Thank you, thank you for the full reply :). Responses below.
"L. Manning Vines" wrote:
> Jim says, "Just sit in a literature class where students are given a poem
> and asked to describe what it means. If you have 30 students, you'll
> probably get at least 25 different readings depending on the poem."
>
> As someone who sits in round-table discussions concerning philosophy,
> theology, literature, language, politics, mathematics, science, music, et
> cetera with 12-20 people every day of the week, and as part of a small
> community fervently dedicated to Conversation with a capital C, where such
> discussions spring up even outside of class at every meal and party, I know
> something about this.
Never meant to question that.
"And if you let those 30 students discuss the poem freely rather than just
> describe what it means, if they go back and forth with one another for a few
> hours, those 25 different readings usually evolve and coalesce and become
> four or five. Sometimes one or two. And when this has happened, people
> leave feeling like they've learned a lot more, and believing that they were
> either dead-wrong with their first idea or else that it was grossly
> simplified.
>
I'm sorry, but my experience has been a bit different. I don't know that we can
really argue on the grounds of experience here. But that doesn't mean I think
we're at a dead end.
One problem with grounding meaning in authorial intent is that it demands a
stable, set, pretty much single meaning. The question, then, isn't whether or
not we can whittle down 25 interpretations to 4 or 5 or even 2 or 3. The
question is, rather, how mutually exclusive these two or three meanings are.
Sometimes they complement one another. Other times they are flatly
contradictory. Most of the time, the range of accepted readings of any given
literary work have elements of both.
The point is, though, that when you say that a work means what its author
intended it to mean (and this is what authorial intent requires), then you
immediately reduce the range of possible, legitimate readings to One -- the
author's. And this simply isn't true most of the time. Most of the time, there
are valid, contradictory readings of literary texts (and I want to emphasize
"literary" texts, not chemical formulas) that all have the same degree of
textual grounds. Appeals to the author don't help us at all here and are
therefore irrelevant.
And that's really what I'm saying about authorial intent.
1. That it's irrelevant so far as solving disputes between contradictory
readings.
2. That it's inaccessible most of the time.
> Also: "I said [. . .] that the author's intent [. . .] is only accessible
> through the author's writing, so the real issue isn't trying to read the
> author's mind (an impossible task), but to understand the author's writing
> within a specific context (usually historical and cultural)."
>
> I don't think anyone here suggested trying to read the author's mind, but,
> rather, trying to read the author's book. You nod to this by saying that
> the author's intent is only accessible through the author's writing, but you
> bafflingly bring telepathy into the matter. This is entirely unnecessary.
>
No, I think you don't really understand the meaning of your own language.
"Authorial intent" takes place in the mind of the author and nowhere else. It
exists Solely in the author's gray matter. When we read texts trying to
determine authorial intent, we are trying to read the author's mind, not the
author's text -- we are trying to make inferences about the author's mind from
the author's text.
This is mind reading, not textual criticism.
> I also think that the historical and cultural contexts you're harping on can
> become helpful, but that they don't deserve the status you're giving them.
> Reading an author within his own context is in most cases perfectly
> sufficient, so long as we are sensitive readers who try not to push our
> prejudices onto him. In other cases, reading an author within the context
> of other authors contemporary or slightly older than him will do. If we
> must go beyond that, it seems to me that we're probably approaching the
> point of diminishing returns. Some small details might be illuminated by
> archaeology or history textbooks, but they are usually small enough to be of
> interest only to the serious hobbyist, and to make little difference to our
> appreciation and understanding of the book.
>
I will address this later. I think you need to carefully consider the work that
really needs to be done before you can make any statements about the author's
probable intent.
> Lao Tzu sings to me, transcending cultural and historical contexts.
How do you know, Robbie? How do you know -- at all -- that Lao Tzu is singing to
you _in the same way_ and _for the same reasons_ that he sang to his
contemporaries, or even to himself?
This isn't a matter of absolute knowledge. It isn't a matter of even probable
knowledge. It's a matter of having _any knowledge at all_. Isn't it remotely
possible that Lao Tzu got something different out of his text (written in his
native language centuries ago) that you get out of it now, reading it either in
English, or even in an original language that is certainly not your own?
Aren't you assuming a great deal of similarity between yourself and Lao Tzu?
What is the basis of this assumption? You can claim a common humanity, but I
think you know better than to do that (I was wrong, having just read the next
paragraph). I share a common humanity with Hitler, but can't even begin to
really understand his reasoning. I share a common humanity with a great number
of people I barely understand. So do you. Is that really a safe appeal, then?
If you can't appeal to this, what appeal can you make to justifiy the assumption
that you're reading Lao Tzu's text the same way he did?
> Also: "Is there any way you could ever know that your ideas are anywhere
> near the author's ideas about his/her own text?
>
> No."
>
> How well do you know anything? This isn't unique to literature, but people
> often treat it as if it were. A scientific theory can never be proven
> either, only disproven.
You should reference my comment above about the type of certainty I'm talking
about. I'm not talking about the high degree of probability that a pair of
wings of a certain shape and size will be able to lift a vehicle of a different
shape and size off the ground given a certain speed. I'm talking about having
_any_ knowledge at all. Not probable knowledge. I'd like to see the grounds of
this knowledge if you don't appeal to historical or cultural contexts.
> Also: "But 500 years from now (or even 6 months from now), will this
> discussion be that clear? Wouldn't uncovering that context be necessary to
> get somewhere close to the meanings we both seem to see so clearly now?"
>
> What you're suggesting is true but, it seems to me, exaggerated. The
> subtlety of conversation and character that is as vivid as day to sensitive
> modern readers of books millennia old is staggering. How do I know that I
> understand it in a way that is similar to the author's own understanding?
> Well, I suppose I don't. But neither do I know that I understand you in a
> way similar to your own understanding, or that I understand a French
> newspaper in a way similar to the understanding of a Frenchman, or that I
> understand my local paper in a way similar to the understanding my neighbors
> and the reporters.
Read what you just said, then tell me if it doesn't contradict the following
statement:
> But the degree of sensibility is so great that I believe
> it anyway.
>
For what reason?
> I agree with the suggestion that we cannot summon the spirits of dead
> authors to understand their books. I agree that no one can rightfully claim
> special access to The True and Final Meaning and Intent of a book. But you
> seem to be ignoring or actually denying implicitly something that is, I
> think, important to acknowledge and remember. This is that books are
> written by authors, and that the good authors actively and deliberately
> inject meaning and substance into their books.
Duh, Robbie, of course books are written by people intending a meaning or sets
of meaning :). I honestly shouldn't concede this now -- many times authors
don't even know what they mean, but for argument's sake let's say they usually
do. I said in my second post to Daniel that I wasn't denying the existence of
the author, or the fact that he/she wrote intentionally.
I'm simply questioning the _relevance_ of this fact. Where do you go to get to
"authorial intent" if it exists at all? The text. So shouldn't the text, and
not the author, be the real focus of this discussion?
> It is indeed important to
> look to the actual book for answers about itself, and looking away from the
> book -- to telepathic understandings or to the further prejudice and
> uncertainty of external sources -- colors our reading of it and comes
> between us and the page. But the author can only be abstracted so far
> before the book disappears with him. Without deliberate human intent,
> intent which we listening humans can however imprecisely sense, a book is so
> many arbitrarily arranged words.
>
> -robbie
But where do you get your knowledge of a long dead author? How do you determine
his meaning? Can you give me a methodology? I think you'll find words divorced
from a specific historical context become very slippery things. Acknowledge
that, and I think you'll find you're simply doing historical research and
allowing that research to limit the range of possible meanings of your text.
You can do this all day long without any direct reference to the author beyond
using him/her to nail down a time and place.
Jim
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Received on Fri Oct 25 11:06:15 2002
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