The Shakespeare Conference: SHK 18.0623 Wednesday, 19 September 2007
[1] From: Michael Luskin <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 17 Sep 2007 11:37:08 EDT
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0615 Authorial Intention
[2] From: R. A. Cantrell <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 17 Sep 2007 10:47:15 -0500
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0615 Authorial Intention
[3] From: Larry Weiss <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 17 Sep 2007 15:28:32 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0615 Authorial Intention
[4] From: David Bishop <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 17 Sep 2007 16:30:20 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0615 Authorial Intention
[5] From: Alan Horn <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Tuesday, 18 Sep 2007 06:09:00 -0400
Subj: Re: SHK 18.0615 Authorial Intention
[6] From: John Drakakis <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Tuesday, 18 Sep 2007 13:08:35 +0100
Subj: RE: SHK 18.0615 Authorial Intention
[1]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Michael Luskin <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 17 Sep 2007 11:37:08 EDT
Subject: 18.0615 Authorial Intention
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0615 Authorial Intention
I think that authorial intention would be a great topic for a round
table. Though I never expect to get answers, the questions of what
Shakespeare meant in Measure for Measure or Hamlet, or why is the
picture of Julius Caesar so muddied in JC, is what makes Shakespeare
different from Marlowe and just about everyone else. I would love to
see longer and closer reasoned posts on this subject.
[2]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: R. A. Cantrell <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 17 Sep 2007 10:47:15 -0500
Subject: 18.0615 Authorial Intention
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0615 Authorial Intention
>>Principally, he is telling us that he is unschooled in formal
>>skepticism, and that once more dear friends, he would strain every nerve
>>in an effort to breathe life into the utterly dead French Ninny School
>>of Literary Criticism and Theory. By his own writ he disproves his own
>>writ, which disproves that which he has written about that which he
>>writes: turtles all the way down.
>>
>>-- All the best, R.A. Cantrell
>
>It may be useful to remember that the attack on "intentionalism"
>preceded the "French Ninny School", or at least it developed without any
>contact or contamination in schools of philosophy and literary criticism
>in the USA and Europe. As far as I know, Wimsatt and Beardsley's
>classic, "The Intentional Fallacy", published in 1946 and revised in
>1954, owes nothing to Saussure, Barthes or Foucault. In fact,
>"psychologism" (i.e. the belief that the meanings of utterances are
>derivable or reducible to the state of mind of the user) has been a
>major target within the analytical tradition of philosophy (a thoroughly
>Anglo-American affair) since the work of its founding father, G. Frege,
>in the nineteenth century--signally in the work of Ludwig Wittgenstein
>and Hilary Putnam, the latter declaring in a seminal essay, entitled
>"The Meaning of 'Meaning'": "Meaning just ain't in the head". One can
>tell from the idiom that this is not a Frenchman writing, but a good
>citizen of the USA.
>
>In my view, much of the trouble with the debate lies in the ambiguous
>use of the word "intention", which seems to be indispensable in any talk
>about things that are produced by human beings, but cannot eradicate the
>equally unavoidable work of interpretation. I thus agree with Hugh
>Grady that it's a red herring. There's an interesting collection of
>essays by intentionalists, anti-intentionalists and hybrid
>middle-of-the-roaders edited by Gary Iseminger called Intention and
>Interpretation (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992) for those
>interested in the argument within analytical philosophy.
>
>David Schalkwyk
Thank you for your measured and informative response to my hasty lashing
out. (Hardy had to correct my spelling, for which I thank him as well) I
lose patience when earnest attempts at substantive discussion are led
(either intentionally or innocently) into the idiotic wilderness of the
skeptical tropes.
[3]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Larry Weiss <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 17 Sep 2007 15:28:32 -0400
Subject: 18.0615 Authorial Intention
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0615 Authorial Intention
The latest spate of comments contains a number of interesting and
perhaps revealing observations.
For example, John Drakakis (whose posts to the WashPost thread fathered
my initial query here) begins by saying
>Larry Weiss obviously has a hotline to the writer's mind.
What is fascinating about this is that I never made any such claim. All
I did was ask questions, admittedly in a Socratic vein; and those
questions most assuredly did not imply that I felt that I or anyone else
had a "hotline" to an author's mind. I have a great deal of experience
with the rhetorical technique of attributing extreme positions to an
opponent which he has not taken. That device usually signals that the
advocate using it does not feel completely confident about defending his
position on its merits. Contrary to claiming a "hotline" to an author's
mind, I merely asked -- ok, suggested -- that, while it is absurd to
believe that we can confidently divine an author's precise intentions
underlying all his words, Drakakis over argues his position by asserting
that any attempt to discern an author's expectations about how his
audience will receive his words is "futile."
I wonder, though, if Prof. Drakakis really adopts his extreme position
in practice. When I hear or read Lady M say "Out, out, damn'd Spot" I
understand that to mean that her mind has been so deranged by the murder
of Duncan that she imagines she has indelible stains on her hands, and I
believe that Shakespeare expected me to have some such reaction. Is it
just as valid to conclude that Lady M is shooing away her dog?
Hugh Grady, who I thought was allied to Drakakis in this, comes much
closer to the mark and may even hit it:
>I don't know anyone who thinks authors don't have intentions
>toward their works, though possibly at several levels in not
>necessarily coherent ways. The problem is, how can we know
>them? All we can do >is make intelligent guesses.
I prefer the word "inferences" to "guesses," but that may be a
rhetorical quibble. I also prefer the word "question" to "problem"; but
I agree that the task -- or one task, at least -- for literary scholars
is to figure out how best to interpret a text. That is the real
question, not whether the author gave the text a significance which may
be discerned.
I anticipate that some may say that my last paragraph shifts the
inquiry, as we have been talking about the author's intentions not the
interpretation of his words. It could also be pointed out that I said
in an earlier post that there is a difference between the meaning of a
text, that is how the text is understood by a given auditor or reader,
and the author's intentions, which is how he or she expected it to be
understood. I stand by that. "Interpretation" is the process of
discerning what the author expected us to take away from the text, not a
psychological inquiry into the state of the reader's mind.
It does not seem to me that there is meaningful distinction between
interpreting a text and deriving the author's intentions. It would be
absurd to say that Shakespeare intended the words "damn'd Spot" to refer
to a dog but the words actually mean an imaginary stain. A
none-too-bright reader might think "dog" instead of "stain," but that's
his problem, not Shakespeare's. Perhaps the question boils down not to
an issue of whether it is legitimate to attempt to derive an author's
expectations but to what are appropriate means to do so. If we confine
ourselves to the words in the text and try to resolve any ambiguities by
reference only to context, without resort to historical analysis,
Elizabethan/Jacobean cultural conditions, biographical facts, etc.,
would that satisfy Prof. Drakakis? Or are those all legitimate tools to
use in interpreting the words?
I candidly acknowledged in my last post that I prefer to use the word
"expectation" rather than "intention," as the former carries less
negative freight. The wisdom of taking that approach is illustrated by
John Briggs's submission:
>there is no problem discussing authors' "expectations", problems
>only arise when they are elevated to "intentions".
Therefore, I shall continue to speak of "expectations" although,
frankly, I do so for purely rhetorical reasons. I personally do not see
a meaningful distinction between saying that an author expected the
audience to react in a particular way and saying that he wanted them to
do so. As I said above, I also do not see a difference between
interpreting a text and determining what the author expected us to
understand from the text.
[4]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: David Bishop <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Monday, 17 Sep 2007 16:30:20 -0400
Subject: 18.0615 Authorial Intention
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0615 Authorial Intention
It seems to me characteristic of this discussion that it includes no
examples from Shakespeare. The abstract argument about intention
converges on a platitude, which may be translated, We are not God.
The absolute impossibility of determining Shakespeare's intentions may
be extended to the intentions of those nearest and dearest to us, as
well as to our own. But relatively speaking, sometimes, we can discover
something about intentions. As Larry Weiss says, "All we can do is make
intelligent guesses." But as I'm sure he means to imply, those guesses
are built up from argument and evidence. If I claim that I've discovered
an intention of Shakespeare's that won't make it so. Nor will it
determine whether the argument by which I've got to where I think I've
got was good or bad.
Even the most theory-loving seem always to reserve the right to use
categories like responsible versus irresponsible criticism. They seem to
have some residual desire to talk about the plays Shakespeare wrote,
though their theory, taken literally, implies that this is absolutely
impossible.
I may sometimes feel no need to argue, as when told that Gertrude
secretly murdered Ophelia. At other times I may argue--though feeling I
should not have to argue--with those who say that Claudius fails to
react to the dumb show, thereby revealing that he did not murder his
brother in the manner depicted. Since great volumes of abstract and
ultimately platitudinous sentences tend to issue from people who take
positions like these, I don't bother much with their theory. My motto
is: by their examples ye shall know them.
Best wishes,
David Bishop
[5]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: Alan Horn <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Tuesday, 18 Sep 2007 06:09:00 -0400
Subject: 18.0615 Authorial Intention
Comment: Re: SHK 18.0615 Authorial Intention
Larry Weiss writes, "If we take the distinction as being the difference
between what the author expected us to understand and what we in fact do
understand from the text, then the latter is equivalent to Cary
DiPietro's 'implied [or inferred] author' and there is no need for that
construct."
This is precisely what Gerard Genette argues in Narrative Discourse
Revisited (chapter 19: Implied Author, Implied Reader?). He concludes:
>"So IA [the implied author] seems to me, in general, to be an
>imaginary[...] agent constituted by two distinctions that remain blind
>to each other: (1) IA is not the narrator, (2) IA is not the real
>author, and it is never seen that the first is a matter of the real
>author and the second is a matter of the narrator, with no room
>anywhere for a third agent that would be NEITHER the narrator NOR the
>real author."
In other words, the term "implied author" sometimes refers to the
narrator and sometimes to the real author, depending on the point that
is being made. In itself it is a superfluous and confusing category.
Hugh Grady writes, "It's hard to know how seriously to take Ibsen's
claim, but to my mind it is one that lessens the import of his play and
should be put aside."
I was going to ask why Hugh Grady takes it for granted that it is the
job of literary scholarship to enhance a work's "import."
But it occurs to me on second thought that this is in fact Presentism's
bottom line: contextual evidence ought to be "put aside" in favor of
perceived contemporary relevance.
Alan Horn
[6]-----------------------------------------------------------------
From: John Drakakis <
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
>
Date: Tuesday, 18 Sep 2007 13:08:35 +0100
Subject: 18.0615 Authorial Intention
Comment: RE: SHK 18.0615 Authorial Intention
The line DOES belong to Desdemona, Joe. My concern was the reason it was
re-ascribed to Aemilia.
Cheers
John Drakakis
_______________________________________________________________
S H A K S P E R: The Global Shakespeare Discussion List
Hardy M. Cook,
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
The S H A K S P E R Web Site <http://www.shaksper.net>
DISCLAIMER: Although SHAKSPER is a moderated discussion list, the
opinions expressed on it are the sole property of the poster, and the
editor assumes no responsibility for them.
|
