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[the-woes-of-an-english-teacher]

Author’s intent

Literary analysis is an essential component of high school English classes. It’s a challenge right now because reading and writing stamina are low, as are attention spans. It’s also difficult to balance literary classics with modern literature. This is why I love short stories so much. I’ll address that in my next post.

Today’s debatable issue: how important is authorial intent? I would not dare say it’s totally unnecessary, however can we really know an author’s intent? Isn’t that ultimately a form of conjecture?

My favorite professor from High Point University said this:

Ben, That's a raging question these days. My answer is that a writer has no control over the interpretation of his/her poem, which will always be filtered through a reader's intellectual background, experience, and feelings. I'm a poet with four books; I give readings often in North Carolina. I am delighted by the range of reactions conveyed by listeners and readers. Some are stunningly perceptive; others discover nuances I never imagined were in the poem; some seem irrelevant. When a poem leaves my hands, it belongs to others. I do not want to limit their responses to what my intention was. Ben, sometimes I don't know what I mean to do in a poem. I start with an image, a snatch of dialogue, or a memory. My poetry rises from life, not from ideas. It often leads to strange, unanticipated places. That's good. When you develop thoughts, you are writing essays or sermons. Poets don't sit down and think, "Now what do I want to say?" When you follow a trail in the woods instead of a train of thoughts, you never know where the trail is going until you get to the end. It could be a fork and the road not taken; it could be a pregnant deer wounded by a hunter; it could be the ghost of your grandfather saying, "It's time for us to talk." Poetry is not pro forma; paint by numbers. Now here's the flip side: Formalist critics like T.S. Eliot and the Fugitive School argued that an analyst needed to restrict interpretation to the words of the poem, to what was on the page. They emphasized formal analysis instead of the author's biography, history, or personality. I admire this approach until it becomes too rigid. I think everything should be taken into account, beginning with what's on the page and then considering outside factors. No real poet would ever want to insist that a poem means one thing and one thing only or that the poet's intention must be exalted above all. The Formalists called focusing on an author's intention "the intentional fallacy." I think you should stress what's on the page but be willing to move outside the poem for influences, etc. If you google me, you can find some of my poems in journals. If you want to ask me about my intention in a specific poem, I'll try to answer and to mention where the poem went….Congrats on your teaching career. You were a sharp, energetic student--a pleasure to talk with.

#literature #books #analysis