I am typing this on Sharon's Macbook (thank you Sharon!) and the keyboard is Devorak but we switched the software to Qwerty because I am way too impatient to hunt and peck. Just wanted to let y'all know.
Attention students taking the Philosophy of Teaching, Learning, and Knowing: you should be here with me eating Sharon's brownies and getting ready to watch Memento. Shame on you!
Kidding, of course. I hope everyone is enjoying their weekend so far.
Now that the preamble is over...
Whenever I listen to literary analysis of any book, I wonder what the author's real intentions were in writing it. While I think our class' interpretations of Plato's Republic are usually reasonable, I wish Plato could give us feedback on our ideas. I wonder if we can make true interpretations that weren't intended by the author. If we can, does that mean that Plato's ideas continue to develop long after his death? Not just last through the ages, but actually grow and adapt to modern minds and situations? Can literary ideas develop beyond an author's understanding and intention?
Don't get me wrong, I think interpreting literature is a noble and worthwhile pursuit. There are just some times when I feel like that guy in Annie Hall, when the screenwriter tells him that his interpretations were crap, he got everything wrong...
As always,
Walk in Beauty ~ Lisa
Reading this and commenting live -- we're talking about poetry fitting this question particularly. When you're in poetry class and your instructor is telling you that the poet meant X ... really? How do you know? Did the author actually explain that somewhere?
ReplyDeleteI agree so far with Matt that the clues for viewing Republic as an epistemological text could be considered evident ... but there's always the question. really? how do we *know*?
I don't think we can *know* in the Parmenidean, or Michael's, sense of it never being possible that we're wrong. We have that kind of knowledge only about tautologies and other relatively uninteresting things. What we can do is live with a text and develop and test possible readings against our most rigorous investigation of it, as well as against our educated intuitions. We can discuss the merits and limits of alternative readings, and try to bring each other to share a sense of the text's power.
ReplyDeleteThe author's intentions matter very much, but they are not final or dispositive; they are just the foundation of serious learning from a text. This is the case both because an author can sometimes say more than she (consciously, discursively) knows, and because the experience of the reader is in dynamic dialogue with the author, through the text.
One interesting example of the author saying / resonating perhaps more than they intend is Elizabeth Gilbert's Eat, Pray, Love. She didn't set out to write a best-seller, from the sounds of her interviews; but her writing, and the various meanings that people have found in it, have grown beyond her original writing.
ReplyDeleteInteresting thoughts. This is why I describe so many forms of communication as (morally) risky, because once you let any expression fly, it is no longer entirely up to you how it is received. Meaning is social to an extent.
ReplyDeleteI am not saying that all receptions are equally reasonable. Some interpretations cohere with the speaker's intentions more than others. But since one will never know the inner workings of another perfectly, we ought to get comfortable with the inevitability of our interpretations adding to, rather than perfectly hitting on, intended meanings.