There is no interpretation more important or more correct than the author's intentions

Wimp wormp wimp wormp blagga blagga blim blam.

Give me the correct, authorial interpretation of this sentence right now or you're a bad reader.

>You realise you're actually saying that the meaning resides in the text and not in the author's intentions, right? You're contradicting yourself.

Wrong, retard.

The authors intentions ARE the text. For fucks sake, are you this stupid? If so, do you have to try or is it a natural gift?

The author is expressing his sorrow and disappointment at this thread. Quite poignant, really.

What if he made a typo?

>Bien connaître l’amour il faut sortir de soi ("to know love it is necessary to get out of oneself")
>Bien connaître l’amour il faut sortir de soir ("to know love it is necessary to go out in the evening")

Loving your circular logic. I wonder how long it will take for you to realize you're actually arguing in favor of literary critique all along.

Close, but I was actually complaining about how my black neighbors kept me up all night with their screaming.

If originalism were widely accepted then thousands of useless professors would lose their jobs.

I would hate to be in a literature course with you. I'm willing to bet your real course hates you too.

If you wanted to, you could have gone and read some Barthes and tried to understand the value of the ideas you're moaning about. Instead you're here, insipidly throwing your cerebral faeces against the wall like the stupid fucking pseud you are.

Are you honestly so thick you can't think of even one reason why looking beyond authorial intent would be a good thing? Not one? Either you're an brain-dead hack who has no idea how to think critically about concepts, or you're the intellectual companion of an inanimate object.

You're a fucking pseud, off yourself.

The only psued's are those who think they can grab random ideas out of the air and attribute them to an author, you fucking hack.

I'll circle around you and punch you in the fucking face from 360 degress, rank cunt. I"m obviously not in favor of literary THEOLOGY aka make up bullshit just cuz.

Obviously the conjugation of a made up language of two different words.

Probably from some reddit tier YA or SCI-FI.

This is true, though the greatest art is made with the least intentions and with the greatest clarity.

Something is being eaten

What if the author isn't trying to SAY anything, but rather give a clear eyed view of a human experience? What if he presents more questions than answers?
Like

>Any conjecture passed the actual words
>passed
Illiterate, go home

t. undergrad who's never read any literary theory

>If you wanted to, you could have gone and read some Barthes and tried to understand the value of the ideas you're moaning about.
This.

>The only psued's are those who think they can grab random ideas out of the air and attribute them to an author, you fucking hack.
Nobody is "attributing them to the author". You are using the "author's intent" as a way to control and delimit acceptable readings of a text. Just stop.

You're exaggerating a bit. If what you say seems to you as true, it would be of everyone's best interest to simply separate interpretive lit from direct lit.

Aaaaah can you just go away. You're an idiot and your opinion is an idiot

Give up lit for the medium far superior, aka music

AUTHORS DONT STATE THEIR INTENTIONS
THE AUTHOR OF GILGAMESH NEVER STATED HIS INTENTIONS
THEREFORE ANY INTERPRETATION OF GILGAMESH MUST BE DERIVED FROM TEXTUAL INTERPRETATION
THE AUTHOR AS A PERSON IS A TANGENTIAL ELEMENT TO THE TEXT ITSELF
ANY CLAIM MUST BE SUPPORTED BY EVIDENCE IN THE TEXT
HOW IS THIS NEW TO YOU?

I usually indentify a theme or a certain dimension and it's attributes from a text, and then view it with irony, flip the precieved meaning and then arrange it arbitrarily. I believe this to be as accurate as any other system of critique, and it sure does entertain me.

Sometimes authors do state their intentions

So you're looking for some form of literary materialism where only rational interpretation subsists to focus on pure meaning. That would work in scientific approaches, but emotion also plays part in esthetic and art. The writer carries meaning but doesn't inherently give meaning because that's on the readers end.

superior gradfag here

ultimately i think most of the fault lies in the instructional/educational structure of how a textual engagement takes place in a modern classroom in comparison to one fifty years ago. in a classical old-timey college the only lesson by way of lecture to be learned stayed closer to authorial intent i.e. what ever social commentary or passive aggressive opinion the author is trying to get off their chest and this was considered gospel. a more modern classroom moves away from that classical approach and is considered more elitist so now the fad is to try and take a piece of literature and cubby hole it into the present by way of allowing students to manipulate it and in a lot of ways pervert it to fit their shallow pleeb point of view. im sure in another fifty years the style will swing back but until then shut the fuck up and deal with it like everyone else.

>There is no interpretation more important or more correct than the author's intentions.
I see your course hasn't covered Modernism yet. Or maybe you just weren't paying attention.

Literature can (and should) be a true art form, like music or painting, with which the observer interacts and draws their own conclusions.

Add Ulysses to your reading list and STFU. You're a student, not a teacher.

Your gross inability to spell ITT somehow makes me doubt you're a writer, or read much at all.

>Books should have a separate section where the author explains their intention in writing it. This would be especially useful for poetry.
Then why even write the book when you can convey what you want to say in a small text alongside?

>Either you're an brain-dead hack who has no idea how to think critically about concepts, or you're the intellectual companion of an inanimate object.
kek

>falling for it this hard

As if you could even get into Uni you incest fuck.

The intentions are the words in the story, dumb fuck.

You know how tricky that is then? There can be a fuckton of different interpretations, all based on and consistent with one text. Kafka's The Trial can be interpreted as a story about isolation and misunderstanding or a totalitarian regime or an expression of Kafka's problems with the authority or even a Christian parable. What was Kafka's intention? Considering his dislike of explaining his own writing, he'd probably be okay with all of them.
You might be pissed at the people who truly just project their own ideas onto a work and I agree that that is a bad habit, but the whole picture is more complicated, even if you just analyze the text you can come to different conclusions and interpretations.

IT'S NOT TRICKY AT ALL

THEY PUBLISH THE FUCKING SHIT

IT'S RIGHT GODDAMN THERE AS YOU READ.

So you're saying that when Kafka describes a man who turned into a bug that is literally everything? The man just turned into a bug? There's no meaning or message whatsoever behind the words "he found himself turned into a bug"?

THAT'S WHY NOBODY IN ACADEMIA IS EVER JUST MAKING THINGS UP
EVERY CLAIM MUST HAVE EVIDENCE IN THE TEXT TO BACK IT UP
SUSSING OUT THE AUTHOR'S "INTENTIONS" IS BESIDE THE POINT BECAUSE EVERYTHING IS THERE IN THE TEXT

I don't get the point of this. Why would the author need to color-code his story to tell you what's going on? Shouldn't it suffice to show you that the character is depressed through his actions/dialogue?

the example in the pic is stupid and reductive, but using imagery to evoke moods and ideas is a basic literary device that you can find examples of in 3000 year old chinese poetry. It has existed for as long as literature has existed. The people that complain about this are the people who read absolutely no literature.

This makes no sense. It seems as if you're saying there's one objective meaning to every text since the author's intention is behind every word and only you can decipher this intention and no one else's interpretation is valid.

We're all confused. We're all half-chuckling and half-pitying you, user. I've called over my entire family and several of my friends to read your posts and they're all shaking their heads in similar confusion and puzzlement.

What made you like this, user? Who hurt you? Are you confused? Have you been drinking again? How old are you? Is it your bedtime yet? Are you allowed to be on this board? and so on.

We're all worried about you, user. It's time to relax.

Reading a text is a personal exchange between the author a reader.

Some writers communicate more clearly to some readers.

Some readers are more impacted by some literary cues than others.

The are bad authors, and there are people who have no business pretending they can understand what they read.

>there is no such thing as a bad writer with good ideas
You, sir, are a fucking moron.

kek

Personally, in my opinion, I thin you're wrong.

user, you are a right, and your quest is holy, but you lack the vocabulary the properly demonstrate your viewpoint. Read more, and starting with the people you hate the most.

I would heavily recommend you to read 'The Death and Return of the Author: Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida' by Sean Burke.

right*

ok, but if Kafka say that he want to talk about her depression in this story,( for example). he is the supreme authoritative figure in the text or you still talking about the infinite perspectives?

t. Derrida

I feel you.
Deconstructionism is cancer upon a once great liberal arts education system.

Yes, instead of teaching people how to think creatively we should just teach them to passively accept one person's idea like a braindead retard.

There is more than one book.

You fucking millennial cunts and your narcissism. You honestly fucking think you have a right to say that Faulkner was wrong in what he was saying in his books.

Yes, I do think anyone has the right to say whatever the fuck they want, true. That's pretty much why I like this website.

This is the point. A little reading between the lines is fine, but modern college education takes 'the curtains were blue' and writes a 20 pages MOP on it, btw, no one reads MOPs, but other people planning to write thier own MOP on the subject. It's a huge fucking circle jerk. Intellectual wankfests are the worst.
Modern art is bad and you should feel bad.
If you have to explain the meaning behind your art piece it's bad. I think the public is finally waking up from thier brainwashing of being told what to like. The major art museum in my city, people spend hours in the europen floors and walk through the 'modern' floor in 10 mintues, and the museum has some super famous 'modern' art peaces

>think creatively
How does making up wrong interpretations of a book encourage creative thinking? You didn't learn anything about the Great book author , you only learned about the average teachers brain. You go to learn about great writing not the teachers writings

This is the problem

>make the theme blatant so idiots can get it
>make the theme obscure so only 1/5th of your readers get it and people need to use sparknotes to understand what the fuck you're talking about

no middle ground

2deep4u

You are a bad writer and not worth interpreting
Simple
3deep5me

>everyone is stupid except me

You must be 18 to post on this site.

>if everyone does it then it's smart

You setting a very low bar for those on the really wavy lengths of the autistic spectrum.

You are the one that sounds underage. Have you ever had to hear a lecture go on for 20 minutes about one page in a 100+ page book?, and you realize they just made something up, and you realize no one would ever objectively independently come to the same interpretation ever again? Not op btw

It's not about the teachers interpretation, it's about YOUR interpretation.

I don't follow. What about that?

But can't your interpretation be incorrect?

For pointing out OP's infantile rant? Your interpretation is brilliant, m8.

...

>everyone itt thread disagreeing with op gets btfo with a comic strip

Yes, of course. Then comes the discussion. Otherwise what we actually do here on this site? (apart from shitpost, of course). One interpretation is pretty fucking boring if you ask me.

But there's only one *correct* interpretation?

I really want to turn in a easy about dick and Jane and gender

There are zero correct interpretations.

Then why can I understand what you just wrote?

You can create your closest approximation based on the evidence you have, but it is impossible to know with certainty whether or not you are correct.

I love you.
That fag got blow the fuck out hard

Not really, that kid is a douchebag.

Ask yourself why you would want that to be the case. I mean, it's like if you piss someone off you can't just tell that person their anger is not there. You'd be arguing against reality, that's insanity. Same as interpretations, ideas. You can say, "well the author didn't intend that," but unless you can offer their intention or your own, pretty boring conversation. If you can offer (what you think) was their intention, them it's still pretty interesting until you're done talking. Then you might as well say what it means to you etc.

I mean, if you're sick of people talking about what they think of the books they read at a literature class, how about you go study history or go the fuck home.

Pathetic. You're equating your own shitty Veeky Forums sentence to a work or literature? No wonder you feel intimidated by other opinions...

Fuck off you retarded deconstruct.
You people are like the Monty python augment skit where the other guy just game says whatever the other person says. You can do that with /anything/. It's a complete demorailism strategy and is complete cancer to building useful thoughts.
God dam I hate deconstructists so much.

>You can do that with /anything/
Yes. Recognizing this makes every idea more useful, not less.

>can't handle uncertainty
Just go back to the bible and take it all literally, redneck

>No wonder you feel intimidated by other opinions...
Literally the 2deep4you aurgument

There are still other legitimate perspectives, in my opinion.

Just because you Gamesay something doesn't make it useful, making everything mean less is a cancer upon this world.
Strawman, go back to logic 101
You are 100 years too early to win an aurgument with me

Why the defensive hostility?

See? A nice, valid interpretation. Not what I had intended, though.

>that kid
>not knowing Calving and Hobbes
I honestly pity you

rekt

Way to ignore the main points of the post. Basically
>look, didn't say the name! *runs*

>A E S T H E T I C S

Not knowing nor being able to reach the objective truth makes everything mean more, as any idea might be closer to the truth than your own. When there is objective truth, everything means less, as any idea will either be correct or incorrect.

>Deconstruction doesn't actually mean "demolition;" instead it means "breaking down"
>or analyzing something (especially the words in a work of fiction or nonfiction)
> to discover its true significance, which is supposedly almost never exactly what the author intended.
>which is supposedly almost never exactly what the author intended.
>never what the author intended
Deconstruction is intellectual cancer. Deal with it. op is right, the author's intentions is the only thing that matters.

That's what they want, a mummy and daddy to say flat out right or wrong. Anything else is scawy.

You should recommend everyone read "How to Read a Book" by Mortimer J. Adler and Charles Van Doran(1972 revised).

No it doesn't, it makes everything meaningless, because you can counter ANY idea with 'but what if...."
Strawman. The author intentions matter

>omiting the "supposedly almost" which changes the meaning of the sentence so that it fits your ideology

You are intellectual cancer.