[ SECRET POST #2624 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #2624 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.


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02.
[Outlander]


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03.
[The Walking Dead]


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04.
[How I Met Your Mother]


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05.
[Twitch Plays Pokemon]


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06.
[Batman, Kill La Kill, Borderlands]


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07.
[Overlord]


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08.
[Red Dwarf]


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09.
[Paranatural]


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10.
[Pitch Perfect]


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11.
[Insidious: Chapter 2]


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 03 pages, 053 secrets from Secret Submission Post #375.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[cbrachyrhynchos]

I've not offered my interpretation. I think it's clear that Death of the Author as a method is superior to authorial intent because:

1. It allows us to compare literary works to other literary works. It's an even playing field where factors like celebrity and archival obsessions don't determine the analysis.

2. It takes into account the fact that many authors are, in fact, dead, with minimal biographical details and documentation.

3. "Intent" is a matter of psychology. Understanding authorial intent requires too many assumptions about what the author was thinking.

You do not get to scream in all caps that we MUST take these statements separately from the texts, if you're also going to be arguing for the validity of your interpretation.

Except that I didn't write MUST, I wrote SHOULD. I've also not stated much of an interpretation, nor is my use in all caps (in the face of a discussion with someone repeatedly missing the point) have anything to do with the validity of the method.

Which is valid because in the vast majority of cases, the text is the only thing we legally have from the author. We must treat the author as dead because the author is dead, obscure, or not able to explain their novel. The novel should stand on its own anyway. But I'm an old fart that way who demands that something advertised as a novel actually be a novel.

[(Anonymous)]

And I think that DoftA, while a valid method that seeks to keep the analysis pure, can also strive too intently to eliminate non-control variables to the point that it actually makes the analysis poorer for it. It drives us into tunnel vision style reading wherein we seek to interpret the text with only our own biases. A text has sociological and historical context, which authorial intent is certainly a part of, and we shouldn't disregard all that in our analysis. If the information is available, we should take it into account -- but that is not to say that we should take it as creed. While the text is the primary source, the secondary information can serve to enrich the analysis, not restrict it.

Furthermore, I don't agree that disregarding authorial intent is the only way to fairly compare literary works. Even when more information is available for certain works than others, control factors exist to make comparison possible without having to utterly eliminate context. Literary analysis is a business of assumption; we make claims, and then search for evidence to back them up. Using authorial intent works the same way, and no contradicting claim can supersede it unless it provides sufficient textual evidence to show otherwise. When an author's words aren't available, we still try to contextualize a text by studying its time period, the cultural milieu surrounding its birth, etc. -- why then do we decide not to do the same for the authors' words when they are available?

[waterfall8484]

I like you, anon. :~D Here, have a bound and printed Internet.

[cbrachyrhynchos]

The first problem is that you build the theory of the text from the text. You don't go cherrypicking the text to support your claims. Discussion of the text that does the latter and not the former is usually obvious to spot. Note that Death of the Author doesn't exclude context, but the relevance of that context needs to be weighed against the text itself. It's reasonable to say that Tolkien applied the same ideas to Lord of the Rings that he expressed in "Beowulf: The Monster and the Critics." It's less reasonable to say that because Tolkien was a WWI veteran that Lord of the Rings is about WWI.

The second problem is that secondary sources about a text are often biased. Take a look at the role of German nationalism in the creation of Mozart and Salieri or Schindler's romantic views of Beethoven ("fate knocking at the door") as examples. News media comes with its own set of biases. So does blogging. If we're going to use those sources to dissect the novel, we should be able to use the novel to discuss the accuracy and relevance of those sources.

Which we do when we're talking about why we accept Rowling's claims about Dumbledore (they're plausible given ambiguities in the text) but not Card's claims about early gay-positive novels (the character is tormented by his sexuality).

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with this post but my monomania requires me to point out that there is very good textual evidence for saying that there are strong connections between LotR and WWI; it's not just founded on the biographical fact that he was a veteran.