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Let's be a serious writing website and discuss writing (or reading in this case).

What do you think about the concept known as "death of the author"? In case you're not familiar, let me quote google:

Death of the Author is a concept from mid-20th Century literary criticism; it holds that an author's intentions and biographical facts (the author's politics, religion, etc) should hold no special weight in determining an interpretation of their writing.

Do you agree with that? Do you think that perhaps an author's intentions should hold more weight than a random person's opinions?

Feel free to discuss.

I think the main thing is death of the author (DOA) shouldn't be used to directly contradict the author. If the author says a flood is a bible reference it's a bible reference, not some esoteric reference to Walmart or some shit.

It is true that authors do lose some control in how there works are interpreted, but if we can prove that they are making bible references that should be the line of thinking.

I also think that who the author is should actually be the base of any interpretation if possible. A lot of people don't seem to realize that some of what makes it into a work is more subconscious.

It is just being a pretentious ass to say that the human behind the art doesn't matter.

On the flip side a author shouldn't be judged as a human purely based on their work. Maybe provide a insight into their world but not define it.

 

Sorry if this came across as a jumbled rant but just some thoughts I have 

 

 

I don't want to die just because I've written stories--- Oh wait, nevermind, wrong interpretation.

Honestly, it depends on the context. For any ordinary reader, when reading a piece of fiction, the key takeaways will often be their own and thus influenced by their background, beliefs, and life experiences. DOA often happens subconsciously when we read, because most people don’t research an author when interpreting their work. We can see this through reviews on the site. I've even gotten positive reviews mentioning things I cannot be given credit for, as I did not intend them while writing, but someone else did when reading my work. (Thanks for making me look smarter than I am!) Therefore, DOA exists in this case.

Yet, the opposite occurs when you're doing a literary analysis (I've done too many in high school lol). This takes into account the author's intention when writing and involves a lot of speculation about the meaning behind specific diction/ use of literary devices; most of the time, this requires digging into the author's background too. That probably ties in to what Tman is saying. Here, the author's interpretation is most important, namely because the focus is on finding out what they intended in the first place.

And I realize none of this actually answers the question. Anyway, yes, in the grand scheme of things I believe an author's intention should hold more weight than an ordinary person's if a disagreement arises and someone is set on determining the "right" interpretation or whatever the closest thing to that is. But sometimes, maybe there's no right interpretation. I’ve disagreed with myself on metaphors I've used based on what stage of a story I'm at. Part of what makes fiction so fun is the different interpretations one can glean from the same piece; this means someone can read WATW and think the protagonist is a self-insert and the man who gives you an opportunity to prove yourself at the inciting incident is an allusion to End giving you a chance to demonstrate your writing capabilities on CYS through his contest. Then again, I could be completely wrong, and blue curtains might not mean anything other than the curtains being blue. (Or maybe it was red, I don't remember what that rant against literary analysis I read years ago said).

I'm going to finish by saying that if none of this makes sense, it's because I'm not very awake at the moment. But please, if you're reading this, do feel free to interpret my words in a way that makes me seem highly knowledgeable to exercise the concept of DOA.

One thing to keep in mind is that with DOA one automatically assumes that the creative work we're talking about comes from one person and their mind only. Sometimes I think this mindset can be a little too narrow. With movies or video games you have the creative input of dozens if not hundreds of people. More often than not creating something is a collective endeavor, not an one man show.

Yes, I would say that this also applies to most literature other than works of hobby writers or very very affluent and popular authors. Editors do have a great influence on the end product after all. Look at the first three books of Harry Potter for example. The plot though meandering is noticeably tighter and the overall page count is shorter. With her rising fame in the later books, one can see that the input of other editors has lessened, resulting in those monstrous 600 page doorstoppers.

So speculating on what the "author" might have intended this work to be, would often be a little silly at times. It's still fun to speculate and pry into their personal lives and interests to do some literary analysis, but yeah, sometimes I wonder if we lean a little bit too much on the "The one true great mastermind behind (insert every possible creative work), let's simp on them" a bit too much.

I think choosing whether to read the work from the perspective of who the author is, vs the context of the style and the art dialogue in which it was published, vs strictly the potential meaning of the words alone, is a lot like trying to study history from the perspective of just leaders, the economy, or the daily lives of the common person. Ultimately all three are useful perspectives, but incomplete. But you do need something to narrow your scope or else there will be too much information to draw conclusions at all. Whether you try to understand the work through the artist, the text, or external factors, it depends entirely on what you're trying to understand about it. Or, apparently in the case of political things like the constitution, entirely on what you're trying to promote or protect.

Unless you are literally the author, as they existed at the time of the writing, I don't see how there's any other way of reading possible. A story (in whatever form it takes) is a thing that's brought to life organically in the mind of each person that interacts with it, and will be colored by the experience they're bringing to the table. At the end of the day there's just you and the things the story does to you, and you can put more or less effort into engaging with it from any angle you want, you don't need a mediator there to feel it 'correctly'. (And also literally no one can stop you even if they want to say you're doing it wrong.)

There's ancient literature and other translated literature, and literature with no author known. So the author is really not a required part of the equation once they've released their thoughts out into the wild. Although just the fact that it's possible for one person to love a story while someone else hates it should be enough to prove that varying interpretations exist by default.

What the creator said outside the story isn't going to be a factor 99% of the time anyway, it's just not a part of most people's experience with a thing even if an author's opinions have been recorded somewhere in the first place. And even they've been known to come to see the things they've written in a different light and from a different angle; whether that's deciding they hate or regret certain things, or that there are layers or some realization they missed.

Everybody becomes a different person a few times as their life goes on, so even to the author the author will wind up dead.

Although I do think context about influential people and the world they lived in and what their intent might have been is interesting and important, but that's the historical angle and a separate thing.

I remember @Gower talking once about how Tolkien's interpretations of Beowulf literally changed how people view the entire structure of it today. I can't think of any clearer proof of how an audience can still find something meaningfully new and different in a work long after the author is gone.

5 posts in and this is already the 33rd usage of "author".

I think everyone else has given very educational answers, so I'm going to weigh in with an example of this I see with my favorite author, Brandon Sanderson.

So he's a Mormon in real life, but when he writes you can't tell it at all. He isn't preachy, or anything like that. He actually creates many different religons within his world that his characters are a part of.

However, many people who don't like him like the use his being a Mormon as an excuse as to why his writing is bad. While there are valid critiques of him, for instance many people say his prose his bland and many counter that it's just straightfoward, this isn't really one of them.

In general I don't like the idea of considering an author when looking at their work. This might be decent in literary analysis, many others here say that it's bad there too, but in general it shouldn't matter. Though as far as actually literary analysis goes, it seems to be common place to look at super famous authors lives when looking at their work. Like how Tolkein was a veteran or how Dostoyevsky just had the most crazy life. But these examples might not be the same since noting how Tolkein is a veteran isn't holding weight against him, which is typically how I believe the authors life is used, against them, and Dostoyevsky's life really did have a super profound effect on his work since he was writing psychological and philosophical fiction. Plus a lot of details of his life is known, unlike other authors. But I think he is a decent example of interpreting the authors life for the better.

So yeah, interesting topic. I don't know a whole lot, but this is just my two cents.

E: Hm, I might have misintreperted the question. It focused more on "determining the meaning of the writing." I hope that dispite this my tangent is still a little on topic.

It depends on what you are trying to get out of determining an interpretation of their writing.

Big fan. If it ain't in the text, it ain't cannon. I do enjoy reading author's comments, since the author's personal interpretation is usually pretty good (after all, they're the one who wrote it). But it's far from guaranteed.

My take is as long as an interpretation is not directly rules out by the text, it's fair game, though if you want to be taken seriously you'd better have textual evidence to back yourself up. Authors tend to put textual evidence going towards their take directly into the work, so they do tend to be right, but again, not always.

That said: I do think there's value in using an author's history/politics/religion to interpret their work, just that doing so isn't a necessary component of textual analysis. If you want to analyze the text on its own, great, you'll learn some interesting and valuable things. If you want to bring in history and context, also great, you'll learn some entirely different interesting and valuable things.

I do think it's absurd, however, to argue "the text is arguing for the emancipation of hippopotomouses" when the author themselves is pro-hippopotomous slavery. Death of the Author applies to the text, not to the author's intent. Obviously the author has final say on what their own intent actually was. (That said, if would be fair (if a stretch) to argue that while the author may himself have been pro-hippopotomous slavery, the text itself promotes values of liberty.)

The idea of a text having one "true" and "right" interpretation is laughable to me. I don't even have a single interpretation of the stories I myself write. Some interpretations fit the text better than others, but it's a matter of degrees. The author's interpretation usually fits it very well, but that doesn't rule out the existence of other equally well-fitting interpretations.

I agree with the principle of Death of the Author - mostly.  Mainly it depends on what type of writing it is, and what perspective one is trying to look at it from.

For example, I think that for the most part works of fiction, especially those that are not intended to be allegorical, should be read at and interpreted within the world that they are created in.  Obviously, certain opinions filter in, but I don't think that the authors life experiences, or perspectives should be considered unless they are included as part of the narrative.  As an example, there have been those that suggested that Tolkien was writing his Lord of the Rings as allegorical of WW2 since he lived during that time and wrote the books during the decade following.  Tolkien himself specifically denied this being allegorical writing. Taking his personal history into account was a drastic mistake in understanding the world of Middle Earth.

However, when the author is writing to support a position or explain an opinion, I think it is proper to read based upon the author's experiences, intentions or biographical facts.  To not take this into account would mean that we should take all satirical writing at face value, which would completely miss the point of the narrative.

So overall, it depends.  It depends on the type of writing and what I am looking to get out of it.

As for author's intentions vs opinion of a random person, I would definitely say that the authors intentions hold more weight.  In my opinion random people opinions have no value.

 

I am not sure if I consider it good or bad, but I am sure it is inevitable, especially in long perspective.