I got smacked down so hard when I suggested that instead of identifying symbolism and metaphors in the writing we should be looking at the author’s intent in the context of their time.
Author intent stops meaning anything outside the head of the author anyways. Individual perception is the only source of meaning. No one can understand a subject without the context of their culture and personal experiences. Hence why two people can interpret the same subject in different ways that are both valid.
That may sound overly reductionist, but that’s genuinely what it boils down to. Someone’s artistic intent could be pretending to be stupid to prove a point, but if the audience only sees a stupid person, the author has no control of the message.
In the context of they sorts of literary analysis done at the high school or early university level, there does end up being a right and a wrong. Maybe that’s what turned me off to that sort of discussion: the downplaying of my experience with a work in favor of the “right” interpretation.
This is a common low-level approach to literature, but I think it’s a really stupid and bad approach. In some ways, it’s a response to the political demand to quantify and standardize education. I think it turns many people away from reading.
That’s because you can never know the author’s intent. That’s a very outdated (and very overdone) way of thinking about literature. It’s also one that we have realized isn’t actually very useful for the purposes of most literary analysis. While it can be useful to look at the historical conditions under which the text was produced (New Historicism), there is much more insight into what literature “means” when we look at aspects of the text itself such as symbolism and metaphor, because these aspects can evolve with the text and with time and with the reader, and this unfolds many more possibilities about ourselves and the work of art. There is certainly a place for combining New Historicism with other forms of literary analysis to use knowledge about the historical conditions to inform the interpretations of things like symbolism and allegory, but attempting to ascertain the author’s intentions is a futile endeavor that usually makes for a lackluster analysis.
You’re obviously levels beyond me understanding and analyzing literature, and I defer to what sounds like your knowledgeable position. Maybe I always missed the point, maybe I had teachers who weren’t that great, or maybe I am just not wired for it. Analyzing a fictional character’s motivations seemed like asking why grass is motivated to be green.
Honest question: if I was interested in expanding my mind on this topic could you recommend some reading? Or is this the sort of thing only years of study would help?
It’s more likely than not that your teachers kinda sucked. I found that very little of my English and literature education prior to undergrad taught me much about what literature even is, let alone how to interpret it.
If you’re interested in expanding your mind, there are plenty of resources you can do it with, but it might be best pursued under some sort of tutelage. If you’re particularly self-motivated, you can pick up a book on literary analysis (I recommend The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends) and read about the history of literary criticism and analysis. But be warned—the reading is not easy, and some things will likely go over your head or remain indecipherable. Derrida is a mindbending trip and Lacan doesn’t make much sense to even the most advanced readers on a good day.
Otherwise, I’m sure there are some YouTube classes on literary analysis (see if Crash Course has any!) or find some classes at your local community college!
Honestly, even reading through the Wikipedia pages on literary criticism and literary theory would give you a good starting point. You can start learning about the various approaches and schools of thought, their strengths and weaknesses, and figuring out how you can apply them to the stories in your life. As you dig deeper, you’ll start to see some of the big names cropping up, and if one particularly interests you, there are tons of PDFs that you can find online.
I got smacked down so hard when I suggested that instead of identifying symbolism and metaphors in the writing we should be looking at the author’s intent in the context of their time.
Author intent stops meaning anything outside the head of the author anyways. Individual perception is the only source of meaning. No one can understand a subject without the context of their culture and personal experiences. Hence why two people can interpret the same subject in different ways that are both valid.
That may sound overly reductionist, but that’s genuinely what it boils down to. Someone’s artistic intent could be pretending to be stupid to prove a point, but if the audience only sees a stupid person, the author has no control of the message.
In the context of they sorts of literary analysis done at the high school or early university level, there does end up being a right and a wrong. Maybe that’s what turned me off to that sort of discussion: the downplaying of my experience with a work in favor of the “right” interpretation.
This is a common low-level approach to literature, but I think it’s a really stupid and bad approach. In some ways, it’s a response to the political demand to quantify and standardize education. I think it turns many people away from reading.
That’s because you can never know the author’s intent. That’s a very outdated (and very overdone) way of thinking about literature. It’s also one that we have realized isn’t actually very useful for the purposes of most literary analysis. While it can be useful to look at the historical conditions under which the text was produced (New Historicism), there is much more insight into what literature “means” when we look at aspects of the text itself such as symbolism and metaphor, because these aspects can evolve with the text and with time and with the reader, and this unfolds many more possibilities about ourselves and the work of art. There is certainly a place for combining New Historicism with other forms of literary analysis to use knowledge about the historical conditions to inform the interpretations of things like symbolism and allegory, but attempting to ascertain the author’s intentions is a futile endeavor that usually makes for a lackluster analysis.
You’re obviously levels beyond me understanding and analyzing literature, and I defer to what sounds like your knowledgeable position. Maybe I always missed the point, maybe I had teachers who weren’t that great, or maybe I am just not wired for it. Analyzing a fictional character’s motivations seemed like asking why grass is motivated to be green.
Honest question: if I was interested in expanding my mind on this topic could you recommend some reading? Or is this the sort of thing only years of study would help?
It’s more likely than not that your teachers kinda sucked. I found that very little of my English and literature education prior to undergrad taught me much about what literature even is, let alone how to interpret it.
If you’re interested in expanding your mind, there are plenty of resources you can do it with, but it might be best pursued under some sort of tutelage. If you’re particularly self-motivated, you can pick up a book on literary analysis (I recommend The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends) and read about the history of literary criticism and analysis. But be warned—the reading is not easy, and some things will likely go over your head or remain indecipherable. Derrida is a mindbending trip and Lacan doesn’t make much sense to even the most advanced readers on a good day.
Otherwise, I’m sure there are some YouTube classes on literary analysis (see if Crash Course has any!) or find some classes at your local community college!
Honestly, even reading through the Wikipedia pages on literary criticism and literary theory would give you a good starting point. You can start learning about the various approaches and schools of thought, their strengths and weaknesses, and figuring out how you can apply them to the stories in your life. As you dig deeper, you’ll start to see some of the big names cropping up, and if one particularly interests you, there are tons of PDFs that you can find online.