Topic: Unintended Interpretations of Classic Literature

[Bunsen]

If the artist actually declares their intention, does that count for anything?

Tolkien is the one who's correct, right?

About what he intended, yes.
About what his story actually means, no. I wouldn't limit that to what Tolkien insists about it.

I have a policy of telling my students never to explicitly trust the author when they state either intent or lack thereof.  It's not a question of "The Death of the Author," it's a question of creatives in the language arts being notoriously... shall we say inconstant?... when it comes to their creative motivations.

For instance, Lord Byron outright stated at times that he wrote the great Epic Satire, Don Juan, to piss off Bob Southey.

Or at times because he needed the money.  Or because he was inspired by, and wanted to pay homage to, Orlando Furioso.  Or because of political questions of Greek independence.  Or even a few times because he was bored.  He would tell friends that he had an overarching moralistic plan for Juan, then mere days later claim he was making the whole thing up from whole cloth and was completely directionless.

And every time he changed his story, he explicitly stated that the previous reason he gave played no part in his creative process.

And Byron's not alone in this.  Most every author who has ever denied an intent or claimed one has contradicted themselves in print or their personal correspondence at some point or another, be it Matthew Arnold, Virginia Woolf, Mark Twain, or Terry Pratchett.

I can, off the top of my head, think of one exception to this, and that's Heinlein.  He was remarkably consistent about why he wrote various works.  But even him I wouldn't necessarily trust.

EDIT:  That's not to say that when an author connects a work to an explicit idea or event in the real world, it should be disregarded.  Obviously, 1984 is a book about some very real, very much identifiable people, events, and philosophies in Orwell's world.

But it is best to take it with a grain of salt when Orwell, or P.B. Shelley, or Stephanie Meyers tell you what you "need to know" about their work. 

I know men who have made tracing the real intent of a single author for a single 10 line poem their lives' work - and they will not succeed in their lifetimes.  Despite the author explicitly claiming his intent in the notes to that poem.

[Henning]

I know men who have made tracing the real intent of a single author for a single 10 line poem their lives' work - and they will not succeed in their lifetimes.  Despite the author explicitly claiming his intent in the notes to that poem.

Wow. What's the poem? 
or were you speaking artfully?

[Neon Genesis]

I have a policy of telling my students never to explicitly trust the author when they state either intent or lack thereof.  It's not a question of "The Death of the Author," it's a question of creatives in the language arts being notoriously... shall we say inconstant?... when it comes to their creative motivations.

Fan-made interpretations of an author's work can be equally inconsistent.  Take LOTR for instance.  If LOTR should be read as an allegory, what's it an allegory about?  Is it about the atomic bomb?  Is it about racism?  Class warfare?  Christianity?  No one seems to be able to figure it out what's an allegory for yet people remain convinced that it must be something more than just about little people and elves saving the world from evil bad guys.  On the flip side, whether they're atheist or Christian, everyone universally agrees that the Chronicles of Narnia is about Christianity because C.S. Lewis told us so.

[pandamonium]

...everyone universally agrees that the Chronicles of Narnia is about Christianity because C.S. Lewis told us so.

Also, there's that whole bit with the Lion dying and coming back from the dead. Christian themes are pretty evident in the Narnia series.

I think the artists intentions should be taken into consideration when critiquing a work, but speaking as an artist, sometimes I don't know why the hell I do a certain thing.

Personal anecdote: I created a painting for an acrylic class; the assignment was to take at least three elements from at least three different photographs and paint a composite of the elements. I chose a picture of a friend taken after she'd been released from the hospital following a car crash, a mountain (Mt Hood, I think) that I'd photographed on a road trip with this friend, and a wasp (an insect that my friend was--and is--fascinated by). I chose all of these elements because this friend is pretty important to me, and the car crash had been recentish and I was still bothered by it. It was basically an homage to my friend, if a rather creepy and slightly dark homage. When it came time to critique it, my classmates came up with all sorts of elaborate stories to explain the elements present in my painting. I was pretty impressed with all that they attributed to me. It made me realize that I don't have to have a fully developed and elaborate idea when creating an image, I just have to create enough ambivalence to allow the viewer to make up whatever shit they want to see. Boy, did that take off some pressure.

[Bunsen]

I know men who have made tracing the real intent of a single author for a single 10 line poem their lives' work - and they will not succeed in their lifetimes.  Despite the author explicitly claiming his intent in the notes to that poem.

Wow. What's the poem? 
or were you speaking artfully?

Byron's "To Woman".  Though I got it wrong when I cited the line count from memory.  It's actually 22 (or 24 - he had an omitted couplet) lines.  A friend and old professor of mine has spent 37 years on that poem.

At least, that's the example I was explicitly thinking of.  I know a few scholars of the New New York School that have this issue with scholarship for hundreds of poems by Padgett, O'Hara, Berrigan, Brainard, etc.

It's actually pretty common in poetry scholarship - hence why I try not to encourage introductory students to take authorial intent too seriously.

[AQB24712]

Yeah, literature is art, and you can't get mad at people for seeing in it what they do.
But I agree, don't start presuming you have the artist's intentions figured out (or that they matter much).

If the artist actually declares their intention, does that count for anything?

Kinda takes away the fun... like telling  person what they're looking for in pareidolia.
After you know, you're judging how well they got across their intention, not so much how well you liked it.

My immediate response to Henning's comment was to disagree vehemently, but I didn't know why.  Upon reflection, I think it was
1.  PTSD from the few literature courses I couldn't test out of in college.  (I was indeed an English major, but I strongly preferred my journalism courses to creative writing and literature.  I DEAL IN THE TRUTH.  And the endless analysis was frustrating.  Took me years afterward to be able to enjoy poetry.)
2.  What Bunsen said here.

EDIT:  That's not to say that when an author connects a work to an explicit idea or event in the real world, it should be disregarded.  Obviously, 1984 is a book about some very real, very much identifiable people, events, and philosophies in Orwell's world.

I realized that it's not that I want or prefer to know the artist's intent before seeing/hearing/reading their work, it's that I often really, really enjoy learning more about the context in which it was created.

Also:

I think the artists intentions should be taken into consideration when critiquing a work, but speaking as an artist, sometimes I don't know why the hell I do a certain thing.

Yep.  As a half-assed mosaic artisan (I can't bring myself to call myself an artist), I make stuff the way I do because...um, I don't know.  Somebody asked me about this yesterday at a show.  Sometimes I buy stuff at the thrift store because I know exactly how I'll tile it, and sometimes just because it has some flat (or not-too-curved) surface and I figure I'll think of something later.  (Sometimes I never do, and the thing goes right back to the thrift store.)  Sometimes I paint things a certain color because I know exactly what color tile I want to use, and sometimes I choose paint colors because I don't have much in current inventory in a particular color.  Sometimes I have the whole tile pattern and colors figured out in advance, and sometimes I start gluing stuff down and see what happens.

Also, it occurs to me that I get into conversations about the artist's intent (also "what is art?") with students at least once a year.  Fun. 

[pandamonium]

One of the reasons I don't want to get into Fine Arts is the absolute pretension and horrible snobbery that occurs there--and is encouraged by some teachers. I could feel it working its way into my brain, too, and I wasn't okay with that.

[AQB24712]

I feel you, panda, lord have mercy.  I'm sometimes surrounded by that horse-pucky, what with working at a college arts center and all that.  I love the arts (and some artists), but I have no patience for overblown, pretentious, wifty-woo-woo artspeak.  'swhy I built a career in operations. 

[Bunsen]

Having lived in an arts commune for the better part of a decade in my wasted years, I can state with absolute authority that the vast majority of artists have no idea why they do anything at any given point in time.

Myself included.

[Neon Genesis]

This seems to me though to be like a postmodern approach to literature and it seems like a bit of a leap to me to go from "authors are inconsistent in their interpretations" to "never trust anything an author says, therefore let's go make up our own meaning."  Extraordinary claims still require extraordinary evidence even when it comes to interpreting the meaning of a piece of literature.  So if you're going to try and convince me Alice in Wonderland is about getting high on drugs and not just a charming children's story you have to have evidence to back up your claims.  And by evidence I don't mean cherry picking random isolated texts from the book and using a "they make up stuff all the time, so we can too" argument.  If you want to just throw out the facts and make up whatever you want to about a story, that's what fanfiction is for.

[Henning]

This seems to me though to be like a postmodern approach to literature and it seems like a bit of a leap to me to go from "authors are inconsistent in their interpretations" to "never trust anything an author says, therefore let's go make up our own meaning."  Extraordinary claims still require extraordinary evidence even when it comes to interpreting the meaning of a piece of literature.  So if you're going to try and convince me Alice in Wonderland is about getting high on drugs and not just a charming children's story you have to have evidence to back up your claims.  And by evidence I don't mean cherry picking random isolated texts from the book and using a "they make up stuff all the time, so we can too" argument.  If you want to just throw out the facts and make up whatever you want to about a story, that's what fanfiction is for.

You're not free to throw out the words that have been written and substitute your own, but you're free to find things in there that the artist did not intend. If you have a better case than the current consensus, you could sway the literary experts to your own interpretation. I buy that... the understanding of art can be made into a process and escape the "all interpretations are equally valid" pomo jerk-fest.
I was gonna write Art is subjective and we should stop expecting it to be like science, but I think I thought myself out of that. Whether you like it or not is a subjective opinion you're entitled to, but as for interpretation, I gotta allow that some interpretations are going to be less of a stretch than others...

[pandamonium]

Yeah, I think there are definite parallels between literary criticism and critical thinking. In my experience, at least, the two have very much fed each other. Being able to critically analyze works of art seems to work the same brain muscles as general critical thinking.

[Plastique]

Having lived in an arts commune for the better part of a decade in my wasted years, I can state with absolute authority that the vast majority of artists have no idea why they do anything at any given point in time.

Myself included.

What's your art?

[pandamonium]

Having lived in an arts commune for the better part of a decade in my wasted years, I can state with absolute authority that the vast majority of artists have no idea why they do anything at any given point in time.

Myself included.

What's your art?

Life, man.

[Bunsen]

Having lived in an arts commune for the better part of a decade in my wasted years, I can state with absolute authority that the vast majority of artists have no idea why they do anything at any given point in time.

Myself included.

What's your art?

Life, man.

Truth.