Reader, Not Writer

Dear Kira,

Yes, it's been a horribly long time since anyone has written on this blog; however, I think it's safe to say that we've both learned a lot about English and writing in the past two years so, hopefully, the blog will be the better for it.

In your last blog, you talked about a fear of reading too much into a novel -- the danger of extrapolating too much from insignificant details. This is the perennial problem of being an English major -- sometimes you're making good points; sometimes you're just making stuff up (roughly seventy percent of all essays ever written). For example, I think we've all been in situations in classes when professors say something to the effect of, "actually, Romeo & Juliet is a criticism of global warming" and everyone rolls their eyes.

English is a great field because every theory and opinion is, theoretically, equally valid. That being said, there are obviously cases where people take this sort of intellectual liberty too far. In one particular class, I remember the professor making a big deal about the amount of walking characters do in Henry IV part 1. Maybe there's a valid point there, but, in Shakespeare's time, if you didn't have a horse, what were your other options? I'm pretty sure Falstaff didn't drive a Prius. I think the problem is that too many people assume that the author does everything with intent. Sure, there is such a thing as authorial intent (for example, C.S. Lewis is very famous for putting allusions to Christianity in the Narnia books), but not every word is selected with a motive in mind. There's definately a balance between taking the author's perspective into account and analyzing every word to death because you want to be the 101th person to write a book about Romeo & Juliet.

On the flip side, there are books in which absolutely nothing is intended -- tabula rasa, if you will. For example, if you read Twilight, you could probably pick out all the times the words "rain" and "blood" are mentioned and write a pretty convincing essay about the symbolism of water in contrast with the symbolism of blood. Did the author intend this? Probably not -- she doesn't seem very bright.
However, lest you think me an enemy to Formalism and New Criticism, I will say that authorial intent isn't the only thing that matters. What is important, in my opinion, is that the text speaks to you in some way. So, if the rain in Twilight is really inspiring to you and meaningful in your life, maybe you should have a theory about it. While I believe that it's important to keep the author in mind, the meaning of the text is really more dependent on the reader than the writer. Shakespeare is a good example of this because people love to have theories about Shakespeare (in case you're wondering, I too am guilty, guilty, guilty). Last year, I wrote a paper about the role of women in war in the Henriad plays. Now, I'm fairly certain that feminist criticism wasn't at the front of Shakespeare's mind when he was writing these plays (actually, I do have theories about what he actually intended). However, I'm female so, naturally, the women in the plays are interesting to me. In this case, I think the important thing is that interpretations of texts have relevance to the lives of the interpreters and the lives of other people who share their worldview.

So, should all the fourteen year olds in the world be writing about symbolism in the work of Stephanie Meyer? I think their English teachers would probably disagree. If any individual can find validity in any text that speaks to them, what does this say about so-called "classics." Is a classic worthwhile even if it doesn't speak to you? Or, is it a classic because it speaks to many people?

MC