How does Veeky Forums defend itself against the "blue curtains" argument?

How does Veeky Forums defend itself against the "blue curtains" argument?

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oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-300
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put up red curtains

I don't know what the 'blue curtains' argument is. Are you talking about how teachers interpret books not originally intended by the authors to generate more meaningful discussion?

Essentially, "the curtains were blue" works if the author typically doesn't say thing's colours, but if he paints everything it's just some word.
Also avoid the word "represents" in interpretation at all costs.

Maybe this is true if your reading a hack writter. A good writter would have a reason for having the curtains being blue or else they wouldn't even mention the fact that they're blue.

what if i told you that everything in REAL LIFE has significance and your surroundings subtly shape your REAL LIFE emotional and spiritual identity

not everything is a metaphor but everything is important

It's the idea that literature snobs and people studying/teaching English look too deeply into books trying to find meaning and complexities where none of that was intended.

How can anyone have immediate access to the author's intention?

what argument is to be made?

people can believe whatever they want

The only valid interpretation of any text is one which accounts for the author's intended meaning whatever it may be. For example, suppose that a word is misspelled on one page of the book and you know what the word is supposed to be because it is unambiguous, only a highs school English teacher would be crazy enough to say that the misspelling had some thing to do with the theme of the book. Anything outside of this criteria of intentional meaning is conjecture and should be labeled as such.

Attack them personally. It's very relevant.

T H E A U T H O R I S D E A D
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What the author meant doesn't matter. Authorial intent is slightly less retarded than critical theory. Readers response will reign supreme in the interpretation of literature in perpetuity.

If you can draw an interpretation of a book that gives you a meaningful or different perspective on something, then original intent doesn't matter

Even though Plato has been dead for a long time we still attempt to interpret what he wrote such that we come close to what he meant. So, the author does not have to be alive to make a charitable interpretation of what he/she wrote.

What benefit would an interpretation of some text be if it was divergent from the authors original intended meaning? Don't we call these divergent interpretations conspiracy theories?

You can do that with anything and logic will dictate whether something is mindlessly deep or truly deep.

please google "the death of the author"

why would a well-studied and cogent interpretation of a block of text be any less important than that of the author of the block of text?

>you can draw an interpretation of a book that gives you a meaningful or different perspective on something
Sure you can, but you can't say that is what the author meant to say, can you?

My original post was about validity not about the efficacy of making readers' feelies come to some good feely state.

You missed the point buddy.

I don't think we do, because nobody is conspiring.
Academia varies greatly on how it interprets certain aspects of Plato, or any author really. one aim is certainly to explicate the original meaning, so that we may treat it, but to come to other conclusions is not without purpose: indeed, some works intend for a personal interpretation, especially those that treat the reader actively, like kierkegaard does. Even in instances where the interpretation is entirely your own, if you can back it up with text it is a starting point of discussion. Finally, even those cases that are neither intended nor start discussion are valuable, for they enrich your thinking: you literally get smarter by thinking, busboy.

This argument isn't one.
It's just a strawman supposed to represent analysis of literature as an art form because some people can't make the effort of seeing books as more than a way to tell a story.

But as others pointed out, the author's intention are overated.

Because since structuralism and the German hermeneutic school its not important anymore 'what the writer meant' but what the text can mean for the interpretator.

There are no facts, only interpretations.

Because the block of text is complete and the information on the author is hopelessly incomplete, the block of text is the expressed intentions of the author and it is ultimately the author's responsibility to generate meaning which is self-contained in that block of text.

There is a distinction to be made between the meaning as related to the block of text itself and the meaning as related to why the author wrote the block of text and what the author intended to do with the block of text.

I can tell you right now that you do not believe that these two meanings are identical because you are at this moment trying to interpret the meaning of my post and not the meaning of the confluence of events which determined my making this post.

A psychoanalysis of the author is not necessary for an interpretation of his or her work. Just like the ultimate purpose of some machine is not necessary in understanding how the machine works.

Are you going to tell me that it is not a fact that you exist?

It ignores a hundred years of literary theory, and is used by idiots as an excuse to not pay attention in high school.

But who cares what the author meant to say, at the end of it all?

Why are you reading the book then?
Why do you care about what my post means, bro.

Where is all of this arcane literary interpretation of my own posts in this thread? Why is the user, who is supposedly a proponent for literary interpretation, interpreting my posts as blocks of text as intended by its author?

The reason why you choose not to do it here is because any post about mine which does not account for the intended meaning of my posts would be irrelevant to the conversation, and it would make you look like an idiot for trying, to put it in a phrase, put words in my mouth.

And yet if you googled and read Barthes' paper as the tripfag asked you to, you would understand that there is an infinite universe of valid interpretations of a given text, and that our job is not to find the one and only real meaning of the work, but to understand it constructively.

The English teachers argument is a bad one. There is generally a kind of internal logic to the text so the curtains wouldn't be blue to represent the character's depression if the character hadn't faced a key contributory moment to his depression yet in the text. Nor, I doubt, would the experience of seeing blue curtains contribute to a depressive state of mind. The 'curtains were blue' argument doesn't represent most literary theory (and perhaps what the teacher claimed the author meant was misinterpreted by the student who made this image), but nonetheless this poor level of inquiry represents what most people think of art analysis and criticism, which in turn forms the opinion that anyone can be an artist if their statements are nonsense word salad about things representing other things ("the period blood on the canvas represents oppression faced by women"). Symbolism is only prevalent in things like film and other pleb fodder with no sophisticated theory behind its production, and it is an egregious misstep to think that commercial art such as film and TV have as parallel a depth of theory as literature and visual art.

In what sense do you mean the word "valid?"

Sure there are many different interpretations of some text, however there is only one interpretation which gives a complete account for what that author meant.

I feel the need to repeat myself. The only valid interpretation of some text is about what the meaning is and not what the meaning may be, because if I asked the question, "what did the author mean?" There is only one answer.

Barthe can say that the job of the readers is to interpret the meaning of the text in a constructive way, but that is a non-answer to the question, "what did the author mean by writing this?" To say that all of these constructive interpretations is what the author meant is absurd.

>he hasn't heard that the author has been dead for years now

lmao

>there is only one interpretation which gives a complete account for what that author meant.

Since the author cannot dominate the structures of language, the author has no real control over what ends up in the text, and thus no real control over its interpretation by others. Considering what the author meant is a means, not and end. If the author contradicts himself or is inconsistent, or relies on things left unsaid (i.e. that occur specifically in the general time that forms the social context of the author's access to language) to generate meaning, then there are gaps in the evidence and thus the access to what the author meant. It is indeterminable and we can at best guess his intentions, and indeed take the evidence into account, but not really know. The text is evidence of intention and we can only work with that evidence.

We can't possibly know what the author meant. And in any case, the authors' interpretation of their work is just one of many. Authors write things that have meaning which they themselves did not intend. The reader's job is not to decipher the authors' intention, which is inscrutable, but as this user said , to understand the work constructively. To assume there is only one "valid" (valid to whom? In what context?) interpretation or reading of a work, and that that validity relies solely on the abstraction that is "the author", is to strangle the work of art. Sure, you can ask "what did he mean by this?", but the only answer would be "we don't know, we can't know". Which doesn't imply an understanding of the work is impossible, far from it. But it does imply that such understanding does not rely on what the author has to say.

what's a good intro to literary theory?

This is absurd. Good writers must interject meaning into EVERY single word? You're fucking ignorant.

You "Author is dead" fags make out that deciphering what the author meant and mainly sticking to that goal, is some sort of impossible labor.
The story or work you're reading is from the author's own world, their imagination, which you would surely not wish to dictate. Is that not a high point of appeal for fiction? Being absorbed by another world and story made by someone else, a world which you can't control or distort? To interpret things in your own way irrespective of the author is to deny the intended experience they're trying to offer. Why should we all conform to that way of viewing literature?

Why are you so obsessed with the author instead of the actual text? The qualities you just described are the text's, not the author's.

Deciphering what was in Shakespeare's head when he wrote a sonnet is impossible mainly, though you might not notice it, because we are not Shakespeare. But he do have the text. If the author had an intention, it is in the text, not the author him or herself.

Yeah, sure, you may stick to that goal, you are entitled to do whatever the fuck you want. Good luck trying to "decipher" a text in order to arrive at a single unifying meaning that comes from the author's head.

We do have***

yes but at what point do misinterpretation and mischaracterization become offensive to the author?

>Good writers must interject meaning into EVERY single word?
Yes, and the best do it on a syllable by syllable basis

Not every single world, but why would you specify the color of the curtains if it weren't relevant to the scene you are describing? That's bad writing.

Authorial intent is shallow grounds for interpreting a work, it's usually tied in with biographical information in some way to give an authoritative reading of a text. Understanding that a work of art or literature has a life of its own outside of the intentions of the author is vital to a critical reading of basically anything.

Maybe it matters. Maybe for no reason. This isn't some Da Vinci Code unlock the mystery treasure, where someone has left you a secret treasure map to decode in each atom of writing.

The text should reflect what the author meant or intended, yes.
I'm not talking about their exact thoughts or feelings, I'm talking specifically about the world and story which they wish to create and convey.
For example, in the instance that the author, externally to his or her work, makes a claim about said work which would seem to contradict a reader's interpretation, the author's claim is valid, not the reader's interpretation. Maybe the text LITERALLY supplements that reader's interpretation more than the author's claims but, those of us who are reasonable should listen to the author. It's their world and their story, not the reader's.

The author can't control your perception.

Truly embarrassing.

All these pseuds don't use the glossary when reading Shakespeare and instead construe words to hold idiosyncratic meanings. This is a sign of autism.

>he thinks the author has a say once the thing is published
>laughing_whores.png

Acknowledging the death of the author is a step in developing a constructive, critical approach, rather than a casual reading of fiction for enjoyment or immersion. It's supposed to open a reading up rather than confine it. You seem to think that the reader's interpretation is where people just make up their own rules because fuck it, the author is fucking dead who gives a shit. That's not what the theory is about; it's that language is complex, far more complex than what anyone had thought up until postmodernism, and meanings extend beyond what is intentioned. It's a similar principle to reading a translation rather than a text in its original language. It's not to say that author's intention shouldn't be taken into account, it's just that it's impossible to know through the text what the author's true intention was, and in the end it only supplements a reading rather than defines it. DoA isn't as extreme as the modernist interpretations of texts (New Criticism) in which the intent literally didn't matter at all, just the form of words on the page.

>Hey guys, I'm Herman Melville, and, uh, this book I wrote, it's called Moby Dick, well, it's actually about cats! Crazy thing, right? What? You say it's about man's struggle against the infinite? Don't be ridiculous! It's clearly about cats. Yep, definitely.

oyc.yale.edu/english/engl-300

It is, at best, guesswork.
Why would you pursue something so banal, when you could literally choose to view a text in the best possible version of itself?

>those of us who are reasonable
>unironically positions himself in a supposedly intellectually superior position because he would mindlessly believe the claim of one guy instead of actual textual evidence

If the reader's interpretation is supported by textual evidence it can't be overruled because the author wasn't (and couldn't possibly be) careful enough to dispel any and all ambiguity that would lead to alternative interpretations.

I can't tell if this board is genuinely this retarded or if the >muh authorial intent people are just trolling.

>Claims authorial intent is key to reading texts
>Misinterprets 'Author is dead' to mean whatever he wants it to mean
>Unknowingly negates his own position

Hm. I guess I'm not making myself clear.
I acknowledge that on an objective level, the text is what it is. If the text says A but the author meant B, then objectively the text still says A.
I guess I'm not really talking about literature strictly within the confines of literature. I'm talking about fictional universes in general more than anything, which I ascribe control only to the creator. I admire the creator's ability and their world which they specifically want to convey, so I can't help it really.
I understand what you mean, it's just, I've seen many people on theory videos who have the most nonsensical and "because fuck it" interpretations of books, sch as "oh, I think this character did this without the author knowing. That's the magic of story telling". It just really irks me, that sort of thing, and it's gotten me on the wrong end of this debate's stick. Sorry for wasting your time.

...

Once the work is released into the wild, the text is stand-alone. The metaphorical umbilical chord has been cut.

So what is the general stance on retconning, then?
It sounds to me that if you're to believe in DoA, then you must reject retcons to an extent? This isn't really suitable for this board but, take the manga series One Piece. In one panel, a door is crushed, in the next it is repaired. So who is correct, the reader, who posits that the door is actually fixed, canonically, or the author, who owns the mistake and is adamant that really, the door IS broken?
At what point are we to separate what objectively happens in a work of fiction and the actual, official canon of said fiction?

That's an interesting question. Off my intuition, I'd say that they're two different texts now. For example, the Despecialized Edition of Star Wars comes to mind as the most prominent example.

Yeah postmodernism isn't as subjective as people seem to think and it doesn't really give free range to do whatever just because. Ideas like death of the author or deconstruction deal with material realities, such as that of the text. As a critique of culture it's like thinking outside the intention of capitalism to advance technology, medicine, etc. and look at the material reality it produces as dictated by consumer culture and popular art.

>uses fucking One Piece as an example
>when it is wel known that Shonen Jump authors tend to fuck up because of their horrible schedule that doesn't allow time for revisions until the release of the tankobon

In your example it was clearly a mistake, and Oda didn't realize it until later, and fixed it.

I think the interaction between a first edition and a revised edition, for example, is different to the interaction between a text and the reality to which it is supposed to refer. It's this latter interaction that is considered inadequate whereas in world-building of fantasy and the like, the author creates his own conditions of reality that are sometimes based on, but not directly controlled by, our own physical conditions.

If you're reading something that literally has zero meaning outside of the basic plot then you're reading something of very little worth that you shouldn't be performing any deeper analysis of anyway.

Does it matter what my example was you picky fuck? It should still be subject to the same criticism as regular literature.
Or what, so DoA is negated when the author is under time constraints or if it was clearly a mistake? Seems like flimsy reasoning. Surely if it's still there on the page it's open to the reader's interpretation.
So what if there is no revised edition? What do we consider canon, or what should we reasonably consider canon? To me it seems clear that in my case, we should just reasonably listen to the author but if DoA is such a valid theory, surely I'm not to listen to the author? Not trying to condemn, just genuinely curious and new to this philosophy.

The example is important, you blithering idiot. Not because it is a manga, it is also literature, but because the interpretation comes from a clear mistake, not because of your precious authorial intention.

>what should we reasonably consider canon
Whatever the consensus considers canon, apparently. Honestly speaking I'm still new to the field myself, and am speaking only from my surface-level understanding of Barthes' work.
>comes from a clear mistake
Which is exactly WHY it's so interesting.

>In one panel, a door is crushed, in the next it is repaired
You're reading it the wrong way.

Also, an interesting thought to complicate things - sometimes mistakes become canon in of themselves. To stick with the Star Wars, there's a Stormtrooper hitting their head that was a mistake. Apparently the fans liked it so much they added a sound effect to it.

I asked a question, all you have to do is give me an answer without being a pissy prick.
It is still authorial intention that that door was broken, even though it was drawn fixed the next panel. At what point do mistakes stop being minute enough for the reader to THEN be allowed to reasonably have their own valid interpretation?

Well, I agree that it is interesting even if it is a mistake, but in the end it depends on what edition of the work you are reading. If it's an unrevised edition then you analyze the work with the mistake taken into account as part of the work. If it's an revised edition, then you just read with the revision in mind. That's assuming there is a revision, which is not the same as a retconning. Take As I Lay Dying, for example. It was revised later by Faulkner, and now we only read the revised edition.

And I gave you an answer. If you didn't like my tone, too bad. How can it be authorial intent if it qas a mistake? Post the page, we don't even know the context here.

Calm down Ben Stiller. He's just talking in terms of literature.

>That's assuming there is a revision, which is not the same as a retconning.
How so? Disregarding authorial intent, what's the difference?
>and now we only read the revised edition
Which is exactly the sort of canon-consensus think I was talking about in I think we generally seem to agree though.

Joke? Just in case it's not, no.
One thing which bugs me is, at what point should we consider things canon?
Let's say you have two unrelated books by the same author. In one book, an object FROM the other book appears as an easter egg to please the fans. Fans now start drawing connections between the books, but the author never intended a serious link.
This is why I like to appeal to the author's intent. But, you. What's your stance on something like this? Everything becomes so muddled. How do we define canon? How and where is canon and continuity contained, and who is really in a position to decide?

This is insane. Validity is based on reasons for believing something. You guys are saying that because the book is not a mathematical proof with an unambiguous meaning it is impossible to determine the true intention of the author. This is true, however the claim that there exists exactly one intended meaning of the author still stands.

Every interpretation which aims for the true meaning of the author must necessarily include the intentions of the author.

>Since the author cannot dominate the structures of language, the author has no real control over what ends up in the text, and thus no real control over its interpretation by others.

No real control? Are you mad? It was never even suggested that the artist had any control over your interpretation. What the fuck are you talking about? The artist does not control your interpretation because the artist is just trying to say something and it is the readers responsibility to intemperate what he/she says so as to understand what was meant. It is not the artists job to cross the epistemological gap when you are the one reading the book they just have to make it easy to get there.

>How can it be authorial intent if it qas a mistake
It was the author's intent that the door was destroyed, but he drew it incorrectly by mistake.
>Post the page
Over 800 chapters and you expect me to dig that up? I've given you all the context you need, anyway, that's literally it.

Consensus in literature (and in every other field in general) is generally built within academia through vigorous debate and discourse. This sadly takes a lot of time.

If we take some less academic works, then you could say that the fanbase is the """""academia""""" of that work. It's probably going to be pasty white men who don't get laid enough anyway desu. This might be a huge stretch, but it's the best I've got.

Yes, but there is a big difference. If you turned around and called your post "art", then there would immediately be a possibility, perhaps even duty, of the appreciator to project and interpret meaning from it. This is what art is all about.

For example, using One Piece as an example, retconning would be to change Luffy's devil fruit from being the Gomu Gomu no Mi to be, say, Ace's fire devil fruit, even when it had already been stablished that one had eaten a certain devil fruit and not other. The story, then, changes.

A revision would be the way things are written. For example, redrawing of certain pages which have the same content but arranged in a different manner. The story doesn't change, but the visual aspect of it gets revised.

The difference is kinda subtle, but I think it's there.

More than this, an author might be totally unconscious of the hidden meanings he is unwittingly expression of himself on the page.

And the fact that people have been debating what he meant for literally thousands of years, and STILL argue about it, means what for your point?

As an English tutor, I will say that high school teachers (out of necessity, I sympathise) put undue emphasis on 'techniques' - such as, simile, alliteration, symbolism etc. - over 'form' for the simple case that they are much easier to teach. In the grand scheme of things however, an authors use of assonance means shit all - prose, in isolation, is written to sound pretty: it is when reviewing the text as a whole that true 'meaning' is able to be appreciated. The fact of the matter is, however, that deadlines - along with the fact that most kids will never *actually* read the book prescribed to them - means that it is easier to teach kids to identify techniques like 'blue curtains = depression' over a general recurrent theme like 'the untenability of traditional cultural institutions' or something.

Kids are dumb.

No, there are Christians that interpret Plato through Neoplatonists, and thus do not see him as a rationalist of any sort, but a mystic.

How is this an incorrect interpretation?

>owever the claim that there exists exactly one intended meaning of the author still stands.
There once was a man named Bob
He literally just lost his job
And in his mad head
So he went down the street
And inside Mary stuck his big knob.

Now, I as an author claim that this work has TWO meanings. The first meaning is that it's an allegory for world war two. The second meaning is that it's the foundation of my theory of quantum gravity.

Please be sure to understand that the poem is seprate from the autorial intent part - imagine it to be a seperate post. Those two meanings can in no-way interact or intersect. They are not even tangentially connected except for that they share the same text-space.

Texts are ethnographic. We can draw cultural and historical implications from a text that weren't intended by an author but are simply the product of an author's time. These conclusions are also informed by our own ethnographic contexts.

Hamlet is interpreted wildly different by each couple of generations. The way we interpret Hamlet now is not how the audience at time probably enjoyed it. Ignoring, of course, the differences in versions that we read.

Well what if you were to say that part of the story was that door getting crushed? And if you're to say that wasn't significant, surely the reader's interpretation dictates significance?
So you could still say the story has changed, as much as if any other change was made. It seems subjective to me.

Well, I'm inclined to say that any revision will split the text in two and there is no distinction.

Yes, and even on a smaller scale, we usually express more than we intend to, even just of our own twisted and conditioned personalities, most of the time we share anything.

Would removing a punctuation mark from a novel make it into a new text? What about adding footnotes?

You expect me to believe your example? That's the least you could do. You might be even misremembering the page. If you want serious discussion, at least give us an actual example, not a retelling of it. As you clearly said, the mistake was not intentional. Why are we arguing about it then?

Well, certainly, but there is a difference between a revision and a retconning, we can agree on that, yes?

I wouldn't know if it were significant or not, I don't even know the text we are dealing with here. I don't think it is subjective in so far as not all changes haves the same impact.

Yes it would. That's why editors of Shakespeare have a hard time editing his texts. As for your example, it wouldn't be a radically new text, but it would be a different one, simply because they are not the same.

>Well, certainly, but there is a difference between a revision and a retconning, we can agree on that, yes?
In a practical sense? Yes! Absolutely. From a literary criticism sense? I'm unconvinced.

Then what about the differences between the quarto and folio versions of different Shakespeare plays? They are full of revisions, sometimes even important ones, like Othello's Judean/Indian polemic or Hamlet and King Lear's texts. How can we account for that? I would say, for example, that the difference in King Lear between the speaker of the last lines in quarto (Albany) and folio (Edgar) is not a revision, but a retconning, since it radically changes the interpretation of the play, but a difference between, say, two words with similar meanings would be a revision.

I don't know, man, the difference between revision and retconning is kinda arbitrary, I admit.

>You expect me to believe your example?
Literally what does it matter if my example is real or not? THEORETICALLY then. Jesus. It doesn't detract from the discussion of my example.
>the mistake was not intentional. Why are we arguing about it then?
The point is whether or not a reader can reasonably interpret that fixed door as canonically fixed. If that is the case, then surely we should always appeal to authorial intent. What's the difference between that mistake and any other? What if JK Rowling claimed now that Harry was really a girl named Donna Kebab? It it's clearly a mistake, do we accept the retcon as canon even if she doesn't rewrite the books?
>I wouldn't know if it were significant or not, I don't even know the text we are dealing with here. I don't think it is subjective in so far as not all changes haves the same impact.
My point is, at what point are we supposed to magically know when it stops being significant? This applies to any similar instance, you don't need to know about the given example. Significance and level of impact are subjective concepts.

The fact that you can distinguish them all (even the non-retcon revisions) as different texts really just supports my view of them all just being completely separate.

Two twins dressed the same are two different people, are they not?

The reader may or may not interpret is as being fixed, it depends on what impact it will have on its reading.

It's not a question about it "magically" stopping being significant. It's not as arbitrary as you think it is. And that's because we have a text to back-up our readings.

But we are not discussing whether they are different texts or not, but on what means that difference rests.

What does 'interpretation' even mean. It's such a meaningless concept, you can't have a 'single' interpretation - not because meaning is inherently subjective (which it is) but because a text is comprised of so many different layers, including contradictions and paradoxes, that a single text itself contains multiple interpretations even before any external party stumbles upon it.

For example, what is your 'interpretation' of Brave New World?

That humanity is naturally inclined toward conformity?
That there is no 'truer' sense of self than the primitive?

Both of these are valid interpretations of the same text, and the same person can argue them both without coming into conflict. But what was Huxley's interpretation? It is meaningless to talk about the 'author's interpretation' because a book itself is so inherently multifarious and polyvocal that interpretations themselves are complex and layered.

Alright, there doesn't have to be exactly one meaning. Whatever (countable) number of meanings you intend to put in the text, those are the only true interpretations of what is being said.

What about uncountably-infinite meanings?
Then it does not mean anything at all.

This is all secondary to the argument that the author's intention as contained within the text is necessary for a true interpretation of that text.

i havent had a single teacher do this. they've always concentrated on the character's relationships and overall plot and themes of the story.

The point is, why in literature must we identify the main body of the story and separate it from say, a broken, seemingly inconsequential door? If we're being objective, surely we should view all parts of the text as being of equal importance.