RE: Authorial Intent

You may have been required to take calc or some science classes, but until
you get to the point where there is uncertainty then sometimes it is hard to
see the beauty of it. Like math, if your taught the ideas as domesticated
beasts then it is not art but once you realize there are feral rebels hiding
everywhere you can(I can) really enjoy it. Math is a language and it is
most interesting when trying to describe the difficult, maybe that is what
you are saying about the critic. I'll tip my hand and show some of my
cards. I studied engineering in college but well over the minimum in
humanities. I easily got high grades with little work while others in those
fields labored over their work and did not do so well. I know that I was
not any more intelligent than them (not a sly backhanded trick) but I
usually read the text in question and bullshitted my way through it (usually
at the last minute, sometimes immediately before class) and received (I
didn't say earned) great grades, we (engineers) called them GPA boosters. I
discovered that the key element to my writing whether essay, poetry, or
fiction was to be audacious. I thought it was maybe a side effect to poor
(crappy) humanities professors at my university, but I have spoken to many
other engineers and they expressed similar experiences. I started to read
some literary critics ( I do have a real interest in reading literature of
all kinds, as well as poetry) such as Stanley Fish and a few others but they
seemed not to help as we have discussed. I think maybe the audaciousness
was a diversion from the same ho-hum work that my professors usually read.
My point is that 'meaning' and 'intent' and other literary concepts are so
subjective that it is truly hard to know when someone is saying something
worthwhile or just being clever and it takes a huge investment to sort it
out which really distracts me from doing my first Love, Reading and
discussing what I read. There are professional critics and they may be
saying important things but it is mixed in with so much BS as well. I'm
sure it is the weakness of us 'techno geeks' who do not have the ability to
sift through it all and support positions. methods, or theories that can
blow away like leaves. I am truly not trying to be dismissive, insulting or
any such thing. Its just that I still read books and enjoy discussing them.
I'm not a Rodney King (why can't we all just get along?) its just that when
it comes to weapons we prefer the sword over the pen. You don't like doing
a structural analysis of an indeterminate structure (I suspect) and I don't
find the contending Literary critical theories interesting, you have your
reasons and I have mine. You may find the superficial details unimportant
that is where I live and I believe the story lives and they are not
superficial in the least
to me.

Now to tip your hand? I suspect that there are many the critic that makes
more out of so little and turns a 200 page novel into an encyclopedia. A
few insights may be relevant but the vast majority (95%?) is ... what...
irrelevant, or mistaken, or wrong, or outdated method based, or.... not
useful. Does that mean there should be no Literary critics? as long as they
provoke people to think about what they are reading then great. But to
assume that only the professional critic has real insight or thoughtful or
penetrating things to say about literature is at the core of their negative
perception(?) by many.

Daniel Yocum
-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Rovira [mailto:jrovira@drew.edu]
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2002 9:23 AM
To: bananafish@roughdraft.org
Subject: Re: Authorial Intent

Robbie, you can make assertions all day long, but assertions are not
argument --
and you didn't address my argument at all.

If you want to know the meaning of Achilles' Shield in Homer's writing, do
you
ask Homer, or do you study his writing? What, then is the real issue?

We can take for granted that works of literature are intentional products.
But
with your training you should know better than to assume that a reader
living
thousands of years after Homer would read Homer's text the same way Homer
did.

You surely have seen yourself the problem readings created by people reading
Homer with Christian ethics and values in mind. I don't think we can read
him
properly without trying to purge our minds of 2000 years of history, if you
want
a reading that's even remotely faithful to Homer.

That takes a lot of work.

Jim

PS The liberal arts education you describe is alive and well and thriving
only
in universities where the humanities are still respected. My two
universities
were good old liberal arts universities and require all their students to
study
math, science, theater, art, or music, along with literature, politics, and
history (this is all in addition to the chosen majors). I had math through
first year calculus, studied theater (I fear I have NO musical capacity at
all
so I avoided those classes), took a good 10 or more hours of science courses
in
addition to my major.

But this only happens, again, where humanities people are in charge, not
where
people like the computer geek who wrote that essay are in charge. In those
institutions the humanities run on a shoestring sufficient to meet state
requirements (where they exist) while the science budgets are fat and happy

--
and I suspect the author's attitude serves the purpose, at least in part, of
continuing this state of affairs.
"L. Manning Vines" wrote:
> Jim says that authorial intent is a complete dead-end, that seeking it
> requires holding a set of critical assumptions that "just aren't held
> anymore."
>
> Yet it appears to me to be overwhelmingly the case that Homer did not
write
> the Iliad accidentally.  Truly Great Books are not mistakes.  I realize
that
> you did not assert the contrary, but it does seem to me that something
like
> it must be lurking for such a bold rejection of the relevance of authorial
> intent.  Unless a Great and Timeless thing was a slip of the pen, surely
> the deliberate author is not irrelevant.  If I am not permitted to ask,
> "What did Homer mean by this?" then I am disallowed to know Homer
> and disallowed to know his poems.
>
> I suppose it is right to say that we can't KNOW the author's intent,
> certainly not with so rigorous an understanding of knowing as we get from,
> say, Socrates.  All he knew was that he knew nothing, or so he reportedly
> said.  We can use this to reject quite nearly anything.
>
> But I need not read archaeological or biographical theories or
> presumptions -- get boggled down with still further Not Quite Knowing --
to
> puzzle over the significance of Achilles' Shield.  Homer presents the
shield
> in a puzzling way, he says puzzling things about it.  He certainly meant
> something, perhaps several things.  I need only go to Homer, and ideally
> also to other sincere and thoughtful readers, to puzzle out what.  I
suppose
> I will never KNOW, but neither will the historian or the biographer.
Homer
> was, after all, writing for us.  If we listen sensitively, he tells us
what
> he needs us to know.  SOMETIMES historical or biographical things become
> very important, but I do expect that these times are usually in less Great
> books or less Great parts of books.  Even then an occasional footnote can
do
> the trick, and if we're especially lucky, it will only refer us to another
> writer contemporary to the fellow we're reading.  The truly Great stuff is
> written for me just as much as for some fellow in the author's time and
> place, and it describes something just as true for me.
>
> I do not mean to say, by all of this, that we should not involve ourselves
> in historical research; but only that reading books IS historical
research,
> and that being sensitive to authorial intent is in fact quite important.
>
> -robbie
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