[lit-ideas] Re: Authorial Intention
- From: jlsperanza@xxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:04:28 -0500
-----Original Message-----
From: Eric Yost <mr.eric.yost@xxxxxxxxx>
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sent: Wed, Jan 20, 2010 4:33 pm
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Authorial Intention
>>What is 'author'.
An author is a human being who has spent time
crafting a narrative. Degrees of skill vary.
----
Thanks for your thoughts. Of course, ´narrative´ should be broadly
undestood. I rather would take it, alla Owen Barfield (are you familiar
with his work?), that "author" is related to "anything someone can do".
The author of a crime, we say. Of course, a poem is not a narrative,
but we still speak of the author of a poem. So I´m not sure what counts
as "author".
If the sh·t is the result of a cat, say, we can still say that the cat
was the author of it, so I´m not even sure about "human". I won´t
quibble with computers, because they cannot author things. But monkeys,
according to Huxley, can.
---
>>What is 'authorial intention'.
Authorial intention (in prose) is the designed
guiding of a reader's imagination through a
narrative. In service to the author's intention,
the narrative accumulates a symbolic, imaginative
verbal complex of verbal associations.
----
Thanks. I see you restrict to prose, but there is no need to. Indeed,
I would rather we don´t. Because I´m interested in any type of
utterance, by any author. And with the "intention" behind what lies
behind it. What I was having in mind is the intentionalist fallacy,
so-called (I don´t think it is _essentially_ a fallacy) to the effect
that what the author intends his utterance x to count as, that is what
it counts as.
---- Ditto, I wouldn´t use "reader", but addressee. In Emily
Dickinson´s case, herself. In drama, the audience, or spectator.
E.g. I´m not sure if there is a specific addressee intended, but some
"idea" has to be in the air. Of course, Heidegger who speaks of
authentic, may relate.
We say this poem is an authentic poem by Dickinson. On the other hand,
this other one, the authenticity has been suspect. So, there is a
connection between AUTH-enticity, and AUTH-or. But THAT is not
Heidegger´s use. So one wonders what he means, etc.
Cheers,
JLS
for the Grice Club
griceclub.blogspot.com
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