I'll tell you what it's all about....

Scottie Bowman (rbowman@indigo.ie)
Thu, 19 Nov 1998 23:20:10 +0000 

    '...That is saying that you are looking for messages that aren't there.
    The author creates the character and their actions and their reasons
    for their actions.  The author knows what the character is feeling
    because he is the character (especially in jds case)...'

    Although I'm not altogether clear about other bits of your message,
    that one quoted above seems to me, at least, to be indisputable.

    Having had no contact with academic linguistics before joining
    mailing lists such as this one, I was bemused, amused, amazed by
    the evidently fashionable view that the interpretation of a text
    or the projection onto it of private fantasies by any jumped-up
    Tom, Dick or Harriet is potentially as valid as that intended by
    its author.

    I can see how attractive this must be in a society - such as the US
    or Australia - where a remorseless egalitarianism lays its dead hand
    on the artist ìn his special role as elite avatar - one only to be
understood
    with the most ardent, humble devotion.  It remains a position
    of grotesque & insightless impudence.

    Scottie B.