To me it's one of those case by case things. Mainly I only want to bring Death of the Author into play if what the author says doesn't match up with what the story shows.
people can intperet things differently...in fact people SHOULD, hell Starship Troopers was turned into a satire (the direct opposite) of the original authors intent and that was greatFox12 said:snip
I think you might want to rephrase that question. How do critics, people who are only allowed to see a finished work, have any control over an author's creative process? They're not editors. If you mean that should we only believe what the author says his/her work is about, rather than listen to critics' interpretations as well, then I can understand. An author should have complete creative control over their work, but everyone is allowed to interpret it the way they want.Fox12 said:Long post short, do you think artists should have complete control over the things they make, or do you think critics should have equal say? Or, alternatively, do you think that there's a middle ground, and that both opinions are wrong?
As I understand it, she may not have intentionally written him as such, she was going for the tortured emo male romantic lead thing, and ended up with him thinking about how he's going to rip Bella to shreds, and planning the best way to snap the necks of all the witnesses.Haerthan said:Link to that please. I don't mean it in an aggressive way. What I am saying is that if it is true, the idea of a book where Edward is a monstrous bastard, than it would raise my respect (not that I respect her ability to write or anything) for her skills.Happyninja42 said:Funny you say that, because I heard the book she never finished, from Edward's point of view, has his internal dialogue that of a monsterous bastard. Which sort of contradicts the previous description of him by the Doctor Cullen guy as being "the most gentle soul he's ever met"thaluikhain said:Well...according to Stephenie Meyer, Edward is the sexiest and smartest and most romantic man/vampire ever. According to many, many people who have read Twilight, he's a horrible creepy and abusive person who is rather thick.
I think we have to lean towards "Death of the Author", because that sort of thing is very common, I don't think anyone would always agree with the authors interpretations of characters.
voleary said:I can't speak for lit crit, but this line of thinking ain't going to help you if you want to be a historian. Context of production is vital in source analysis. This is true even for historiographical criticism. Pretending the author doesn't exist or isn't important won't make him go away. You'd be just supressing valuable evidence.
Of course, you should also be wary of going the other way around and analysing a work based solely on its context of production. Like many historians and self-proclaimed "cultural commentators" are fond of doing. A work has social impact insofar as it is read, and people are very capable of reading against the grain. Not to mention that some works travel so far temporally and spatially that the original intent is all but lost.
As for whether or not the author's statement on his work is reliable, well, it isn't. An author's statement is not what the book is, but how the writer wants it to be read. It's interesting that if you compare authors' views on their work at different stages of their lives you'll sometimes notice that they change their minds.
That said, knowing that a given writer wants his work to be a read in a certain fashion is, in itself, crucial information for an in-depth analysis.
Whether you're a good or bad writer has little to do with it. There's all kinds of contextual things at play that could lead a work to be received very differently than the author intended.Queen Michael said:I like the idea of Death of the Author. I judge a work by what's in it, not by what the author wanted to have in it. A good writer will make her intentions clear. A bad writer needs to explain everything.
I quite disagree with this, to a degree I do think intent should not simply be ignored. Yes, it is also important to point out any interpretations from different perspectives that might look points made by the writer differently. And pointing those out and talking about them matters for the public debate, to solve problems.Vault101 said:if something in a work is thought of as offensive, the fact that the author says it wasn't indented that way is mostly irrelevant
I don't fully understand this. It sounds a little...silly to say that they are 'their own people' for are they not your imaginations? How are they not completely in your control? You could just type "And then he had a sudden stroke and died." and that's that.squeezal said:As a writer, I don't think I have total control over my writing to begin with. The characters are their own people, who act their own way. Everything is shaped by the events and setting in ways I can't fully predict until I'm buried in the guts of the story.
What squeezal is saying (I believe but cannot speak for authorial intent which I think ties in nicely to the thread ) is that a story and its characters begin with a certain path in mind but as a writer writes different thing suggest themselves and so the characters and the plot morph according to these new ideas. Perhaps the original ending doesn't match the characters that have emerged in the writing process and therefore the story changes.Cowabungaa said:I don't fully understand this. It sounds a little...silly to say that they are 'their own people' for are they not your imaginations? How are they not completely in your control? You could just type "And then he had a sudden stroke and died." and that's that.squeezal said:As a writer, I don't think I have total control over my writing to begin with. The characters are their own people, who act their own way. Everything is shaped by the events and setting in ways I can't fully predict until I'm buried in the guts of the story.
As you say, as a writer writes different things the story and so his mind changes. But I don't see how that means that the writer isn't in control; it's the writer who influences his own thoughts and creations by reflecting upon them. How can a story make demands of its own? After all, a story is thoughts made flesh. A physical manifestation of what the writer thinks trapped in a moment. It's obvious that that moment in time influences how a writer progresses, but how does that make him less in control? It's his own thoughts influencing himself.Korenith said:el snip
Yeah, I don't have a link for it. If I recall correctly it was on the Satire Knight website, where she does a scene by scene breakdown and riff of the terrible writing in those books. I vaguely recall her making a side comment when she got to the part where the doctor vamp was talking to Bella about Edward, and made that "beautiful soul" comment. She then pointed to the aborted book from Edward's viewpoint, and illustrated how all of his internal thoughts were violent and angry and stuff. She was pointing this discrepency out to illustrate the "show don't tell" aspect of writing. In that Meyers kept trying to tell us that Bella was a wonderful person, but showed us the actions of a manipulative, deceptive sociopath.thaluikhain said:As I understand it, she may not have intentionally written him as such, she was going for the tortured emo male romantic lead thing, and ended up with him thinking about how he's going to rip Bella to shreds, and planning the best way to snap the necks of all the witnesses.Haerthan said:Link to that please. I don't mean it in an aggressive way. What I am saying is that if it is true, the idea of a book where Edward is a monstrous bastard, than it would raise my respect (not that I respect her ability to write or anything) for her skills.Happyninja42 said:Funny you say that, because I heard the book she never finished, from Edward's point of view, has his internal dialogue that of a monsterous bastard. Which sort of contradicts the previous description of him by the Doctor Cullen guy as being "the most gentle soul he's ever met"thaluikhain said:Well...according to Stephenie Meyer, Edward is the sexiest and smartest and most romantic man/vampire ever. According to many, many people who have read Twilight, he's a horrible creepy and abusive person who is rather thick.
I think we have to lean towards "Death of the Author", because that sort of thing is very common, I don't think anyone would always agree with the authors interpretations of characters.
I don't think he was ever supposed to be the bad guy in that, Bella is so tasty he doesn't think he can stop himself.