Literary theorists have been debating the nature of meaning within texts for well over a century. The matter is not settled. You advocate a highly intentionali

Literary theorists have been debating the nature of meaning within texts for well over a century. The matter is not settled. You advocate a highly intentionalist interpretation of a work - the author says it means this, so that's what it means. 'jevoten and others in this thread advocate a more formalist interpretation - the meaning lies in what is written. I drew your attention to a more reader-focused perspective - that meaning comes from the reader's experience of the work, not the work or the author. To say "they would know" is to sidestep this entire discussion and suggest that there's some objectively correct way of interpreting a text and that correct way is intentionalism. This is reductive because it ignores the reality that many people (theorists and non-theorists) don't put a whole lot of stock in authorial intent.