Ramblings on Librarianship, Technology, and Academia

Why do you think it's impossible to know an author's intent? Many authors tells us what it is, sometimes in the very beginning of the story

Oh, it's possible to know what the author has said his or her intent is. Certainly, you can collect all of the various speeches and writings by the author in which the intent is explained. But the author could be lying, could be mistaken, could be telling different stories to different audiences, could be heavily influenced by marketing. Lois Lowry changed her stated intent about what she meant by the end of The Giver, whether the characters live or die, as soon as she wrote a sequel. JK Rowling said, after the Harry Potter series had been completed, that Dumbledore had always been gay. Does either statement of intent add or subtract anything from a reader's own analysis and interpretation? Does Rowling's assertion that Dumbledore is a gay character trump readings of him as straight, or add any force to readings of him as gay? Does Lowry's eventual assertion that Jonas lives add any utility to a discussion of textual support for his living or dying?

No, is the answer. Those discussions might be useful in terms of analyzing the relationships of authors, texts, and the social constraints of marketing and business that surround them, but they don't add any insight to an analysis of the text.

what an author may have done unconsciously

Or what an author may not have done it all, but is in the text anyway. I don't think that Milton, consciously or unconsciously, put a feminist interpretation into Paradise Lost, but that doesn't mean I don't see it there.

which level do you teach?

Graduate students in literature.