4 ms·
> I'd tend to say that the author's stated intentions matter more than whatever headcanons you or I might come up with, but not as much as the work itself. Afte
by msla 3y ago
> I'd tend to say that the author's stated intentions matter more than whatever headcanons you or I might come up with, but not as much as the work itself. After all, unpublished intentions like that can always be changed later if the author has cause to publish something that would contradict them.
This runs headlong into the whole idea of textual criticism and the death of the author. If the author can have new ideas about a work which supersede someone else's head canon, they can undo a whole academic treatise with a magisterial wave of the hand, and that's unsupportable. Academia must be allowed to exist, which means the text stands alone.
More simply: The academic is working with a specific text, not a text and whatever random ancillary material the author crapped out years or decades later. Their thesis is, therefore, not invalidated by that paratext and superfluous commentary.
- kemayo 3y agoIt's worth noting that this is a reinterpretation of Death of the Author. The original essay isn't about this sort of "what is canon?" question at all, it's about the subjective meaning and interpretation of a text. It's arguing that asking the author "what does it mean that the curtains are blue?" isn't the way to get a definitive answer. To quote Barthes' essay: "all writing is itself this special voice, consisting of several indiscernible voices, and that literature is precisely the invention of this voice, to which we cannot assign a specific origin" -- i.e. the author's contribution is one part of the work, but what the reader is bringing to the work also matters when you're interpreting it. The author can't tell you how the work makes you feel. It's totally valid to say "I think what the author said is canon is junk, and I'm going to ignore it", but that's not technically Death of the Author. :D (This particular term being thrown around inaccurately is, perhaps, a pet peeve of mine.)