Mario wrote:
"And my question about intention was serious, too. If one
were to judge a work based on the author's intention, who
knows what the results would be. In fact, there is one school
of criticism that uses authorial intention as its main tool.
I have always found it suspect (and impracticable, in most
cases, since one doesn't have access to the author)."
I agree with you here. Especially since declarations about
authorial intent are so often retro engneered from the
finished product.
I remember the, probably apocryphal, story about a student
who got a poor grade on an essay because the teacher
disagreed with the interpretation of the author's themes. The
student wrote the author, who said the student got his book
just right. The only result of the validation? The school
stopped teaching living writers. Damn, I wish I remembered
the specifics (assuming there's any truth to the
story).
Mark
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