/lit/ - Literature

>being this much of a faggot

>not understanding literary studies
>2015

>>6765199
>2013 + 2
>still having curtains blue
but yeah youre a faggot op

>>6765199
burden of proof isn't on the people who are criticizing the image.

saging btw delet this

Why do genre fiction readers seem to think symbolism and allegory don't exist? What kind of pleb do you have to be for the first example of this that comes into your head being le blue represents sadness?

>>6765199
>not grasping that your teacher was trying to get you thinking about "possible" meanings of a sentence as a way to exercise the reasoning faculties.
>you're supposed to argue with the teacher "no, the curtains can't represent his depression because the color of the curtain is outside of his control" or similar
>the point is the construction of criticism and exercise of analysis vis a vis the process of reading and thus of writing

>>6765199
Only in schools dominated by postmodernism this is a thing because your interpretation becomes the only important thing.

Taking either side
1. everything is symbolic
2. everything is literal/arbitrary

is foolish. Arguments about meaning of a text should be more scientific than people think. You have to support your claims with evidence from the entirety of the work. Just as the logical positivists made a mistake in thinking sentences were verifiable in isolation it is a mistake to interpret sentences on their lonesome in a piece of writing.

The curtains may just be blue because the author wanted to create a realistic or vivid scene, or they may be blue because they have another significance related to prestablished metaphors or rewritings of the meaning of particular words within the text.

Believe it or not, you have to use your brain to read and understand things! It's not a passive process where you can hurr dur it immediately means this and I do not need to reason about it or back up my claims in any way.

>>6765284
>he still believes "postmodernism" is some sort of ideological movement
Seriously, has postmodernism become the new reactionary scare word, like "cultural Marxism"?

>>6765298
yes

>>6765199
summerfags please go

>>6765284
Are you serious?
>public schools
>anything remotely "progressive" in intellectual studies
I wish I was detached enough to believe this

Im sorry i read a book not the author

There is no way to know what an author meant
the author isn't the one reading the book
The book doesn't have much at all to do with the author when its the subject thats reading it.
What the teacher thinks is just as "right" as what the author thinks but should probably let the class know that its only their opinion

>>6765298
It's the dominant view on the world now, what's the matter? Have you ever seen a literature class in say Germany? And why couldn't postmodernism be a movement?
>>6765354
Most literature professors are liberal, raised on postmodern ideas. People with more conservative views hold a very low percentage there, while a relatively high in law, economics, but even there are never a dominant majority.

the funniest thing is that if you keep hearing that from university humanities majors

>he thinks the author is alive

>>6765199
>what the author meant matters

>>6765292

This guy knows what's up. 10/10 I wish more people would realize this, especially from a teacher's perspective.

>>6765199
theres a pic that's like

>validly assignable meanings to the text

that encompasses both of the circles. wish i had it saved for an occasion like this. basically the problem is the blue circle, "what the author meant" is actually just your own personal take, ie, "what you think the author meant"

so now all you have is you and your teacher's conclusions competing with one another, about "what the author meant." why is your interpretation more credible than your teacher's? especially since you're in middle/high school and they are older, better read, etc.?

the stupid thing is, and what your teacher had been trying to tell you, is that it is not about what the author MEANT, but what people INTERPRET. the text takes on different meanings with different audiences.

>>6765503
>>6765506
what was going through the authors head when he wrote it. Its Objectively what the book actually means but since you can never exactly know what was going through his head the best thing to do is make a logical guess of what he was thinking and not try to add your own personal beliefs.

>>6765199
>tfw your last english exam was a D and the only remark was "over-interpreted"

>>6765372
>>6765506
Why even read then, if you're just going to make up your own story?

>>6765631
the author sets the ground work for which we build upon

>>6765626
Not trying to get into a fight with you there, but I can't agree.

>the best thing to do is make a logical guess of what he was thinking and not try to add your own personal beliefs.
The best thing to do is..?
That's just some imperative, I don't know where it comes from.

>Its Objectively what the book actually means
Well no, it was what the author wrote about.
It's not what the book "means", this notion is much to elusive.

You can read "Mein Kampf" and it might motivate you get into lifting or long distance running.

Yo might read a book involving Japanese high society, written for Japanese middle class people, with jokes on the social situation, and not get it. You get something out of that book, you might even love the book. The book might sell millions of copies in Canada and it's impact might be big but completely removed from the authors intentions.

Post-structuralist readings focus on the possible readers and the author himself merely becomes one guy to interpret the work. "The author dies once he hands it over to the publishers."
You don't have to fight against the possibility of this reading mode once you see that it's possible. It's a tool. There is no dichotomy where you must take sides. That would be like saying you can study biochemistry but you can never apply the knowledge to your personal daily nutrition, because it's all about chemicals and soot and helium and carbs are just certain things to investigate in a laboratory. There is more to a text.

>>6765630
>tfw your teacher circles your essay in green paint
>tfw his only comment is, Quit being a queer-Quinten, you contrarian, cock.

>>6765670
It's ok Quentin. I know Shreve likes to bully you

>>6765464
Literature professors weren't teaching my high school literature courses.

>>6765298
>he believes postmodernism never happened

>>6765631
Even if the author's original intent can't be known, you can't argue just anything about any text; you have to use consistent references and demonstrate that a text is actually about something. And new things are being found in old texts that may have never been intended by the author. Achebe pointed out that 'Heart of Darkness' was a pretty racist text, but that's just one of many possible interpretations. It doesn't mean all interpretations are equally valid, but that there can be numerous good interpretations.

>>6765292
this

it all depends on context

>>6765273
I tried that in high school when we were doing great Gatsby with the green light on the dock. Teacher was all about how the green light shows his jealosuy and such. I took the route that the light is green as a sign of acceptance that the dock is there and that he can move forward. I got shut down and was literally told by my teacher that i was being stupid on purpose and got detention.

ITT Americans being too dumb to read

>>6765630
>tfw creative response in English
>write a short story
>its literally gibberish
>say I was influenced by Joyce
>get highest mark in class

>>6765631
The author's intent does matter, but it's not the word of God either. The reason why is because some things are so deeply ingrained in our culture that we are influenced by them without even realizing it and we say and write them almost without thinking. There's a lot going on that's subconscious, which the author may not necessarily intend to show but is revealed if you read between the lines enough.

It's like if someone talks about how much they hate black people, and then goes out of their way to emphasize that they aren't racist. Shit like this happens all the time in stories.

Obviously it needs to be well argued though, or else we get shit like hurr durr mark twain was raciss because nigger

Did anyone else go full Freud in all of their analyses?

When we studied Death of a Salesman I based my assessment around the claim that the reason Willy cares so much about work is that he's overcompensating for not having enough sex.

>>6765746
Of course the postmodern condition is real, but suggesting that postmodernism is some sort of ideology imposed by "postmodernists" is so fucking dense that it makes my head ache.

Why can't you reactionaries actually try to understand a concept without simplifying it into bogeymen?

>>6765746
Post-modernism is just an ongoing commentary on modernism. Not a real movement, just a subset of a larger and more creative one

>>6765829
It is an ideology.
And it is imposed by persons in power.

>>6765801
No it doesn't. The words mean things independent of what someone thinks they mean. OP's pic is a bad example, but to take your example, Mark Twains books are largely about the absurdity of racism. It doesn't matter what Twain says, it's in the fucking books. The same goes for almost any author I can think of.

To address OP's pic: images are granted connotations (with or without intent, it doesn't matter) simply by the way they're used throughout a novel. There's room for interpretation is some instances (Pynchon's V. gives objectified people certain positive traits while simultaneously decrying them, Anne Garreta's Sphinx uses scientific language to describe everyday occurrences in order to further emphasize how demanding and binary so much of our world is, Joyce almost always uses fatherhood as a hopeful idea, etc.) but the idea that Dumbledore becomes gay because Rowling said so or something like that is bullshit. The books don't really hint at it at all and that's what we have to go on.

You might be correct that certain societal attitudes impress themselves on individuals but that doesn't mean we're cultural critics who are here to plumb the socio economic, racial, and ideological background of every person who writes a novel.

>>6765896
This guy gets it

>>6765904
was it really necessary to include pynchon's pic in your reply? he is already memed enough.

>>/lit/reports/image-reposts

maybe you just want him at the top?

I'd repeatedly bring up (true) explanations that my highschool teacher would agree with, saying it wasn't in his handbook

I got a c in 11th grade without turning in any work

>>6765983
Why even use 4chan if you don't like 4chan?

>>6766007
i dislike avatarfagging, which is actually against the global rules

there's a big difference between

>4chan is an imageboard

and

>i must include an image with every post i make

>>6766020
I don't think you know what avatarfagging is

>>6765199

If an author describes the color of motherfucking curtains then their probably is a meaning behind it

>>6766035
i do, but what you do it just as annoying. just as bannable imo

>>6766048
>being fucking retarded

>>6765199
Only plebs read books where descriptions are arbitrary painting

In every good book I read, the setting and how it's described sets a stage.

>>6765786
I once mimicked Kleist in a class test, I got a C and a note to never do that again.

>>6765257
Why do pretentious shit-dicks derive pointless symbolism from where it doesn't exist?

"MY DICK REPRESENTS SADNESS BECAUSE IT WAS IN UR MOM LMAO"