Metathinking (Why Snape may know what he knows WAS Re: The Gleam Revisited)

[marinafrants]

No: HPFGUIDX 45203

--- In HPforGrownups at y..., "bluesqueak" <pipdowns at e...> wrote:
> Hmmm... unfortunately lit-crit tends to provoke strange growling 
> noises from me, but could you possibly explain how a reader is 
*not* 
> supposed to interpret a text through their own knowledge and 
> understanding? And why this is supposedly less canonically 
rigorous 
> than interpreting it through, say, Freudian psychology. 

I never said lit-crit was more canonically rigorous than any other 
approach, I said that it wasn't *less* canonically rigorous.  To my 
mind, there is absolutely no difference between interpreting a text 
through a reader's real-life experience, and interpreting it through 
Freudian psychology.  In both cases, something from outside the text 
is used as a mechanism for examining the text.

I also believe that a certain degree of metathinking is unavoidable: 
using knowledge of real life to interpret a piece of fiction only 
works if you assume that the author was striving for some degree of 
of realism -- and that in itself is a meta assumption. 

> 
> For example: I support my reading of Snape's goading of Harry in 
PoA 
> Ch. 19 by making reference to his similar behaviour in Ch.14 
(where 
> he also goads Harry into losing his temper) and argue that Snape 
in 
> Ch.19 knows from his previous experience in Ch.14 that insulting 
> Harry's parents will make him lose his temper. That is MORE 
> canonically rigorous than supporting a different reading of 
Snape's 
> goading of Harry by saying that at this point in the Story it is 
> essential that Harry take independent action and learn that 
> sometimes we have to defy those in authority.

That depends on what canonical evidence I would present to support 
the assertion that *this* point in the story, more than any other, 
requires Harry to take independent action.

By the same token, if I point to specific statements in canon where 
Dumbledore emphasizes the importance of truth, honesty and free 
choice, and suggest that the Spymaster!Dumbledore theory undermines 
these statements, I don't see how it's canonically rigorous to 
suggest that the Spymaster theory must nevertheless be true because 
that's how counter-terrorism works in real life.

Either approach can be as canonically rigorous, or canonically 
sloppy, as the user wants to make it.

> > I never said the universe revolved around Harry, I said the 
> *story* 
> > revolved around Harry.  Now I suppose you're going to say that 
by 
> > bringing the concept of story into it I'm indulging in meta-
> > thinking, but I think that attempting to analyze a literary text 
> > without ever acknowledging that it *is* a literary text is a 
> highly 
> > artificial and pitfall-laden approach.  
> 
> [Rant mode on]
> Marina, of course I know it's a literary text. It has a cover, and 
> pages, and words printed on the pages; I bought it from 
> the 'fiction' section of the bookshop - these are some of the 
clues 
> which tell me that it is a literary text.
> 
> And I pay the entire list the compliment of assuming that I do not 
> *need* to acknowledge that it is a literary text, because they too 
> have picked up on these clues. Far from being 'artificial', 
assuming 
> that the fact that a literary text *is* a literary text is 
> understood by everyone (other than English Lit professors) and 
thus 
> requires no acknowledgement within a theory is the beginning point 
> of analysis.
> [Rant mode off]

I apologize if I phrased myself offensively.  But I was responding 
to specific statement by Gray Wolf, who wrote the following in post 
45141:

> 
> Note that I haven't mentioned JKR other to put examples of 
terrorism 
> wars, and I have not mentioned the fact that HP is a book, nor 
that in 
> it JKR is God and Creator. At all points I treat Dumbledore et co. 
as 
> if they were real beings, capable of abstract thought. NOT as 
secondary 
> characters of a literature piece called "the Adventures of Harry 
> Potter". 

Perhaps I misinterpreted.  But to me this looks like a conscious 
refusal to treat the books as a literary text.  (And a conscicous 
refusal is not the same as ignorance or lack of understanding.)

I wrote:

> But if you're actually 
> > trying to predict where the story will go, then you have to deal 
> > with the fact that it is a story, not a news report or a 
> > historical chronicle, and examine the literary underpinnings.
> > 
> 

Pip responded:

> You mean that stories follow certain rules, and that an 
examination 
> of which rules the author is following will allow you to predict 
> where the story will go.
> 
> Unfortunately, this mostly only works with second-rate writers. 
The 
> Rules say that Frodo either a)should have died heroically 
succeeding 
> in his task (theme of courage against certain death) or b)have 
> miraculously survived to a happy retirement (theme of grace) or c) 
> failed completely, with death and despair all round (theme of 
> despair). In fact, Tolkein is a good enough writer that none of 
> these happened - though there were a few chapters where the reader 
> was fooled into thinking it was going to be ending b).

Lucky Kari has already addressed the LoTR example.  I would just 
like to add that the general events of most classic Greek tragedies 
and Shakespearean plays can be predicted with a high degree of 
accuracy by anyone familiar with the forms.  Doesn't make them 
second-rate.

> 
> > Example: if you were trying to predict the ending of a 
traditional 
> > cozy British mystery, you would not say "the killer will be the 
> most 
> > likely suspect" or "the killer will be an anonymous drifter with 
> no 
> > connection to anyone in town."  That may happen all the time in 
> > real life, but that's not how it happens in cozy British 
> mysteries. 
>  
> Of course, prior to Agatha Christie's cozy British mysteries you 
> would also have said 'the murderer cannot be a small child', 'the 
> murderer cannot be the detective', and so on. 

Well, Wilkie Collins used a variation of the "detective is the 
criminal" device in one of his novels decades before Christie, and I 
wouldn't be surprised if someone else had tried the child-murderer 
trick, too.  But yes, before Christie, the genre rules were in flux, 
and could not be used as an analytical tool.  Once the rules *are* 
established, however, using them is perfectly valid.

>I think the only 
> reason she never used 'anonymous drifter' is because it's *so* 
> boring. 

It may be boring in the context of a British cozy, but it would be 
perfectly fine in a police procedural, or in a mainstream novel in 
which the murder is merely a vehicle for the author's philosophical 
musings about the randomness of fate.  The conventions of the genre 
play a very big part in determining what will and will not work in 
the context of the story.  

Now when you look at the Harry Potter books, which are a hodgepodge 
of many different genres, the usefulness of genre as a predicting 
tool becomes very limited.  But there are other considerations, such 
as theme, story structure, and, yes, the identity of the 
protagonist, that can be used with validity.


That's not how it happens ... until a writer decides 
> different.
> 
>  > the HP series aren't quite as genre-bound, but I still don't 
> think 
> > you can just ignore the fact that Harry is the protagonist of 
the 
> > story, or that free choice, morality and the power of love have  
> >been established as major themes.  
> 
> I'm not. I just think that another major theme is going to turn 
out 
> to be 'sometimes we have to do things we hate and consider immoral 
> because the alternative is even more evil than the things we have 
to 
> do'. Morality when it consists of choosing between good and evil 
is 
> one thing; choosing the 'lesser of two evils' another. 

That's fine, if you can point to evidence of suchc a theme in canon 
(as opposed to saying that this is true in real life).

> 
> The Voldemort war as shown in the books is one where both sides 
shot 
> to kill, and the supposedly good side imprisoned without trial. 

Yet none of these questionable methods on the part of the "good" 
guys led to Voldemort's downfall; instead, he was brought down by a 
mother's self-sacrificing love for her child.  We see Dumbledore 
show disapproval of many of the Ministry's methods (such as the use 
of dementors).  We see miscarriages of justice -- a famous athlete 
passes information to the enemy and gets off with a slap on the 
wrist; Death Eaters like Lucius Malfoy escape punishment, while the 
innocent Sirius spends twelve years in prison.  In general, when the 
good guys start behaving like the bad guys, the results are not good.


> Dumbledore may not have had a shoot-to-kill policy, but he uses a 
> truth potion on Crouch Jr. (depriving *him* of free choice and of 
> the right to not incriminate himself) without a second 
> thought.'Lesser of two evils' - he needed that information and he 
> needed it *now*.

That does show that Dumbledore is capable of acting beyond the 
bounds of pure idealism, yes.  But I think it's a long way from that 
to the sort of ruthless puppet-mastering that the MAGIC DISHWASHER 
theory is advocating.

Marina
rusalka at ix.netcom.com