Monday, July 12, 2010
Poetry..
Hi guys, its Henry. I really liked the poem presentations and the amount of positive participation from the class today. I just have a question, can anybody help? Can anybody ever know what the authors really mean in their themes and symbolism? For example, in todays poems many people had suggestions of what they may have ment. I just think of something that makes sense to me. Some themes and symbols are pretty obvious, but others not so much. How can one know what they really mean, especially if the authors are dead? It just gives me a headache when I'm reading something and I'm not sure what it is supposed to mean. I make up something that makes sense, but how am I supposed to know that, that is what the author is trying to say.Thanks ^_^
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What you are asking is an impossible question to answer. If the author of a piece of poetry is dead, than no one can truly learn what that poet meant in his/her poem. The only way that I can possibly think of is if the poet told someone or wrote it down. However, I think that is a very unlikely situation, but you never know.
ReplyDeleteThanks :) . I just find it annoying to try and guess what the message is.
ReplyDeleteI always think that the whole point of poetry is to stretch our minds and allow us to learn more about ourselves and our thoughts on poetry. Everyone is different, so I'm glad I could help!
ReplyDeleteWell, aside from Occam's Razor where the simplest meaning is probably... on can always use the triangle (writer, reader, and text) to make an insightful theory to the theme. Using the author's background and time, personal thoughts, and references in the text as evidence, you can come to conclusions to what the authors might be talking about. Jamie is right one can't really tell, but we just have to make do with what we have.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete... Occam's Razor where the simplest meaning is probably *right*... *one* can always use the triangle
ReplyDelete(Forgot to put that word in and spelled one wrong)
I have to agree with Jamie, I feel that there is no sure way that we as a reader can know the full intention of the author if he or she is dead. Unless there is a written explanation or some other form of medium to express the intended themes of the poem we can't really know.
ReplyDeleteWe've touched on this in class and I've mentioned that the highfalutin (it's a real word, honest) term for trying to reconstruct what an author meant is the 'intentional fallacy.' One of the main tenants of New Criticism is the idea that we can never know what authors mean and, even if we did, there is no guaranatee that they managed to execute their intentions anyway.
ReplyDeleteThe intentional fallacy is tempting at times, but I think that as long as we balance consideration of the context in which a piece was written, pay close attention to the text itself and also recognise how as readers we tend to project our own experiences onto a text, then we are staying safely within the triangle.
So the only way to find any answer from a text is just "trying"? We would have to try to be as close to the middle of the Triange where we balance out personal experiences, text and the author. Can't things just be concrete and correct because human translations have lead to problems.
ReplyDeleteIt's true that authors were not able in some cases to "execute their intentions" as they wished. The Torah, the Bible or any old text has always been the centre of much translation and some of those translations are very extreme. Extremists, cultists, fanatics, zealots, etc. use the text as proof for their translated actions. It's a sad and scary occurrence.