[Question] How important is authorial intent?
- Thread starter drifter
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Once you release it into the wild, a work is largely feral. You cannot control how it impacts people or what it means to those people. But the author can help shape the interpretation (if they choose to do so) by discussing their work and its inspiration, etc. It is like providing provenance for what is written to add further meaning, perhaps, or to induce a different point of view. But when that author is gone, the interpretation of the reader is pretty much all that is left.
I feel like this could also be posted in the Game of Thrones thread. 
But honestly, odds are pretty high that a mass audience is not going to give two shits about what an author "intended" by something. Just think about any number of English classes in which you are told what something means and you disagree (or is that just me?)
If we are just talking about a discussion, then obviously the original stater of said discussion will be able to make his point known.
But honestly, odds are pretty high that a mass audience is not going to give two shits about what an author "intended" by something. Just think about any number of English classes in which you are told what something means and you disagree (or is that just me?
) If we are just talking about a discussion, then obviously the original stater of said discussion will be able to make his point known.
GasBandit
Staff member
On the one hand, you've got the George Lucases who made a work of art that wasn't in line with their "intent," and woe betide us who are forced to watch them reauthor our childhoods decades later and make Han shoot first.
On the other hand, you've got the Peter Jacksons of the world who bloat a not-very-thick children's book into 3 extra long feature films with lore-unfriendly love triangles and extraneous battle scenes manufactured out of whole cloth. There were no warg-riders in the Two Towers book, remember (nor was there romantic tension between Aragorn and Eowyn).
So it's a fickle thing. Sometimes it's important, sometimes less so.
On the other hand, you've got the Peter Jacksons of the world who bloat a not-very-thick children's book into 3 extra long feature films with lore-unfriendly love triangles and extraneous battle scenes manufactured out of whole cloth. There were no warg-riders in the Two Towers book, remember (nor was there romantic tension between Aragorn and Eowyn).
So it's a fickle thing. Sometimes it's important, sometimes less so.
Hmm, would you say quality / import has an effect on authorial intent? For instance if Stephanie Meyer comments on Twilight is that any more or less valid than anything Tolkein said about LOTR? Do we need to give the same weight of authorial intent to both Chick Tracts & the American Constitution?
For most people I think it comes down to whether they agree with the author or not. If they agree with the author's intent then it's very important, if they don't then it's what they did say not what they meant to say that matters.
For most people I think it comes down to whether they agree with the author or not. If they agree with the author's intent then it's very important, if they don't then it's what they did say not what they meant to say that matters.
I find knowing authorial intent to be very important. I may disagree, and even interpret their work differently than they wrote/interpret it, but I am most enriched if I can suss out even a silhouette of the original intention of the author.
One way of showing what I mean would be if you take the rather famous example of correlation fallacy, that the decreasing number of pirate ships is correlated to the increase of global warming and therefore we can solve global warming with an increase in our number of pirate ships; you can interpret the point of this story to mean that there are so many correlated and confounding factors around climate change that we simply can't have enough data to make a good decision about what to do.
A little research into the story and the author reveals this to be untrue, and now, knowing more about the intent, I feel that I have a better understanding of how he sees things, and his use of metaphor. Things I read by him in future will be perceived with a deeper sense, and all the while I continue to see that his stories, metaphors, etc., hold separate values in my conclusions.[DOUBLEPOST=1399590965,1399590788][/DOUBLEPOST]
One way of showing what I mean would be if you take the rather famous example of correlation fallacy, that the decreasing number of pirate ships is correlated to the increase of global warming and therefore we can solve global warming with an increase in our number of pirate ships; you can interpret the point of this story to mean that there are so many correlated and confounding factors around climate change that we simply can't have enough data to make a good decision about what to do.
A little research into the story and the author reveals this to be untrue, and now, knowing more about the intent, I feel that I have a better understanding of how he sees things, and his use of metaphor. Things I read by him in future will be perceived with a deeper sense, and all the while I continue to see that his stories, metaphors, etc., hold separate values in my conclusions.[DOUBLEPOST=1399590965,1399590788][/DOUBLEPOST]
I would say that quality makes no difference in terms of authorial intent, but that the importance of resolving authorial intent is lessened, personally, in things I find to be poorly done, or do not enjoy. Nonetheless, I think the author's intent remains impactful on how I would understand the work, were I to read it.
In works of art, I'd say authorial intent means nothing. In science, if there's doubt of what you're trying to convey, you're not conveying it properly.
Art, however, is a completely subjective thing, making authorial intent pretty much irrelevant. It's academically interesting to see the difference between authorial intent and audience interpretation, but the two things are almost mutually exclusive.
Art, however, is a completely subjective thing, making authorial intent pretty much irrelevant. It's academically interesting to see the difference between authorial intent and audience interpretation, but the two things are almost mutually exclusive.
"In the air tonight"
Obviously it depends on a variety of issues, but especially in the context of most of my grad school work (studying biblical texts) it's a VERY important part of interpretation and understanding.
On the flip side, I recently had a girl asking me about some of my lyrics in one of my bands songs, and my answer to the whole, "what do they mean?" question is generally, "well, what do they mean to you?" I think thats an example of when authorial intent is less important because the subject is intended to be informed more by the listener than the author. Ancient biblical text don't work that way.
So… it depends on the work I guess.
On the flip side, I recently had a girl asking me about some of my lyrics in one of my bands songs, and my answer to the whole, "what do they mean?" question is generally, "well, what do they mean to you?" I think thats an example of when authorial intent is less important because the subject is intended to be informed more by the listener than the author. Ancient biblical text don't work that way.
So… it depends on the work I guess.
This is an excellent point. Po-mo biblical interpretation seems like it would be a pretty thoroughly rejected thought in mainstream theological circles.
From purely the standpoint of communication for communication's sake, it is an interesting mental exercise.
FIRST an author has an idea. THEN that author commits the idea to paper, which is an interesting process that hinges on the author's ability/talent to choose and arrange the most appropriate words to cause another person's head to faithfully reconstruct the same idea which is in his. THEN time goes by and language evolves, causing the nuances of the words on the paper (or their arrangements) to change. How can it possibly still evoke the original idea in the new reader's brain? What is the degree of divergence, and how does that affect the perception of the author's intent?
--Patrick
Then you've also got things like The Beatles' songs, where people became obsessed with knowing what the lyrics "really meant". It led to a very-annoyed John Lennon, tired of people's analysis and occasionally changing the intended meaning of their lyrics, to write "I Am the Walrus" , and, quote,"Let the fuckers work that one out."