Re: no problem

J J R (jrovira@juno.com)
Sun, 22 Nov 1998 18:12:50 -0500 (EST) 

Your last comments about intention being "religious" really caught my
eye, Will.  My first formal training in the interpretation of texts was
within a religious context.  They did indeed say the meaning of a text
was determined by the "author's intent."  But then they went on from
there to teach us how to arrive at a close approximation of the author's
intent.

You start out with a study of the history leading up to the piece in
question.  "Historico-Cultural Analysis," it says in Henry Virkler's
_Hermeneutics_. (interestingly, he's a psychologist out of Dallas
Theological Seminary, I think).  Then you go on to 
"Contextual Analysis."  This means a study of the audience originally
reading the piece, the concerns addressed by the piece, how that relates
to the history surrounding that area, etc.

>From there you go on to a study of the language
itself--"Lexical/Syntactical Analysis."  You have to learn Greek, Hebrew
and Aramaic to do this properly, of course.  Then you go on to
"Theological Analysis," but in many cases this boils down to identifying
themes common to particular authors.  In other words, a study of
intertext.

So what "authorial intent" really means is studying the author's reading
community.  You try to read the piece the way the person(s) whom the
author wrote to may have read it.  It means placing the language within a
specific historical context and letting that guide your reading of the
text today.

I think that's fairly valid, and probably more valid for ancient
literature than for modern literature written in a world community.  But
it'd be hard to establish that we need to do this with all works of
literature at all times.

It really has nothing to do with prying open the author's mind.  That's
pretty well impossible anyhow.

Jim   

>Deconstruction subverts most intention...I'm sorry but clinging to
>authorial intention is like clinging to partiarchy IMHO, and perhaps 
>even
>more striking is that clinging to intention is religious...but maybe
>scottie or another priest will say more of what is really meant by an
>author's intention...ha, what a lovely pun for someone who I suspect 
>is
>among our list's most widely published authors, will
>
>

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