aware of this and I know
that there was something that stirred the heart and mind before the pen
moved and this is what I am after. I am not sure what the options are as
far as theories go out there but the apparent impossible nature of knowing
what an author means does not detract me from my quest. I may be wrong but
I seek none the less. When I mentioned the attic in the previous post I was
talking about knowing something more than what I already do as part of the
motivation to read (communicate), I see this with my daughter (just 1 year
old), she sometimes behaves very shockingly (pleasantly) and I know that she
is learning strange new things from here Egyptian nanny, she often says
words in Arabic. She got them from somewhere and despite the fact that, at
first, I thought it was babble it had meaning that meant something to more
than her. The multiple readings you speak of may be laid before me I still
must choose one or some and what criteria do I use to choose? That is the
question. The 'as many readings as there are readers' may start the show
but which one or ones were there at the beginning. Some of these readings
can be set aside but it never changes the fact that an intended meaning was
implanted at the origin. We know this because we know writers and are
writers ourselves. These modern theories (the little that I know of) seem
to try and cut everyone off into mere islands of existence. Your theories
may be about formulating the criteria but just because the meaning is not
easily unmixed from the dough ball, it did go in there in the beginning, I
know because I put it there. Can meaning disappear? I guess it can but
that is the author's hope, that it does get through. That is the hope in
all communication. The idea that man has so radically changed over time
that meaning becomes completely unattainable seems again to be rooted in the
modernist progressive assumptions. Here's an assumption to chew on:
relationships are.

Daniel

I very much appreciate the distinction between assertion and argument.

I think the multivocity of fictional texts can be taken as a fact --
there's a certain denseness attending those who insist that every
fictional text only has one valid reading. No one who's studied
literature for very long -- or really at all -- can honestly hold to
this belief. This isn't a matter of argument -- it's more a matter of
observation. Give a roomful of people a poem with no title, no author,
just the poem. This has been done before. Depending on the poem, it's
conceivable you could get as many different, legitimate readings as you
have people in the room.

Then ask the readers to identify the characteristics of the author --
male or female? Contemporary or ancient. Married or divorced or
single. Again, you'd get a variety of responses depending on the poem.
 Each response can point to specific material in the text to justify its
assertions...

Jim

-
* Unsubscribing? Mail majordomo@roughdraft.org with the message
* UNSUBSCRIBE BANANAFISH
Received on Wed Mar 5 18:22:46 2003