A Thought about the University....

john v. omlor (omlor@packet.net)
Sun, 13 Sep 1998 15:29:26 -0500

Regarding the University and the Author:

Actually, the University as an institution has long been a vigorous
protector of the "author" as icon.  Perhaps the reason certain parts of it
(like Lit. Crit. or Philosophy or Theory) have often been somewhat
suspicious of intention as meaning however (even the stuffy old New Critics
had their Wimsatt and Beardsley and the Intentional Fallacy after all, and
you can find critiques of intention and rhetoric that go all the way back
to the Greeks) is what happens in the classroom (and Marxism has nothing to
do with this).  It's simple, really.  This week I am in the midst of
teaching works by Dostoevsky, Flaubert, Plato and Descartes.  Whatever is
happening when I "teach" them, there is certainly not a transference of the
intentions of these men through me to my students.  I'd never want to claim
that or to defend that as a goal even.  That doesn't mean the students
don't "learn" stuff about these works and about when and where and by whom
they were written; it just means that intention is definitely being
exceeded and even displaced by what ends up getting taught.

At least that's what seems to be happening when I read the exams.

--John