/lit/ - Literature

we have this thread every week

>>11579552
Fuck off and take your Jezebels with you!

Gee, I wonder what I meant by that, must be up for interpretation.

>>11579552
its satanic

>>11579554
If we solve the debate there will be no further need

>>11579552
All my favorite authors are dead. I don't want to agree with this but I must.

>>11579554
>>11579574
I would like to have and take part in that debate please.
>>11579562
No angry cat. Have a Russian.

The real question should be which authors should die.

>>11579589
the ones who write crime fiction

I remember a lecture by Hélène Cixous
A woman asks, Can it be said that the reader is the author of the author ?
I think it gave Hélène Cixous an orgasm

should literary criticism aim to read the mind of an author through their writing and random factoids we were able to discern about their life or should literary criticism examine a piece of literature and the thoughts that can arise from reading it?

seems pretty obvious which option is more sensible

>>11579574
>there is currently a need

>>11579841
But surely an author and the influences on his life influence his work.
Is Swift just shit posting or satirising his world? The author's life provides context.
As in a way might Cervantes capture by Barbary pirates figuring in don Quixote.

>>11579923
of course it does but again should the aim of our discipline be to try and read the minds of dead people through things they wrote or should it be to examine what they wrote and what it means

>>11579552
i appreciate the concept of a piece of work as a collection of signals independent of the author, but i highly disagree.
every good book is a reflection of the author's psyche, and through every good book you learn to know its author. you can read the book without paying mind to the author and just look at the signs in context of whatever society you're currently in that gives the signs meaning, but you would be missing out on a huge deal of complexity and nuance. as a somewhat forced analogy, id compare it to looking at a foreign word just for the pretty shapes of it letters and sounds of the vowels, rather than finding out the meaning of the word by looking into the foreign language it came from.

DEATH OF THE AUTHOR IS TRUE, BECAUSE A WRITER CAN CREATE ACTUAL TRUE EXISTING MEANING IN HIS TEXT WITHOUT BEING AWARE OF IT.

HOWEVER: DEATH OF THE READER IS ALSO TRUE, BECAUSE THE TOTALITY OF READERS CAN FAIL TO GRASP THE TOTALITY OF MEANING CONTAINED IN A TEXT.

IN CONCLUSION: READERS CAN ALSO BE WRONG BY INACCURATELY CLAIMING CERTAIN MEANINGS EXIST (i.e. shakespeare was a furry because he wrote this scene with a horse that did this jig at a wedding and this represents the struggle of genderqueer people of color and oppression of the patriarchal white man in not allowing furries to marry)

>>11579929
This will sound like semantics and I accept that.
>but
You can't read any piece of literature without the influence of the language it was written, the culture that produced the Author, the events that influenced that author and his place in history and culture.
On the one hand you don't need to know that Byron maybe buggered his pregnant wife to read his poetry* on the other knowing Solzhenitsyn's biography certainly helps with a day in the life of Ivan Denisovich.
Perhaps a more interesting example is Chaucer. We don't know a great deal about his life (compared to say a contemporary writer) but he is giving us England of his life through his eyes and how he sees his fellow travellers - just as the tales they tell are influenced by their own perspectives and biases. (Compare Miller and knights tales which are basically the same story if you squint a lot).
*I would argue though that (as I don't rate Byron highly as a poet this might in part explain his continuing fame as much as the friends he had).

Honestly how can anyone disagree?

Let's do an experiment: I intend this post to be the greatest work of literature in the English language.

If you believe in authorial intent, then there is no meaning behind my post except what I declared as my intent.

>>11579992
i think stating that chaucer authored a text in which the world is presented as ________ is a reasonable statement, as opposed to chaucer authored a text which shows us that chaucer thought _____

>>11579991
Your formatting is terrible but I agree with you.

>>11579991
does the meaning exist in the text if nobody grasped it? isn't meaning a human concept, what is the difference between a string of words that every reader believes to mean "buy more turnips" and a string of words that mean "buy more turnips"?

>>11580002
I wonder if our answer lies somewhere in the middle.
Let's stick with Chaucer if we may?
He's an odd example as we have Chaucer actually placing himself as a character in his text. He is our narrator, author and fellow traveller.

>>11580026
But literature does not exist in isolation. It is "of its time."
Sorry if I'm misunderstand the OP but there is always going to be that historical/semi biographical element. In a way even going back to Homer.

Death of the Author is correct because sometimes they create new meaning they don't intend, or fail to convey their intended meaning.
However not all alternative readings are equally valid, and must properly be supported by the text, so it's not like every fag saying it's about purgatory or something needs to have their view seriously considered.

>>11580034
could we ever know for certain that chaucer the character is intended to 100% be chaucer the author? they almost certainly did not have identical life experiences.
would chaucer the author use chaucer the character to truly, honestly transparently insert his thoughts into the text? is not conceivable that he might choose to alter his internal self in order to make it more appealing to audiences?

>>11580040
of course it doesn't exist in isolation, a reader who knows a great deal about the culture in which the literature was written may read things in the text that a reader who doesn't know so much about the culture didn't read in the text.

an expert who knows a great deal about social structures may be able to read things in the text that neither of the above people read in the text.

a person who strongly subscribes to a political ideology would again produce a different reading.

but none of them have the ability to map the inside of the author's mind, all they can draw meaning from is the text

>>11580026
>does the meaning exist in the text if nobody grasped it?
YESYSYSYSYSYSYSYSYYSYS

A TREE VIBRATES AIR CAUSING SOUND WAVES TO EMANATE WHEN IT FALLS IN THE FORREST EVEN IF NO ONE IS THERE TO HAVE THEIR EAR COLLIDE WITH SAID SOUND WAVES

>>11580009
>Your formatting is terrible
YOU FAILED TO GRASP THE MEANING

>>11580101
there is no physical aspect to meaning anon

>>11580001
interesting, what about the inability to penetrate what the author might have meant, what did he mean by this?

I guess this is part of the point, it doesnt matter if the author was trying to be ironic, or funny, or silly, or sarcastic? But I guess interesting thing if statements can be equally read and interpreted, the same statement, in multiple different ways....must all texts apriori be assumed to be written as a form of humor, and absolutely seriously?

Author- "I was trying to be very cringy and edgy with that line to make fun of edgy people"

Edgy people- "hes my favorite author, I love that line, it speaks so much to me and gets me through the day"

>>11580051
I'd argue we are getting dangerously close to epistemology there. Every reader is interpreting a work true but I still argue that context is of great import.
Is Spenser's the Faerie Queene just some slightly dodgy poems or passionate railing against a Catholic influence in the monarchy?
>>11580073
With respect, that is the best we can do. Even with picking up the latest book published.
That doesn't mean it's invalid.

Whats that terrible anecdote again? You know the one (I paraphrase)
>teacher: the Author said the sky was blue as a comment on the plight of the middle classes in Zambia
>student: what.
>author: the sky was fucking blue.

>>11580144
context can only come from the reader's knowledge, no reader lived the exact life of spenser but yes the reader can bring pieces of information they have learnt to the text (if you don't then you aren't even reading you are just looking at meaningless symbols and are probably also not a conscious being)

>>11580144
>That doesn't mean it's invalid.
what it means is that a reading by someone who doesnt know much of the context can be just as valid and revealing as a reading by someone who does, at the end it comes down to whether or not the words on the page support your argument or contradict it

>it's another either/or debate

>>11580158
>No one can live the exact life of another
True.
But as humans we can transmit ideas and concepts through words and writing.
To not attempt to hear the (this sounds like pretentious wank and I know it) full voice of the author is, while quixotic, to not to read. Sure we will never know exactly why Shakespeare had Richard III as a complete dick but I think we can make a pretty educated guess.

>>11580178
>But as humans we can transmit ideas and concepts through words and writing.
it is an extremely imperfect process since language does not adequately map our internal thought processes

>>11580107
Sparks in my brain cause the illusion of a truth which is the literal definition of meaning.

Much more interesting is what the material (in both the social, marxist sense and the empirical, physicalist sense) contributes to our reception of a given author

There's a way in which the deconstructive move of announcing the death of the author (maybe characteristically) reestablishes a new rationalistic structure by denying any material base for its critique

>>11580107
YOU FAILED TO GRASP MY MEANING
it exists and you failed to grasp it, I made a metaphor, a reference to a common thing: there is even meaning in my metaphor, did you grasp it?

Why I didnt say "if a tree falls in a forrest and noone is around to hear did it make a SOUND?" do you know the meaning of why I did that? If you dont, does that mean there is no meaning?

>>11580187
True but without positing some new technology of mind transference it's what we've got.

>>11580192
so if the meaning can only exist within the brain of a reader then how can readers fail to grasp the sum total of the meaning "in a text"

the readers summative interpretations are the sum total of the meaning

WHAT DO YOU GUYS THINK OF THIS?

Author- "I was trying to be very cringy and edgy with that line to make fun of edgy people"

Edgy people (unaware the author thought that)- "hes my favorite author, I love that line, it speaks so much to me and gets me through the day"

>Make high effort post on death of the author thread some time ago
>Thread dies soon thereafter

Fuck my life senpai

>>11580203
No one can ever grasp the sum total meaning of a text.

>>11580206
Stop posting.

>>11580195
Does your post mean anything?

>>11580143
Then you accept the possibility that texts can have meanings beyond what the author intended. That's all this is about.

>must all texts apriori be assumed to be written as a form of humor, and absolutely seriously?
I don't see how either of those conditions follow. If you accept the possibility that texts can have multiple meanings, then you don't need to make any assumptions beforehand, and multiple meanings are valid, even contradictory ones.

If you believe a text's meaning is restricted to authorial intent, then matters of humor, irony, or sarcasm need to be deduced from the author such as interviews or whatever else intentists believe is sufficient grounds for induction. If there are no solid grounds on which to arrive at a solid conclusion, then intentsts should accept that the meaning will never be known.

>>11580212
the readers plural sum total interpretations plural make up the sum total of the meaning

if the meaning didnt happen in anyones brain, the meaning does not exist, because as we agree meaning is something in peoples brains

This is just postmodernism vs not being a retard.

>>11580155
>lmao symbolism literally doesn't exist, DAE the curtains were blue?

>>11580218
The fuck are you talking about?
Meaning in this case would be subjective with the need for relatively strong proof.
Just because it isn't in someones brain, doesn't mean it isn't in someone else's.

>>11580220
That's pretty much modern culture.

>>11580144
>Is Spenser's the Faerie Queene just some slightly dodgy poems or passionate railing against a Catholic influence in the monarchy?
could it be both, and much more?

>>11580175
intentists are the only ones arguing for exegesis. anyone accepting death of the author remains open to the validity of authorial intent as well as the validity of other interpretations

>>11580220
Stop posting in threads whose topic you know nothing about.

>>11580234
Well technically it is both. I wasn't a fan of his meter and slightly creative spelling.

>>11580220
The intent of my reply is to furnish proof you are a brainlet.

>>11580216
Yes. And the meaning varies relative to many contexts.

HERES AN EXAMPLE I HAVE CONSIDERED BEFORE:

First Player
'But who, O, who had seen the mobled queen--'
HAMLET
'The mobled queen?'
LORD POLONIUS
That's good; 'mobled queen' is good.

>That's good; 'mobled queen' is good.

Did Shakespeare realize that mobled can be broken down into: Mob led?

Can a queen be mob led?

Can there be a meta interpretation of Polonius sentence being:

The mob led queen is good?

If shakespeare didnt notice this, can I still say thats cool?

If shakespeare did notice that, and no critic in history thought if it, was it not cool?

>>11580235
>validity of authorial intent as well as the validity of other interpretations
This is my view of it, although death of the author dismisses the author's intent, maybe rightly so.

>>11580252
If you think it's cool, it's cool for you. Are you a child?

>>11579552
No.

>>11580252
Probably not, because the word mob was not used in his time.

>>11580252
I've seen people who write like they are drunk. I've seen people write drunk. You're the first I've seen where the writing looks drunk.

>>11580215
YOU COULDNT ANSWER THE QUESTION OR THINK OF ITS NATURE YOU NIGGER? FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU

>>11580203
>so if the meaning can only exist within the brain of a reader
it doesnt... the meaning exists between words... these words mean something... even if no one ever read them... they have defined meanings...

>>11580250
>And the meaning varies relative to many contexts.
you wouldnt say the meaning varies... to contexts...

There would just be: The total meaning.

And parts of that total, may relate to different things

>>11580280
Stop posting and go to bed

>>11579552
In my opinion, only non-western-canon authors die.
A great novel carries with it an urge to find out what kind of person wrote it, a mediocre novel does not have this drive and therefore their legacy is dead.
I.e. dragon crime fighting queers

>>11580266
>from Latin mobile vulgus "fickle common people" (the phrase attested c. 1600 in English),

Ok, but anyway, its a general example of what we are talking about

I cant believe how niggerish all your 20 year olds, absolute fucking shitfuckers
im speaking to >>11580271

>>11580226
for fucks sake

the original statement: "THE TOTALITY OF READERS CAN FAIL TO GRASP THE TOTALITY OF MEANING CONTAINED IN A TEXT."

my counterargument: if the meaning can only exist within the brain of a reader then how can readers [THE TOTALITY OF THEM] fail to grasp the sum total of the meaning "in a text"

>>11580304
How could you misunderstand this thread so thoroughly?

>>11580243
>slightly creative spelling.
olde english?

>>11580308
You're embarrassing yourself.
Stop posting until you don't seem like a 17 year old kid who just discovered 4chan two months back and got a sudden urge to read books so he can seem smart, please.

>>11580293
>>11580293
I would. Meaning varies relative to context. It depends on context. Meaning is contextual.

>parts of a total meaning would relate

Then it really isn't total in the sense of a unified totality. You can think of it that way sure, but the idea then is whether that total actually matters in any way, and I'd say: not really. But its fun to think about.

>>11580313
I don't understand, is this an infinite amount of monkeys on typewriters scenario?

So, let me get this straight, someone proposed that the canonical interpretation (in so far as we can approximate it) is one whereby the author as a person is to be excised from the equation.

And people argue over this simply because the author and the work are interdependent on one another for full comprehension, obviously, but so too is the personal interpretation interdependant on the strength of the argument being made for itself, obviously, with the highest form of interpretation being that which intersects both methodologies, also obvious.

Yet no one here has stated that.

Am I really the only non-retard here?

Hello? Is anyone else out there?

>>11580294
FUCK YOU SHITTY FUCK YOU FUCK FUCK YOU YOU FUCK FUCK YOU SHITTY FUCK YOU FUCK FUCK YOU YOU FUCK FUCK YOU SHITTY FUCK YOU FUCK FUCK YOU YOU FUCK FUCK YOU SHITTY FUCK YOU FUCK FUCK YOU YOU FUCK FUCK YOU SHITTY FUCK YOU FUCK FUCK YOU YOU FUCK FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK YOU YOU SUCK YOU SUCK YOU SUCK YOU SUCKYOU SUCK YOU SUCKYOU SUCK YOU SUCKYOU SUCK YOU SUCKYOU SUCK YOU SUCKYOU SUCK YOU SUCKYOU SUCK YOU SUCK
SU C K
U
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FUCK
U
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YOU
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DUDE
POSTMODERNISM IS BAD
LMAO

>>11580323
Yes but Spenser was not contemporary to old English or even really middle English.
He was going well beyond ye olde aenglish.
I recall someone thought this was to make a point about something.

>>11580325
it was a general example of exactly what this thread is a bout though dummy, shut the fuck up skunkdick

>>11580308
Turkish or Canadian anon?

>>11580332
given that
-meaning only exists within people's brains
this must mean
-meaning is not a quality of text, since text is not people's brains it is words on a screen or on paper or wherever
therefore
-the totality of meanings that have come from a text is the exact same thing as the totality of interpretations that all the readers have drawn from the text
therefore
-it is not possible for a text to contain meaning that has been missed by everyone who read it, any additional """undiscovered""" meaning in a text does not exist at all until someone new reads the texts and creates some new meaning from it that had not previously been created by anyone

>>11580333
>trip
>pleading for attention
God damn anon.
I'm only replying because of your triples.

>>11580333
It has already been posted, so calm yourself.
The debate is if one could do without the other.
And please stop posting in threads you've only read the wiki page for, and please learn to spell interdependent if you're going to use it more than once.

>>11580357

>someone once told me /lit/ was the smart board
We were having a really good thread too...

>>11580350
It's not, stop posting.

>>11580359
>If one could do without the other.
Obviously they could, what a fatuous thing to argue over.

>>11580313
>if the meaning can only exist within the brain of a reader
meaning doesnt only exist within the brain of the reader.

An author can write a book with meaning in their brain... put it in a drawer and never show anyone.... the book would still have meaning if no one read it, because words have meanings.

In a post you ignored I said, if no one read this post, these words would still have meaning.

If you show an english TV show to non english speakers, do the words the characters speak not contain meaning,,, you have not realized an objective world exists, and subjective. Words are tautologies and objective, in a dictionary, words have meanings. Just because the subjective minds of the non english speakers dont grasp the meaning of the words, doesnt mean the meaning doesnt exist.... sheesh

>>11580315
>How could you misunderstand this thread so thoroughly?
We can only hope that poster did in on purpose as a meta example of what we are discussing!
>>11580304
please say you did... or it will be the death of you!

>>11580356
Ahaaa, so that is how you chose to interpret my original post, you misunderstood.

>>11580365
but ive made the greatest contributions to this thread and you have contributed nothing

which posts have you made? I know you are scared to post them, but I will round all mine up in a bit and posterity will look upon you as a supreme ass

>>11580380
It's a turk.

>>11580366
Yes it is, are you done?
And please stop acting like you belong here, or that you have any knowledge in this area other than what you got from reading wikipedia since you posted itt.

Oh, I see, you're all arguing over your differing levels of confusion regarding the differentiation between the objective properties of the primary concept and the definition of the valence of the abstraction derived from that confusion, in an attempt to determine where the significance for value judgements are actually made in the psyche.

Cute.

>>11580356
you are so dumb

>>11580394
Done making fun of you idiots? No.

>>11580369
>meaning doesnt only exist within the brain of the reader.
meaning of a piece of text does only exist within the brains of those who have read it
>An author can write a book with meaning in their brain... put it in a drawer and never show anyone.... the book would still have meaning if no one read it, because words have meanings.
no, texts communicate meaning. they don't HAVE meaning, because as we established meaning is something that only exists in people's brains. if nobody can glean the meaning I intended from the text I wrote, then the text has failed to convey the meaning in my brain into the brain of anyone else. for example if I write "ioejsfoisfseoijsefo" while intending it to communicate a specific thought it doesn't actually put that thought into that garbage string of letters
>In a post you ignored I said, if no one read this post, these words would still have meaning.
because even if nobody read your post, there are people who know what meaning those words can be used to convey because they have encountered the words in other places
>If you show an english TV show to non english speakers, do the words the characters speak not contain meaning,,, you have not realized an objective world exists, and subjective. Words are tautologies and objective, in a dictionary, words have meanings. Just because the subjective minds of the non english speakers dont grasp the meaning of the words, doesnt mean the meaning doesnt exist.... sheesh
the words would communicate meaning to me but they would not communicate meaning to the non english speaker, since the meaning exists in my brain then yes the meaning does exist, please reread the post you were responding to because you still seem too fucking retarded to grasp what I mean by "readers [THE TOTALITY OF THEM]", your counterexample is about a specific individual reader not receiving meaning from some words

>>11579631
>Can it be said that the reader is the author of the author ?
So deep. What a productive question. (No offense to Cixous though, elle fait ce qu’elle peut.)

>>11580423
>because as we established meaning is something that only exists in people's brains.
We are having a difficulty with semantics, and understanding right now what one another means.

What is your definition of meaning?

mean·ing/ˈmēniNG/
noun
what is meant by a word, text, concept, or action.


You see: I was arguing from the standpoint that, the word The, has meaning. The word, A, has meaning. The means the. A means A.

The boy touched the tree, means the boy touched the tree.

You will find the meaning of all these words in the dictionary.

Trees exist, whether minds see them or not.

The meaning of all words are in the dictionary. Things exist, cups, spoons, and these words, are symbols that point to those things.

The boy took the cup and placed it inside the tree and then danced and stood on his head and jumped off the tree and flew to a building and pooped on a crowd and ate a crumpet and then spun on his head and then went up to a political leader and shook his hand and then moved his hand away right before they shook.

What does that sentence mean? What did I the author intend?

I would argue, regardless of what I think and was thinking and could think about it, and regardless of what the totality of people could think about it, the totality of possible meaning of it, exists exactly within its words, which exactly depends on their definitions in the dictionary. The totality of meaning is related to the totality of possible interrelations of the definitions.

>>11580365
>>11580388
I wrote these posts (and a few more), which are yours?
>>11580449
>>11579991

>>11580449
Meaning, from the psychological standpoint, the only one that matters, refers to the effective valence of an object or concept, and its relation to the referential framework used in the determination of value and significance to motor output.

>>11580423
ok I wrote this
>>11580449
and now realize a possible issue:
That the totality of words and definitions do not contain the totality of meanings, (case in point, how there are some words in other languages, ideas, that do not have other language equivalents)

We can get a feeling: that reminds me of this time I went with my grandma to this firemans parade because I saw a leaf fall

But the author didnt intend to make you think of your grandma there just because he mentioned a leaf

>>11580457
what is the 'valence' of an object/concept, and what makes one effective as opposed to ineffective?

>>11580449
>meaning: what is meant
lol

"intend to convey or refer to (a particular thing); signify."

>You see: I was arguing from the standpoint that, the word The, has meaning. The word, A, has meaning. The means the. A means A.

how can a word "have" a meaning objectively, whether or not the word conveys meaning depends on who hears the word. for a one day old baby the words do not convey any meaning, for a caterpillar they do not convey any meaning, for a person raised in an african tribe that spoke another language who never heard a word of english in his life, they do not convey any meaning

"The boy touched the tree, means the boy touched the tree."

what if the sentence appears in a context where 'tree' can be validly interpreted as a euphemism for a penis? a 15 year old may say 'boy' to mean someone who looks to be 12 or younger, a 90 year old may say 'boy' to mean anyone who looks to be 25 or younger. if the tree existed in a fantasy novel where trees are living beings with money perhaps the boy "touched" the tree in the sense of asking the tree to lend him money

>You will find the meaning of all these words in the dictionary.

was this dictionary carved in stone by god? does it get updated? do you ever encounter people who use words in a way that isnt described within the dictionary?

>What does that sentence mean? What did I the author intend?

i can only assume, i certainly could never truly claim to know

>>11580423
>by "readers [THE TOTALITY OF THEM]
What I mean by this is: When Joyce first published Finnegans Wake, the Totality of readers on Earth that first read it, lets say the first 400 readers, at one point only 400 readers had read it, we I think can successfully assume that the totality of readers at the text did not grasp the totality of meaning that was contained in the text at that point. Furthermore, it is possible there is still meaning that has yet to be grasped in that text, and others.

>>11580495
there is no meaning contained in the text, how can an object contain a thing that happens in your brain

What about currently living authors though? Can't I just walk up to him and ask him what he meant by certain shit and from that do a literary criticism incorporating his thoughts? wouldn't that make my analysis something more critical than some chump just reading the book and coming up with whatever the fuck he wants to read into it?

>>11580509
One weird trick puts academics out of a job

>>11580482
The intrinsic moral quality, but not just quality, also, attractiveness based on intrinsic moral quality.

As for effective or ineffective, it depends on the system being by the brain. The approach or limbic.

>>11580489
>for a one day old baby the words do not convey any meaning, for a caterpillar they do not convey any meaning, for a person raised in an african tribe that spoke another language who never heard a word of english in his life, they do not convey any meaning
That does not mean the meaning of the words do not exist. If a baby doesnt get math does that mean math does not exist?

I touch upon this in my last post about grandma leaf:

I can certainly have thoughts and feelings from reading a text the author didnt intend: he can be talking about a scene in a kitchen and say the word refrigerator:

And that can make me think to when I was 11 years old, and opened my fridge and spilled juice, and then my parents yelled at me and I ran away from home, and fell in the dark, and scraped my knee, and then I kept running, and got picked up by person, and I was hitch hiking, and then I pooped my pants, and then I traveled around the country, and I put down the book to reminisce about this, and think of how I joined the navy, and went to france, and joined the circus....

All because in that moment, the word refrigerator sparked a memory...

surely the author did not intend for me to think of that....

surely the word refrigerator means something to me...

surely my story, is not a part of the meaning of the text

>>11580509
what if his text does not support the thing he told you? how do you discern that he told you the truth? if your aim is to understand THE TEXT then THE TEXT is the authority here, if your aim is to understand THE AUTHOR'S BRAIN, then yes THE AUTHOR would be the primary source of information.

>>11580520
>That does not mean the meaning of the words do not exist

where is this infallible arbiter of word-meaning? how does he nail down perfectly what words mean?

if what you call "the meaning of a word" is just a lot of people looking at a sign and all agreeing on what it represents then isnt the meaning coming from those people and not the word???

have you traveled much? have you noticed how in different places words can mean different things? asking for tea in texas does not produce the same thing as asking for tea in london. so what is the meaning of tea? its just three symbols placed together that some people relate to an object, some people relate to a different object and many people relate to no object at all but simply see three meaningless shapes

>>11580508
Depends what you think meaning means.

You are purely thinking of it from an emotional affected perspective. Purely thinking of abstract and meta meaning.

Which must first and foremost, be grounded in what I am saying, root conceptual meaning of terms relations to the world.

And in that sense for starters, the words are bricks that build a building of meaning. The words have meanings.


" riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend
of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to
Howth Castle and Environs."

riverrun - means a river runs, a running river

past - means to go from point A to point B, to point C

Eve and Adam's - ... uhhh im already stuck... but they are names of people in the bible... those names mean something (yea not to a native american 3000 years ago, just as 2+2=4 doesnt mean anything to a baby)

from - means a location that was left

sweve - means to move

etc. etc.

A river running past something, moving from shore to shore, recirculates back to a castle..

That is meaning. And that meaning exists in the book.

This is foundational meaning. The meaning you want to talk about, which we will get to after we agree about this, cannot exist! if it was not for that meaning existing.

>>11580538

just an edgy french way of talking what the ancients called the muses

>>11580489
>what if the sentence appears in a context where 'tree' can be validly interpreted as a euphemism for a penis? a 15 year old may say 'boy' to mean someone who looks to be 12 or younger, a 90 year old may say 'boy' to mean anyone who looks to be 25 or younger. if the tree existed in a fantasy novel where trees are living beings with money perhaps the boy "touched" the tree in the sense of asking the tree to lend him money
How does that contradict what I said? All of those possibilities would be birthed from the fact the exact words exist in the book in the exact orientation they do and the exact words have possible defined meanings

>>11580519
you should put your thesaurus away, i think

>>11580556
so the words dont "have meaning" they "allow people to produce multiple, different, often contradictory meanings in their brains" you dumb shit. the only thing that stops me thinking whatever dumb bullshit i want into the words you write is the fact that there are reasonable limits to how text can be interpreted, thus the text is the authority and not the author

>>11580523
This suggests that there has to be some objective relationship between a text and some larger metameaning. There isn't. The brain is a fucked up machine that doesn't always turn out products with a higher, objective set of properties.

If a writer writes X because of Y, then that IS the case. Full Stop. It's obviously possible that a writer can be unaware of the things they are actually saying but that still has more to do with the author than it does the text itself.

>>11580538
respond to the rest of that post
>he can be talking about a scene in a kitchen and say the word refrigerator

Does the word refrigerator mean:

>And that can make me think to when I was 11 years old, and opened my fridge and spilled juice, and then my parents yelled at me and I ran away from home, and fell in the dark, and scraped my knee, and then I kept running, and got picked up by person, and I was hitch hiking, and then I pooped my pants, and then I traveled around the country, and I put down the book to reminisce about this, and think of how I joined the navy, and went to france, and joined the circus....

It may not even mean that to me, but in that moment it meant that to me. But what a word in a moment means to me, you are RIGHT! DOESNT EXIST IN THE TEXT! my story about running away when 11 doesnt exist in the text!! That meaning I experienced from the words of the text, is not contained in the text, you are right!

But:

>A refrigerator (colloquially fridge, or fridgefreezer in the UK) is a popular household appliance that consists of a thermally insulated compartment and a heat pump (mechanical, electronic or chemical) that transfers heat from the inside of the fridge to its external environment so that the inside of the fridge is cooled to a temperature below the ambient temperature of the room.

IS MEANING! And it is contained in the text!

>>11580572
and its also possible that a writer can fail to say what they wanted to say, so again the text itself is the primary authority in a study of a text

btw i meant that bit above to be a perfect refutation of your arguments that causes you to close your browser and cry IRL (this is me, the author telling you this)

>Much more interesting is etc etc etc
Thanks

>>11580573
if the meaning you created from a text is so heavily based in your subjective experience that nobody apart from you could ever hope to create that same meaning from the text in their own brain then its certainly not meaning that is worth putting in an academic paper, i'm sure we both agree there

>>11580592
I was going off on the tangent, that the person who I was speaking with said:

Meaning cannot exist in/as the text it self.

I took that to mean, words dont have meanings.

Now I think we see the interlocutor meant a specific meaning of the word meaning. Maybe abstract, symbolic, ambiguous.

I would still argue, all those meanings exist IN AND AS THE TEXT.

He says, they only exist in readers brains.

I say if you take some words away, you take some meanings away from the brains... therefore the meanings must have existed in the words.

>>11580592
>>11580608
c-c-check m-mate...?

>>11579552
imagine being her aha

If all interpretations are equally valid then why would i even have to read a work of literature to state what meaning I interpret it to have?

>>11580582
I'm not sure what you're saying. I agree with what you've said. What I was pointing out is that even a failure to arrive at meaning is a form of connection between creative agency and the text itself. I think it's wrong for someone out there to have a strong opinion about what a text *has* to mean.

>>11579554
No we don't.

>>11579552
>using the subject line
>linking to the mobile version of the wikipedia article for an extremely well known concept
>with a jezebel picture to boot

If you disagree with Barthes or Focuault on Authorship, then you disagree with T.S. Eliot. Ergo, a fool.

GOOGLE TRADITION AND THE INDIVIDUAL TALENT

In Hungary we were always taught to separate the person of the poet and a so called lyrical self which is the 'author' or 'narrator' of the poem and could be a roleplay by the poet with a complete different personality, situation and story.

>>11581889
That's just English 101. It also helps to stop retards sperging about sexism or racism of the person, so they wont have to read said person for class. The speaker or narrator of a piece is certainly never truly the person who jotted it down, especially in any fiction.
>quick rundown
What Barthes (and Foucault) argued for was a type of hard formalism similar to New Criticism. People thought literary criticism was MERELY contextual evidence and the 'author' became some biographical leviathan that was being shoved down people's throats. Really, a text has no final meaning, obviously because it requires a reader to interpret it. These interpretations change with epochs, and it's best to be aware of that. Otherwise, the text would not exist without readers.

>>11581000
It's possible to think in terms of death of the author, without also thinking that every interpretation of a work is equally valid.

Death of the author is a valid way of interpreting art, but it is just as valid to interpret art in the context of the authors life.
If you limit yourself to one or the other, you are limiting the possible value you can find in a work.

>>11581913
nice post

>>11581747
Pedant.