Re: Thinking with Jim and Robbie

From: Jim Rovira <jrovira@drew.edu>
Date: Tue Oct 29 2002 - 11:30:36 EST

I didn't reply to the other message about "older criticism" because I didn't
feel my reply would help either of us at all. I will say I do benefit from
older criticism as well, but not always in the way the critic may have meant me
to :).

Here, though, we have something useful again:

"L. Manning Vines" wrote:

> I think that my
> fundamental disagreement (which is probably just an older agreement) is that
> textually reasonable interpretations necessarily follow from that intention,
> traceable to the moment of composition, while others here are tacitly
> assuming that it does not (and thus necessarily, I think, either that the
> substance of language can come to exist independently of the mind that
> ordinarily puts it there, or that there is no relevant connection between
> the substance put into speaking and the substance extracted from hearing).
>
> -robbie

I would reply to this:

1. Not all authors are perfect, and do not actually and consistently SAY what
they INTEND. You run into this problem a good bit in poetry and philosophy.
You feel like the author doesn't quite know how to say what they want to say, or
is not quite sure what they intend.

2. I myself believe that the author's reading of his/her own text is usually at
least one valid reading -- in other words, I think the author usually has a
legitimate understanding of his or her own text.

HOWEVER,

this is Seldom or Never the _only_ legitimate understanding of his or her own
text. The text can mean beyond or in addition to the "author's intent," and
legitimately.

To think, again, that a single author can conceive of every potential reading of
his or her text is to expect more out of an author than is fair to expect.

I think you're not fully aware of how many radically different readings can
"legitimately" be drawn from most literary texts.

Jim

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Received on Tue Oct 29 11:31:11 2002

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