/lit/ - Literature

Yes and no, if the authors intent is relevant to your analysis, then yes it is important. If your analysis in no way requires you to consider the authors intent, then no its not important.

Intentional Fallacy, look at wikipedia page.

Yes

No. Analysis is subjective, so you can easily ignore the author's intent. That's why Catcher in the Rye is the best book of all time, you can analyze it thousands of ways without giving a shit of what Salinger "intended".

>>1576634

If that were the case then literary analysis would add nothing to empirical or analytical knowledge.

If you can't back up your theories with evidence then you cannot justify your argument.

>>1576634
>>1576630
ITT: people pretend whatever flaccid, boring ideas rolling around in their stupid skunk heads is better than analysis based on author intent.

>authorial intent

>>1576645
I agree with what he said. If you're reading a story about a kid going to the store and buying a loaf of bread. At this store he encounters a girl he likes and talks to her for a little while. about halfway through the discussion a biker he competed against and lost to comes up and makes out with the girl. After this the boy buys the bread and leaves the store.

Now anyone in their lit minds can see this as a quest. The boy could be seen as a hero. The bread the holy grail. The girl a damsel in distress. The competitor another knight that stole said damsel. their bikes are their trusty steeds. he finally receives the holy grail and returns home.

These have evidence to back them up. it's the author's job to hide stuff in his story to guide you through said story so that you reach at the right conclusion. It's important to be able to interpret the right way and not the wrong way. Making up your own inference on something ignoring parts of the text is wrong, thats why you should never breeze over certain parts of poems like they don't matter and knit picking certain sentences to make your conclusion right isn't right. It's delusional. Author's intent matters.

>>1576697

Great post.

>>1576648

This, of course, assumes the author had something more meaningful in mind than whatever anyone can infer from the text. Sometimes literature just fucking happens.

>>1576697
This guy knows How to Read Literature Like a Professor.

>>1576737
haha
oh you
This guy knows How to Read Literature like a Professor too

No. The goal of an author should be someone who writes an interesting story. Someone who paints a nice mental picture, that's it. People will find meaning on their own.

>>1576645
>If that were the case then literary analysis would add nothing to empirical or analytical knowledge.

IT DOESN'T

>>1576759
Tone - a literary technique which encompasses the attitudes toward the subject and toward the audience implied in a literary work
Allusion - is a figure of speech that makes a reference to, or representation of, a place, event, literary work, myth, or work of art, either directly or by implication.
Simile: A comparison of two things through the use of the words like or as. The title of Robert Burns’s poem “My Love Is Like a Red, Red Rose” is a simile.

Theme: A fundamental, universal idea explored in a literary work. The struggle to achieve the American Dream, for example, is a common theme in 20th-century American literature.
Thesis: The central argument that an author makes in a work. For example, the thesis of Upton Sinclair’s The Jungle is that Chicago meat packing plants subject poor immigrants to horrible and unjust working conditions, and that the government must do something to address the problem.

>>1576775
There are other things beside imagery as literary techniques.

>>1576775
Yeah... things that go into painting a mental picture. Thanks for the list?

Literary analysis is worthless.

The question is irrelevant.

>>1576789
>I failed High School English because I was "too smart".

>>1576789

I disagree.

Literature done right can influence and progress so many aspects of human civilisation, socially and scientifically, it deserves a dedicated field of study.

But it post-modernism has no place in education outside of philosophy.

>>1576630
>>1576645

Author's intent can matter, but we definitely need things outside of the authors intent for criticism.

Take Mein Kampf, would we do Hitler's book justice if we only read it through his good intentions? What about the holocaust? What about WWII? If we only analyze the intent of the author, we're missing the big picture.

Often times literary criticism benifits from taking other viewpoints, and looking at a text in ways the author did not intend. Edward Said's criticism of Jane Austen is a great example. Said doesn't barely discusses the position of women in British society, and instead focuses on the system or privilege that results from colonialism. I don't think Jane Austen had any intention of us thinking about colonialis,, and if she did we have a very different perspective on colonialism than she did.

If literary criticism were just the deciphering of a text into the authors intent, then we need not write literature, but merely our intentions. Being able to get new meaning out of a text, meaning that didn't exist before, is what makes criticism a worthwhile endeavor.

>>1576812
You do realize that one of the main ideas of post-modernism is that it need not confine itself to fields of study, right? Why should post-modernism confine itself only to phillosophy when classicism and modernism were also encompassing modes of thought that described other fields?

to answer op:

in my opinion, it all depends on the ending of the book.

for instance, picture a book. let's say it's The Giver. that had a very open ending, and so the author's words don't really matter because it's totally open to anything.

but now for a book like, say, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, which ends with the main character trying to rebuild his relationship with his wife and live a normal life again after all of that weird stuff that happens. he doesn't really get together with anyone and, like i said, he starts trying to rebuild his relationship with his wife.. i would've loved it if he got together with may kasahara, but the author wrote a pretty defined ending and that's that.

>>1576815

You don't have to agree with the authors argument, but you must acknowledge that it exists within the book.

>Said doesn't barely discusses the position of women in British society, and instead focuses on the system or privilege that results from colonialism.

So you agree that ignoring or marginalising parts of the literature is the only way to arrive at this conclusion

Taking Mien Kampf as a work of satire on Hitler's part transforms it into a very different book.

The question of authorial intent is in itself entirely subjective.

That is to say that if the reader believes authorial intent to be important, then it is. If not then, the reader will find another way to construct meaning.

Either way, authorial intent is in and of itself dependent on the reader - It can only be important with the reader's permission.

Authorial intent is itself dependedent on reader response.

Amen.

>>1576627
No.

>>1576821

Because post modernism supports its directionless arguments with meaningless jargon and unclear language instead of evidence and principle.

>>1576627

>Does authorial intent matter when it comes to literary analysis?

Let's consider "A Modest Proposal" by Jonathan Swift:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/1080

If you don't take authorial intent into consideration, then you will probably not see this work as a satire.

>>1576759
This man speaks the truth.

>>1576829
Incorrect sir.
I can read a prose or poem that is very religious and disagree with it, however I could see that its main idea that it is trying to get a cross would be religious
and i could read an atheist poem that gets atheism or counter acts that of religion and maybe not agree with how it was able to create those feelings but i could still see that the poem is arguing for one thing or another by actually reading what the words imply.

>>1576827

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_fallacy

Marginalize? Hardly. Criticism doesn't need to be, "here is what the author wants you to think about", if Said has interesting things to say, and he's not going to discuss all of the book or all of the authors intentions, that's fine. Orientalism happens to be a wonderful book, even if it doesn't touch on every part of Pride and Prejudice.

Where would we get simply asking "What did the writers of the Declaration of Independence intend the document to mean?" if we didn't also ask "How is our situation today different, and what does/should/can the document mean to us".If we only look at authors intent, we can never have a historical grasp of a subject.

None of this is to say the authors intent isn't an important factor of a work. In criticism, you might spend time with, but if the work is well known, chances are others have hashed that portion out.

Also, how would ever fully identify an authors intent, and be sure it simply isn't your own reading?

>>1576829

If authorial intent exists, there will be evidence for it in all parts of the book.

If not, not.

With the subtraction of authorial intent, don't literary analysis and criticism then consist, reducibly, in reading books for other people? In that case, we can class more liberal literary analyses as a secondary art form—in which I see immensely little value.

It could be argued that the authors intent is only the primary text in its fullness. That any attempt at synopsis or interpretation (even if it claims to be understanding the authors intent) is only the intent of this critic.

If you right a piece of criticism and say that you are enlightening the authors intent, your probably lying to yourself, trying to make your intentions more important and accurate than they really are.

>>1576759
>>1576846
No. Interesting stories are nice but not at all necessary, nor do I think should they be the sole purpose of a written work. Often, by posing an argument inside of a narrative structure, the point being made is more poignant, powerful, and effective. 1984 is more than just a nice story, The Bell Tower is more than just a nice story, and they both had very intentional effects. Seeing arguments outside of the authorial intent, which is not simply supplemental, is often a result of either a poor writer or an uneducated audience.

>>1576849

>if Said has interesting things to say, and he's not going to discuss all of the book

So then he cannot say that pride and prejudice is a book about colonialism.

He is merely drawing upon the book as a literary historical reference for his own ideas and interpretation of colonialism, not of the book itself.

>>1576871
So? Isn't that still criticism?

Also capote, do you fancy yourself an author or a critic?

>>1576875

No because the book is unaffected by the reference. Merely stating what is already there for everyone to see isn't analytically significant.

And maybe I'll write some day, but probably I will never want to be a critic.

No, because literary analysis is meaningless.

>>No because the book is unaffected by the reference. Merely stating what is already there for everyone to see isn't analytically significant.

What exactly does it mean to affect the book? Do you have an example of criticism that does what you're talking about?


Pride and Prejudice isn't literally affected by Said's book you're right. All of the words and phrases of Austen's novel continue to appear in their usual order.

Now when it comes the the field of criticism about Austen's work, Said's work is considered important. If you go pick up the Norton Ciritical Edition of P&P or Sense and Sensibility, you will Said's writing in the appendix next to other kinds of criticism. Their are reviews from when the book was originally published (which primarily deal with the text in the way I think your suggesting), there is feminist criticism and other things as well.

>>1576897

>affect the book

Perhaps I should have been more specific

I'm talking about the meanings, ideas and emotions which one can derive from reading the book in a perceptive way.

What you are suggesting is the constructs that people have used the book to build, such as anti-colonialism, can be appreciated from reading the book itself.without having any pre-conceived disposition or bias towards a certain interpretation.

>>1576789
This. It's glorified mental masturbation.

>>1576932
and why wouldn't mental masturbation, of all things, hold every reason to be glorified?

>>1576932

But masturbation is awesome.

>Does authorial intent matter when it comes to literary analysis?

Depends what exactly it is you're trying to analyse. Also authors don't always know the exact implications of their own work.

There is still time for the Leavisite reading.

>>1576927
I guess I don't believe I can rid myself of preconceived notions. Edward Said didn't have the idea (your words "construct") supplied to him, he looked at the book (and other works) and came to new ideas. He is a very perceptive person.

I guess I'm just not buying that a reader can claim to know an authors intent and then not deviate from it. How can you be certain you even know the author's intent?

The conservative read of Austen's novel Sense and Sensibility, is that it is a story of a women behaving in as a proper women, note striving past her situation, and eventually getting was is owed to her, a husband of good status. To a conservative reading the novel in the period it was written, it would illustrate the silly fancy of women, and how in the end they will stop fussing with notions of true love and get married.

A feminist read might take a look at the less than satisfactory relationships of the novel, and analyze how the female to female relationships are the strongest in the book, although in the end they can do little against the established patriarchy, as as one women succumbs to marriage, they all eventually fall into place as expected by the men. A feminist might see the story as a tragedy, and at the very least see the compromising of values as abhorrent.

What did Jane Austen intend? fuck if I know, but I do know that the only way to get to any decent ideas about the book is to look past the book and start thinking about what I consider a healthy and equal society.