Contentious Intention

I have been reading a book called Intention and Interpretation this week desperately trying to find a "good" definition of authorial intention to include in my paper. My problem: as far as I can tell, there is no "good" definition of authorial intention. Instead, opinion (and I would argue, it is opinion) varies from E.D. Hirsh's stance that the text means what the author intended to subjective reader response (led by the work of David Bleich) that presumes, "reader's responses are the text, both in the sense that there is no literate text beyond the meanings created by reader's interpretations and in the sense that the text the critic analyzes is not in the literary work but the written responses of readers" (p. 178, Tyson, 2006). Honestly, I feel a little bit like Alice in Wonderland; the further I go into the territory of interpretation, the more confusing and bizarre things get! I guess it is a sign that I am learning more when I have more questions, but I sometimes feel that in the field of education, you will always have a critic. There is no 'correct.' I can always disagree with your theory as long as I ground my own response in another theory - or better yet, make up my own theory. Doesn't it seem like some things should be universally true? But that isn't necessarily the case, as Tyson points out (when writing about subjective reader-response) that, "What is called 'objective' knowledge is simply whatever a given community believes to be objectively true (p.179). She wisely points out the widely held belief that the world was flat and that the sun revolved around it. She goes on the say, "...'truth' isn't an 'objective' reality waiting to be discovered; it is constructed by communities of people to fulfill specific needs produced by specific historical, sociological, and psychological situations." Subjective reader response is not some free-for-all - students do need to negotiate meaning within classroom communities. It also seems that students do need to identify aspects of their responses that are rooted in the text - so there is a return to the text. But there is no talking to someone else during high-stakes testing, whether on the 3rd grade OAT or the GRE. There is the reader and the text - and there is a correct answer. And this is where I always remain a teacher and a pragmatist: I think I owe my students both a love of reading (and writing) but I also want to provide them with the "keys to the kingdom." I want them to have the skills to do well on tests like the SAT and ACT so they can gain admittance to "the Academy," or med school, or whatever career they desire. Their ability (or lack thereof) should not determine there career/pursuit of passion; their interest should. For lest we forget, one component of admission to the doctoral program was the GRE....




I really haven't felt so confused after I've read so much on one topic before. It is a little maddening. I will reveal my bias here that whether or not a reader interprets what I have written to mean what I intended, there is no doubt that as an author I intended to convey meaning by carefully selecting (or omitting) words. As I think about what it means to infer, I think that both Hirsch and Bleich (and likely everyone in between) has something to offer. As a reader, I'm taught to make inferences based on what I know about author's craft (but I do think that must be taught...or experienced) and by my visceral reactions to what an author has written. I'm still coming back to the fact that as an author, there are some topics/words/symbols that I can use (within a certain cultural context) that will very likely elicit a certain type of reaction from my readers. Pilkington identifies something called strong and weak implicature - strong I've left clues for (Hirsch) and weak a reader reacted in a way I could not envision (Bleish). There is also a belief that writers create their readers as they write (this was in the article I read by Kroll, and it is late, so I'll look it up and add it later!). So either way, there are theorists who would almost negate the importance/role of the writer or the reader. It just depends on whose lens you chose to look through. Guess this is where all this talk of "knowing your theoretical stance" comes in....

It is late, I am salty, and I am going to bed!