Literature functions as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object. All that is required to understand a text is intrinsic to the text itself.
Bringing extrinsic elements into a reading of the text - such as the intent of the author or the response of the reader - is fallacious. Such extrinsic elements may be worthy of study in their own right, as adjuncts to history or psychology, but they have nothing whatsoever to do with the study of literature.
ya but what if the author is a total fag like OP
response of the reader is intrinsic to the study of literature. words are dead without eyeballs.
>texts have to be read therefore my feelings are relevant to what a text says
No.
'what a text says' depends on extrinsic elements
>makes grandiose claim
>offers no reasoning
Good post. It really cements your thread-long tradition of assuming your opinions are facts.
The meanings of our words are innately historical and systematically idiosyncratic, the aesthetic object we experience is one created by us in conjunction with the text. The words on the page are static only when unread, we are an extrinsic element and literature cannot exist without us. It's like the other user said, but it isn't feelings that are relevant it is the definitions and understandings that the reader brings unconsciously. It is impossible to experience a book without introducing the extrinsic element of oneself.
Being able to read isn't bringing in extrinsic elements, nor is using a dictionary since there are gaps in everybody's vocabulary.
You're supposed to tell us it's a contrarian opinion thread first desu.
So your view is reductionist and very very simple - and it's going to suffer for it if we probe it. And 'literature' is very very complex so i'm already suspicious of a too-neat theory like that.
>it is self referential
This is a nice idea which you can expand to explain the historical development of a system of forms, like the russians did in the 20's, but it doesnt tell you the whole story. If literature is self referential, why is good literature always historically and socially contextualised? Why are historical novels rarely great novels? Why is good sci fi always ultimately concerned with our current society, at least in so far as it is good 'art' and not just good sci fi etc etc
>reader response is extrinsic
I think where you go wrong is you suppose there to be an a-historical reader, that some things have just not changed (you're probably a christian, am i right?), and that there's an absolute division between a texts established subject position on one hand and the actual reader on the other. There's some merit to this of course. you can't make any text mean anything, but neither can any one text be said to mean any one thing - and its in close study of reader response that you bring out the more subtle and complex possible divergent interpretations and even forms.
Perhaps the best thing you can do though is ask yourself, honestly, why you want your theory to be true? Why do you need literature to be so reducible and explicable, rather than fluid, endlessly connected to the world at large, and often inneffable? What ideology comforts you when you when you feel threatened by what you presumably would label postmodern theories?
>hadn't read Pierre Menard
Literature is the complete opposite of self-contained, famperoni
As I already explained, considering the response of a reader is psychology, and considering the intent of the author is biography or history. Studying those things is not studying literature. It's all very well to say that "X wrote Y in year Z with intent A", but such a statement literally hasn't said anything about the text itself.
A text can only mean more than one thing when extrinsic elements are (fallaciously) brought into a reading, due to the inherent subjectivity of such an undertaking. If you study the text ontologically (as an object that exists in itself) without recourse to extrinsic factors then a text does mean one and only one thing.
Pierre Menard is about the same text being read differently when the name of the author is changed. It clearly demonstrates why bringing in extrinsic elements is fallacious.
Thats not what i said. Learn to read. Your interpretation of my post is irrelevent. Words are dead without eyeballs. Schrodinger's text.
so you just didn't read my post at all?
Let me give you a simpler example,
I don't know what a word in a book means, I open up a dictionary and read the definition of that word, I then use that definition to understand the word. This is the single most literal form of introducing outside information into the text. (Do you just think that the definitions of words are absolute? Those gaps in everyone's vocabulary are encountered and then filled with definitions that are historical, that are based on cultural understandings, and that are delivered to is in words. So that every new definition is constructed from the definition of every other word we know, creating a system that is irreversibly idiosyncratic.)
He read it he just either didn't understand it, or understood it and ignored it because he know it was right.
No I understood you just fine.
The definitions of words are not arbitrary. It is possible to misread a text by having an incorrect understanding of a word, but that doesn't say that extrinsic elements must be brought into a reading, it merely says you misread the text. Using a dictionary is a good thing.
Kant pls go
What do you think aesthetics is, if not psychology? When we're talking forms and devices, what is this aesthetic effect that is unchanging across readers, cultures, generations etc.? There isn't one - you're looking for something that doesn't exist.
Also, this idea that a text can only mean one thing is absolutely ridiculous. It doesn't even mean only one thing to the same person rereading it many times consecutively. And there is no independent, faultless perspective from which you can argue about a texts single meaning. That's not how language works, its not how literature works.
I never said word definitions are arbitrary, in fact I said almost exactly the opposite.
The definitions of words change constantly based on factors that exist beyond the text, how are definitions not extrinsic?
If there is a single "correct" definition, as you seem to believe, what makes this definition correct?
Using a dictionary is a good thing, but it is a completely separate text, how is a dictionary not extrinsic?
Please just give me straight answers.
>All that is required to understand a text is intrinsic to the text itself.
Wrong.
>If you study the text ontologically (as an object that exists in itself)
But it isn't that.
>what is this aesthetic effect that is unchanging across readers, cultures, generations
I'm not saying that. Taste can change but the meaning is unchanging.
That a reader comes to a different (say, more complete) understanding of a text doesn't meant that text literally says something different than what it did previously. It's only with study and discussion the meaning of the text can be determined, and re-reading is a part of that process.
Yes, so that's an answer to one interpretation of what i just said, but if you re-read it to get a better grasp of its meaning, you'll notice that the second part qualifies my position. Which is the part that directly pressures your theoretical misconceptions, and which you've tactfully chosen to ignore.
You're a slimy man, twisting and slithering out of all these questions we've asked you.
>taste changes but the meaning doesn't
Firstly, thats just wrong. But i'm not so much interested in that problem as why you think 'literature' which you've so encapsulated and reduced, can be studied, talked about, and is worth being interested in without considering the aesthetic effect to be central. I mean, thats what we're interested in, surely, when we engage with art??
So you're talking about etymological considerations.
I'll get blasted for this for seemingly contradicting myself, but the correct definition of the word is the one that the author intended (e.g. because that was the common meaning at the time of writing and context makes it obvious that that meaning was intended).
But the meaning of the text is still intrinsic. Determining the correct definition of a few words this way doesn't mean that the text means what the author intended it to mean.
I've responded to every post. Disagreeing with you isn't slithering out of things. I've done the exact opposite of that.
A reader needs to first understand what they are reading in order to have an authentic aesthetic experience.
No you haven't desu. I'll try simplify the problem for you - what is this abstract absolute independent and infallible perspective from which a text has a single meaning? Bearing in mind that there's no such perspective for language as a whole. And bearing in mind that dictionaries are texts and also interpretive and that there's no escaping this fact.
I get that you want to take a more 'objective' and 'scientific' approach to theory, but you have to lose the prejudgement that the answer has to be simple, that the correct, fact based understanding of literary texts can't be complex and can't require recourse to reader response, social criticism etc
Without external semantic information, a text is merely a series of symbols with no inherent meaning.
As I already explained, those things don't say anything about the text. For example, reader response says something about the reader, but nothing about the text. How could my being frightened upon seeing a snake say anything about the snake?
I think you fail to distinguish between opinion/understanding and meaning.
>dictionaries dictionaries dictionaries
You keep slightly altering your view on this. Let's just go with this then: Do dictionary entries have a fixed meaning in your opinion? Or does the intent of the lexicographer, or response of the reader of that dictionary entry, mean that it has many different yet valid meanings?
I would say a dictionary entry has a fixed meaning.
> but the correct definition of the word is the one that the author intended (e.g. because that was the common meaning at the time of writing and context makes it obvious that that meaning was intended).
>the common meaning at the time of writing
>that meaning was intended
So you decide on the correct definition based on historical context and authors intentions, but meaning is still intrinsic?
Please just address this question directly, I asked three simple questions last time and you gave a fallacious answer to one then ignored the other two. How can you expect to have a discussion if you so clearly ignore questions.
Also there are multiple people in this thread which can be confusing as we are all making similar arguments. For clarity, I am not this poster: I don't want you to conflate his argument with mine.
These are my posts.
Okay to run with your snake example: i see a snake and am frightened, bringing my own paychology to bear on the experience. It is frightening from my perspective, and only frightening from my own perspective, because a snake, as thing in itself, is not frightening. After all, there are people who see the same snake and aren't frightened. But to complete the analogy we have to apply your positive claim, which would be that the snake is a 'thing in itself' and that a necessary property of this thing is 'not frightening.' The question i'm asking is how do you come up with this idea of the snake as thing in itaelf that is necessarily not frightening.
Its a bad analogy anyway, because your snake isnt made up of words like your text is. And for language, there is no single objective viewpoint from which, say, a text can be said to be frightening or not, like you think the snake can (although maybe some philosophers will take issue with uou there). Thats just linguistic fact. You're gonna have to accept that and work your theory around it.
And of course dictionaries don't have a single meaning. Fucking hell, why are there still people who make dictionaries? Why are there multiple editiona across multiple dialects across multiple generations across mutliple theory-based methodologies for writing them? You're just not reading your dictionary close enough, desu.
Yeah i should also clarify im not the other guy and its him you were talking with about dictionaries before. But you should be able to tell who is who from the arguments
>The definitions of words change constantly based on factors that exist beyond the text, how are definitions not extrinsic?
I conceded that definitions are extrinsic.
>If there is a single "correct" definition, as you seem to believe, what makes this definition correct?
As I said, the meaning that was intended (based on both research of the author and the lexicon of the time period).
>Using a dictionary is a good thing, but it is a completely separate text, how is a dictionary not extrinsic?
It is extrinsic.
>but meaning is still intrinsic
Yes.
I mean that the definition of the words and the meaning of the text are two different things. The relationship of the words to each other in the text is what leads to meaning, not the definition of each single word, and not the meaning intended by the author. (Looked at another way, I think learning to read is not strictly the same as reading).
Let me use an example. Say I write "clouds are green" and I tell you two things: 1) I intend 'clouds' and 'are' to have their plain meaning, but 'green' to have its meaning of 'sickly'; and 2) i intend my sentence to mean "cows are round". I think the meaning of the text is "clouds are sickly", not "cows are round".
I don't advocate the idea that a snake is both a thing in itself and not frightening. Neither 'frightening' or 'not frightening' can be a property of a snake. Saying 'a snake isn't frightening' is saying that 'you are not frightened by a snake', a subjective response not an objective attribute of a snake.
I also don't think a text can be frightening. Fright would be a reader response.
>And of course dictionaries don't have a single meaning.
They wouldn't be very useful then would they? Different dictionaries have different guidelines for inclusion in the dictionary, or they are laid out differently, or they are updated to reflect changing definitions (adding definitions, not taking away), they don't actually define the words differently.
I give up - you're unfixable.
I only hope I've sowed enough doubt in your mind, which might grow into something fruitful if you ever lose your burdened and painful ideologies.
That's cause I'm not broken.
Fare thee well, relativistbro.
Okay, thanks for answering those, I understand your opinion much better now.
I agree that author's intention is not an objective source of meaning, but that isn't what is being argued here.
>The relationship of the words to each other in the text is what leads to meaning, not the definition of each single word
The meaning of the text is reliant on relationships between words, the relationships between words are reliant on the definitions of those words, the definitions of those words are reliant on extrinsic information, therefore meaning is reliant on extrinsic information and cannot be achieved with the text alone.
You say in this post that definitions are extrinsic and reliant on both historical context and the readers perception of the authors intention.
How does this not completely contradict your original post:
>All that is required to understand a text is intrinsic to the text itself.
>Bringing extrinsic elements into a reading of the text - such as the intent of the author or the response of the reader - is fallacious.
Sauce cunt.
>Neither 'frightening' or 'not frightening' can be a property of a snake
If part of the influence of snakes over evolutionary time as seen in it's relation to it's environment, is to become instinctively frightening to infants of many species, does this mean that snakes (venomous?) are frightening?
Not true. You cannot understand the text if you don't know the language it was written in.
I think I can see a difference but I don't know how to articulate it. Something to do with the difference between learning to read and actually reading.
Anyway I am quite happy to just say that it does contradict it and I will voluntarily append "(except for the definition of the words that make up the text)" to each line you quoted. It's just the minimum necessary to read at all, but going beyond is not justified.
Ryan Newman
It's more accurate to say that some things other than snakes evolved to be frightened by snakes.
the people who find the snake frightening are perceiving the objects aesthetic in a different way because of evolutionary pressure, and so arent really interacting with the object in the same way or are interacting with a different object of 'a frightening snake'
if i sit on a table, is it a chair?
>I think I can see a difference but I don't know how to articulate it. Something to do with the difference between learning to read and actually reading.
Okay, I would be interested to see what you come up with after putting some more thought into it.
> It's just the minimum necessary to read at all, but going beyond is not justified.
I still don't agree with this but to be totally honest I am tired of talking about it. I am frustrated with this format because I know in person we probably could have sorted this out in about 15 minutes instead of the several hours this comment thread took. If this is still up tomorrow I might come back. Good chat user.
That snake example is plain retarded. A snake is not part of a code, but a wild animal.
A board with "LOOK OUT: SNAKES" written on it is using language. It's intended to be read and understood by someone who identifies the meaning of the word "snake". If you decide to stay away from that place because you're afraid of snakes (or whatever you choose to do, keeping in mind that there are snakes there), then the board's communicative task has been successful.
The epic of Gilgamesh or In Search Of Lost Time are also messages which rely on your capacity to recognize what they're alluding to.
>pretending to know more than Borges
“The taste of the apple ... lies in the contact of the fruit with the palate, not in the fruit itself; in a similar way ... poetry lies in the meeting of poem and reader, not in the lines of symbols printed on the pages of a book. What is essential is the aesthetic act, the thrill, the almost physical emotion that comes with each reading.”
That is not true. The act of a text "saying something" requires no listener. It's just saying something
I see someone has read the wikipedia article on New Criticism recently
>New Criticism was a formalist movement in literary theory that dominated American literary criticism in the middle decades of the 20th century. It emphasized close reading, particularly of poetry, to discover how a work of literature functioned as a self-contained, self-referential aesthetic object.
>texts have ideas
>studying what those ideas are and how those ideas are understood is not relevant
People are awful at detecting tastes if you blindfold them and don't tell them what they're eating.
t. someone who's never read a critical analysis inhis life
No art exists in a vacuum, and literature is no exception.
You can TREAT it as self-contained, but that not only doesn't make it so but in in fact limits the text. You may prefer this if you are too lazy or benighted to make full use of the extrinsic elements naturally evoked by a text.
So this is the origin of the everybody hold hands and read book club phenomenon.