Will the mystery guest please stand up?
Posted by Joan, too on July 28, 1998 at 05:40:19:
In response to What's my line?..., written by Nathalie R. on July 28, 1998 at 03:19:02
] Would I be wrong in saying that you (Danielle & Joan,too...etc) would classify me as a devotee of the 'New Criticism' school - discovering 'as many meanings in a text as my own ingenuity could possibly supply'?
IMO the following quote from Cox exactly describes what it appears to me that you are doing in your analysis:
But the New Critics often proceeded as if the text could be understood apart from any consideration of authorial intentions. They neglected the author's ability to impose structure by using objectively ascertainable textual markers to include certain meanings and exclude others. As a result, they sometimes discovered as many "meanings" in a text as their own ingenuity could possibly supply. "Meanings" that flatly contradicted either one another or any conceivable authorial intention were construed as "ironies" and "tensions" that "enriched" the overinterpreted text.
And for my own part I find myself strongly identifying with the "Chicago School" critics. I also agree with Cox that Hirsch's distinction described below is very useful:
Hirsch's discussion of the determinacy of authorial meanings is especially important to consider at a time when many prominent theorists assert that the meaning of a text necessarily varies with the race, class, and gender of its audience. Hirsch makes a useful distinction between meaning and significance: various readers may regard a text as significant to them in various ways, but they are responding, still, to the same text, a text with particular meanings, established by a particular author.
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