Hey Guys,
This essay was inspired by many hours of debate in University lectures and seminars regardless as to what module it was in so I decided to put my thoughts on paper and share it with you.
In this
essay I wish to explore whether it is the author’s intentions or the reader’s
interpretation that determines literary meaning. I hope to look at both sides
of the argument and draw an overall opinion through understanding the
perspectives of others.
As a reader
you experience a piece of art. Art is, in fact, subjective at its very core.
However, it is also a creation by a person, an author who had some sort of intent
for their work. This intent could be to have the audience experience a
particular emotion, consider certain subjects, or teach us and give us a
certain opinion about a character, place or situation. Most literary theory
is based around the idea that a text can take on a life of its very own once it
has been written. According to this opinion, any novel or any poem can be
complete as it is and it is our interpretation that deciphers what the meaning
on the page really is to each of us individually. It is the job of a reader to
appreciate and understand what the author’s intent may have been.
Every reader
has a different experience of a story and a different interpretation; this is
what makes reading so interesting. An author provides a story from which we can
take a different meaning to everyone else. Cleanth Brooks believed that “the
relevant part of the author’s intention is what he actually got into his work”.
When an author writes a piece of work, they don’t just simply record their own
rational thoughts for you to take as they are. Instead, a good writer will
inevitably and instinctively include all sorts of paths from which we may take
meaning completely different to that of another person. It is the reader’s job
to analyse and interpret literary meaning and find their own interpretation of
the author’s work. The reason that this independence for people to give their
own interpretation is so interesting is that sometimes we find meaning that the
author themselves are not even aware of. For the reader, the literary meaning
is not just a direct expression of an author’s intentions; it is a visible sign
of the author’s exact consciousness.
Though an
author may have an intention for a text in their conscious minds, the
unconscious urges and desires leave indirect messages in their works as well,
and it takes careful, creative reading and decoding to understand what a
literary work really means. Some critics argue that literary meaning can be
derived from more than the expression of a single individual. They believe that
it is the product of an era or a community or even a representation of a
certain age. From this viewpoint it can be said that literary meaning becomes
an exercise in exploring meanings that go beyond the personality or thoughts of
just one author.
Language is
not just used by people, but language also uses people. Deconstruction explains
that we are, born into a world of already existing language and literary
meanings. This means that our own interpretation of a piece of work is based
around our own understanding of pre existing thoughts, ideas and words.
Language allows us to think, describe and understand everything around us. From
this perspective, authors exist in an infinite network of prose and individual
intention is either an illusion or just another fiction assembled from past
fictions and thoughts. The fast changing pace of language and word meaning can
sometimes interfere with our interpretation of work from a different epoch.
Shakespeare’s plays become a
window into social, cultural and even political issues that may have formed
part of his own original intentions. As Shakespeare did not intend on
publishing his plays and directed them himself he did not need to write long
detailed stage directions or descriptions. As a result of this, his work is
open to our own interpretation. As exciting and interesting as that is, it
still means that we may be misrepresenting what Shakespeare wanted to portray.
There is simply no way of knowing
what Shakespeare’s intentions were, the message he intended to portray or even
what he was thinking when he wrote a play. The Merchant of Venice was used by
the Nazis to represent an anti-Jewish piece of propaganda. However, most modern
interpretations are sympathetic towards Shylock (Martin Yaffe, 1999) this has
come from different interpretations of his character by different directors.
Throughout the centuries people have seen what they want to see in
Shakespeare’s work and we don’t all have to agree on one opinion. The freedom
of interpretation can result in controversial perspectives on the literature.
In spite of this it could be said that the ambiguity of meaning has kept his
work thriving and also keeps it relevant as it can be interpreted to fit almost
any time or location that it is read in.
Ernest Hemingway wrote that
“books should be judged by those who read them—not explained by the writer.” He
also included that asking a writer to explain their works is extremely
challenging. He said that you either get no useful information at all, “I don’t
know, what do you think it means?” or else you get their own personal
interpretation of what they intended for it to mean which leaves us with more
questions. An author’s only real intention
is to create a work of art for us to interpret and not to send a ‘message’.
In comparison to this, William K.
Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley (1946), wrote an essay on intentional fallacy
to explain how it is wrong of us to only consider the author’s own opinion as
the last word to define the literary work’s meaning. They said that as authors
are not usually around to answer our endless questions and even if they are,
their opinions are merely just that, an opinion no more relevant than our own.
The documentary ‘Room 237’ (2012)
explores perceived meanings behind the events in the film, ‘The Shining’. Stanley
Kubrick’s 1980 adaptation of Stephen King’s novel has brought about ideas and
beliefs that neither King nor Kubrick intended to portray. This example leads
the vanguard in defining the absolute nature of a novel being interpreted when
it is turned into a film. Stephen King has always refused to provide any
interpretation of his books beyond the prose, to him the meaning the reader
finds is more important than his objective.
When a novel is converted to a
film the director’s vision and interpretation of the prose often directly
clashes with interpretations of other readers. This is why films based on books
are generally perceived in a negative light by people who have different
interpretations to that of the film’s director. Notable examples that prove
contrary to this include work such as Cormac McCarthy’s ‘No Country for Old
Men’ (2005) which is very telegraphed in its intention and difficult to
interoperate in any way other than the author’s intention.
Similarly, it can be emphasized
that reading literature is not a matter of simply deciphering a message.
“Meaning” means having an experience, and that experience is based on the text
itself. That is the tightly constructed work of literary art in front of you.
Every literary work, for these critics, has its own artistic intentions. It is
not the author’s intention that matters; it’s the intention of the work itself
and what we interpret as the reader.
On the other hand, literary
theory also supports the idea that an author’s original intention does matter.
E. D. Hirsch (1967) defended the idea of authorial intention as essential to a
proper understanding of any literary work, “a text means what its author
meant.” According to Hirsch, you would need to study an author’s letters and
background carefully in order to get at the “aims and attitudes” that signal
the original intention of the author to convey the correct literary meaning.
Hirsch distinguished between the objective “meaning” of a text, only available
through exhaustive research and the “significance” of a work which is what the
work means to a reader, without the need for in-depth study.
It is suggested that reading
literary work can give us the chance to recreate not only the author’s
intention but the author’s consciousness in our own minds. These critics saw
literature as a material, a form of consciousness that you the reader can
explore. From this perspective, you are able to form opinions and make
judgments about the authors’ lives and worldviews through their works. Given
all this, literary theory suggests that an author’s intention is just one
aspect of appreciating literature, and it’s an aspect that people treat in many
different ways. You could say that reading literature is really an exercise in
performing literature silently in your head. When we deliver the lines of a
novel we aren’t interested in finding out the original stage directions of the
work, instinctively we read it as a free-form, impromptu text in our heads.
A book
does not exist for the benefit of the author; the book exists for the benefit the
reader. This means that the reader can extract their own interpretation to get
the literary meaning without the author’s direction or opinion impeding. If
after reading a book you feel as though you have gotten something from it, be
it personal growth, knowledge or compassion from your own interpretation then
that book has been a success and the authors own intentional meaning should not
change your opinion.
(Richard Badenhausen, 2004) T.S
Eliot was of the opinion that an author should always depersonalise their own
experiences when writing and that readers should approach a text impersonally,
this is a very difficult task. Authorial intention is of course useful in
understanding a text however, the literary meaning of a text should be
interpreted on what an author has written.
E.D Hirsch says that this does not stop a text’s meaning from being
ambiguous or philosophical. It could be said that Eliot’s poetry has somewhat
of an incomplete meaning but infinite capacity for evaluation.
Comparatively, unconscious
intention can influence a meaning that is sensitive to the language of the time
of writing and can be interoperated differently nowadays. The meaning created
by an author be it intentional or not can create historical gaps, also change
of social and psychological norms create a bridge that allows us to create our
own meaning even if we ‘carefully’ dissect the authors work. Therefore, you
could say that the best meaning of a text is that which we create as individuals
and is also what makes thinking critically about other people’s prose so
interesting.
It could be said that an author’s
intention is useful for deciding what the validity of other people’s
interpretations of a text. No interpretation can be judged as correct or
incorrect, but the author’s intention is a normative opinion against which
probability can be gauged. Some critics believe that interpretation should be
based around what is unquestionably in a text and that only critics should read
between the lines to avoid misunderstanding texts. You could contend however,
that because all texts are incomplete in some form, we should always try to
read deeper and include our own interpretation of a piece of art to find out
the literary meaning.
As students of English Literature
we are taught to dig deeper and to form our own opinions of other peoples work
and be critical. Through careful consideration and research I have come to the
realisation that it is the reader’s interpretation that is important when
trying to determine the literary meaning of a text. Eliot once said, “History
has many cunning passages, contrived corridors” this implies that nothing is
more subjective than the truth and the reader’s interpretation says more than
an author could ever express. Therefore, interpretation is led by the author’s
intent but in the case of ambiguity, meaning is derived and interpreted through
the personal experience of the reader.
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