January 9, 2018
Authorial Intention and the Chaos of Meaning
Authorial intention must be among the most perverse – yes, perverse – things in connection with literary criticism. By the term “authorial intention” we mean, self-evidently, what the author’s intention was when writing a certain piece of work.
In other words, authorial intention refers to expressing a meaning the writer intended. For many people, there really isn’t any mystery: Writer A wrote book B, therefore the meaning expressed in book B is what writer A intended. However, as we will see in more detail further below, this is an excessively simplistic approach.
Problems begin once we realize that there never really is only one reader. Again, this might appear as self-evident, but it is important to emphasize the repercussions: Are we really certain that reader C and reader D have interpreted book B in the same (or even similar) manner?
Indeed, even the same reader can have two different responses to the same book on a subsequent reading. Think of a book you loved as a teenager – let’s assume, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Think of the second time you read that book, perhaps years later. Some things didn’t feel as interesting, while others you discovered for the first time. You had two readerly responses, being one individual, for the same book.
Authorial Intention and The Generation of Meaning: Controlled Chaos
As I demonstrated right above, there is an inherent problem in interpreting meaning in literature (and art in general): Authors cannot contain or limit the meaning of their book. In other words, once a novel leaves the author and reaches the reading audience, meaning begins to propagate.
It’s a bit as if every reader creates a new instance of the book with every reading turn. If that sounds chaotic, it’s because it is. However, though this be madness, yet there is method in ‘t – it might be chaos, but it’s (somewhat) controlled. Clusters of interpretation can and do exist that attract significant portions of readers.
For example, it’s fairly reasonable to assume that most people who have read Stephen King’s The Shining, interpret it in connection with fear, parent-child dynamics, or madness. It’s also very likely that Stephen King did intend such meanings when writing his novel.
The problems begin a) with more complex books; b) with older texts. An example of the former would be Bret Easton Ellis’s American Psycho – a grossly misunderstood masterpiece. As for the latter case, that would warrant its own section
Case Study: Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market
I wrote my Bachelor’s Thesis on Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market, and it remains one of my favorite poems of all time – perhaps together with Byron’s “Prometheus”. I am in awe of Rossetti’s vocabulary and her ability to combine words with such mastery – I even made a music album to express this admiration. But I am even more in awe of her ability to create such a multi-layered text.
Or, did she?
Lengthy biographical references to Christina Rossetti’s life would be outside the scope of the present post. However, you should know that Rossetti lived very piously. Take Lord Byron – “Mad, Bad and Dangerous to Know” – and apply an inverse filter. You’ll get Christina Rossetti. They’re like Gothic doubles!
Although authorial intention is virtually impossible to prove, it is a fair assumption that Rossetti intended Goblin Market to be a cautionary tale, perhaps a moralistic fable to tell the children before bedtime (hey, it’s the Victorian era we’re talking about).
I wonder what Rossetti would think of the interpretations Goblin Market has received in the last few decades. They include some fairly straightforward readings pertaining to class, imperial capitalism and drug abuse. They also include some more… exotic ones such as homosexuality, incest, and bestiality. Although you never know, I consider it unthinkable that Rossetti intended any of the latter readings when composing her poem.
But does this fact make them any less valid? Do they not count as meanings created (and propagated) by someone? Which brings us to perhaps the most intriguing question of them all.
Afterthoughts: Can even Authors Control Their Own Work?
I mentioned in a previous section how the meaning of a book cannot be controlled anymore once it leaves the author. But let’s take this a step further: Can even the author retain full control of their manuscript?
I mentioned in this article about writing motivation, that I have never written anything worth a dime that wasn’t a semi-subconscious product – where a book basically takes over and writes itself. It is the very process of artistic creation that renders the text something ghostly; something that is created if not ex nihilo, then at least in parts without a conscious creator.
In this framework, with even the author’s own control under scrutiny, I think it’s reasonable to consider readers’ interpretations as valid. Someone might suggest that they can’t be as valid as the author’s own, but I think such qualitative comparisons would lead us onto thin ice.
3 Comments
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Authors are subject to the world around them, whether they are always conscious of it or not. It influences what and how they write, because it must – maybe that’s what readers pick up on, something the author transmitted almost by accident.
As I say sometimes, all fiction is autobiographical, to one extent or another, because it contains the author’s personal experiences and reflection on those experiences. The problem is – and it’s a problem I’ve seen even with academic criticism – when one confuses experiencing as a cultural entity with experiencing as a personal one. What I mean by that is, we are all a product of our respective contexts. When, to name one example, critics place excessive emphasis on Mary Shelley’s personal tragedies, they seem to ignore the point such were the lives of most women at the time.
Thanks for your comment!
It is in the same vein of wondering who the pseudonymous author of something was (like the furor over Elena Ferrante) and then being dismissive once they know who it is. Women wrote about women with a male pen name – and were taken much more seriously.
Yes, an author’s life AND culture affects her writing, but No, you don’t understand enough of either his personal OR cultural background to make the correlations that are made.