authorial intent

[deborah]

It just occurred to me that it would be really easy in this day and age to put together a portfolio of online and offline writings by creators to show students how impossible it is to get at authorial intent as any meaningful way of interpreting the text. (I don't deny the you can get it authorial intent as a meaningful way of interpreting the authors, nor do I deny that some might find it fruitful to analyze the disjunction between stated authorial intent and the text as it stands. I just find neither of these interesting from a literary criticism point of view.)

But these days, creators of texts are so willing to talk about their intentions that would be really easy to let students analyze a series of texts, make their own judgments, and then read stated authorial intent. Example: give them a series of texts whose creators have claimed to have major feminist intent but where the text itself is a mixed bag, such as Buffy, or (far worse) Veronica Mars. Or how about His Dark Materials, together with an essay by Pullman in which he explains how the trilogy brought down the kingdom of god? (/me pets poor Pullman on the head) Or a book by one of the many authors who has shown his or her ass on the Internet over the last few years -- because some of them have written quite thoughtful, kyriarchy-challenging books? Or the Twilight series, along with Stephenie Meyer explaining how feminist her books are, how much they celebrate her female characters' freedom of choice?

I feel like this could potentially be really fruitful, in helping students to understand that while what authors say might be interesting, it's not a useful way of analyzing the text in hand.

Comments

[ayelle]

Oh yes! That would be AWESOME. That's exactly what I DO find interesting about authorial intent.

It's also interesting to be teaching a writing seminar, because we talk about authorial intent all the time from a different perspective -- because my students are trying to write, and essentially half the purpose of discussing the readings for the class is to get them to think about these pieces of writing from a WRITERLY point of view. And yeah, that mean's discussing the author's intent in writing the piece -- noting where it went wrong, but also, one hopes, showing them what authors do right in terms of successfully conveying their intentions insofar as that is an achievable goal (because they have to believe that it is!), because I'm trying to teach them useful tools!

But of course I'm trying to get them to write literary-critical essays (well, sort of -- the class is on fairy tales, so it's not quite that simple! But that's still my primary discipline, of course, despite the multiplicity of useful approaches when it comes to discussing fairy tales that we're looking at) -- a discipline in which they have to remember that discussing authorial intent is NOT a window into the True Meaning of the text.

It's a lot for them to juggle, but I LOVE this stuff, so that helps.

[ayelle]

Oh good one. I wrote "mean's". I have a complex about making typos in posts and comments where I've revealed myself to be a teacher of writing. *facepalm*

[deborah]

My writing is terrible, though I blame dictation. Excuses FTW. :D

And oh, yeah, totally it's different -- but related! -- while teaching writing. Specifically, there, it's the difference between intent and effect, which is *so* important to get to.