Authors Intentions

Hi Mike I'm enjoying the way our recent discussions are exploring the subject but also the larger concepts and semantics. Where you suck despondently in the example above (couldn't resist!): Yes, of COURSE it is an attempt by the author to give a clue about how the reader should interpret Mike's feelings - a fairly blatant one! The author spells it out for us! It's more than just a signpost about what's happening in the novel...it IS the novel. Everyone who experiences that novel is going to be told that Mike said his line despondently. Every thought, action, description, nuance is clearly laid out on the page, not to hint at the novel's meaning, but to BE the novel. It is still up to the individual how they personally understand and interpret the word 'despondently', but as far as expressing a clear intention, the novel author could not have been any clearer about that particular point. EVERYTHING in a novel is carefully and specifically selected by the author to deliver meaning to the recipient, although admittedly he cannot control how it is actually received. Where you then talk about interpreting allegory and analogy, these are meanings that are outside the text, and much more subject to speculation. I don't quite see the relevance to your argument, because a play script can ALSO have meanings that are outside the text; allegory, analogy, metaphor, etc...not to mention then adding the dimension of physicality which gives more scope for interpretive variation, including physical metaphor and symbolism. The playwright's intended recipient is the theatre-going audience, none of whom are going to witness the actual content of any stage directions. So those 'instructions that sit above the content' are not intended for the receiver, but are guidelines for the intermediaries - the director and actors. A play script is not the end product. It's a blueprint, planning and suggesting how OTHERS ought to achieve the end product. Whereas a novel IS the end product. So I don't see how you can assert that a playwright is being clearer in their intent than a novelist is. The playwright knows that there are middlemen involved, and in a 'chinese-whispers' sort of way the message is going to be modified at every point it passes. I grant that a playwright is probably highly concerned with being clear and specific at the start of the process, and this is the point of stage directions, but it's only because it is a GIVEN that the message will be diluted with other people's interpretations by the time it reaches its end. It doesn't matter how many instructions he writes...every one of those instructions will need to be interpreted, so the potential for varied interpretation is actually increased with every stage direction. The audience will never see the specific direction; they will only potentially see the interpretation of that direction. It can only get vaguer, not clearer. (Actually no, it CAN remain clear, but only by the efforts of the director to keep it so. For the message to remain 'true', it is by the author losing some influence, as the director gains influence.) As for 'sharing being a two-way process': You and I could share a piece of cake. Once it's cut down the middle, what we do with our half is entirely up to each of us. I don't have to let you taste any of mine or vice versa, but together we can get the task done of consuming all cake. Simultaneous but separate. Or if we shared building a house; I might be responsible for doing all the brickwork, someone else does the plastering, then you might come in and do all the painting. What I've created informs and influences what you have to do, but you're free to interpret your job as you see fit and I have no interest or control over how you do it. The plasterer in the middle has distorted my contribution before you even get to see it. The end product house is the result of our shared efforts, but it was a linear process...exactly like an author/reader relationship. Cheers, Craig ~<8>-/====\---------