Re: no problem
Camille Scaysbrook (verona_beach@geocities.com)
Mon, 23 Nov 1998 15:51:20 +1100
This reminds me a little of a famous Australian case in the 1940's. A book
of poetry came out by the little known but brilliant poet, Ern Malley.
Critics raved about the newly discovered work - until it was revealed that
Ern Malley did not in fact exist, and his surrealistic poems were simply
assembled at random. But a lot of people still found insight into those
poems. You could almost say that this is a case in which authorial
intention has been removed, so meaning is wholly reader-constructed. An
interesting case, anyway.
Will Hochman wrote:
> In 1949 Wimsatt and Beardsley wrote about "the affective
fallacy"--arguing
> that readers feelings obscure meaning...in their words, "The Affective
> Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results...It begins by
> trying to derive the standard of criticism from the pyshchological
> effects of a poem and ends with in impressionism and relativism."
>
> New Critics loved this idea as a means to justify their "close
> readings" but Reader Response critics loved it better,
> though folks like Stanley Fish were openly directed at not what a poem
> means, but what it does. And Louise Rosenblatt, before WWII was talking
> about literature as a continuum where the reader's identity does indeed
> create meaning from his or her identity in flux with text and author.
Camille
verona_beach@geocities.com
@ THE ARTS HOLE www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Theater/6442
@ THE INVERTED FOREST www.angelfire.com/pa/invertedforest