author/reader/text

[zesca]

No: HPFGUIDX 72951

BUTTERCUP wrote:
There are so many people in these books and every one is an interesting 
individual. No one's stereotypical or dull. She does such a good job that these 
characters seem like REAL people. Readers really care about them.

To which MARIANNE responded:
"This is an interesting question.  A lot of people think that none of the
Slytherins are more than two-dimensional, and that Draco has not progressed 
at all as a character over the last several books.  I personally have a real 
problem with how Sirius' characterization has changed from GoF to OoP....lots 
and lots omitted...

WENDY said:
I think on the whole, JKR wants us to react to the characters based on our 
own experiences, rather than based on how she sees them. I think she'd write
them differently if she wanted to guide us to one and only one interpretation.

Having said that, I do think there are times that she's surprised at the 
conclusions to which we come! <G> Draco being possibly the best case>> in 
point: JKR seems to think she's written Draco to be an unattractive (physically 
and in all other ways) little git, and is surprised that so many people seem to 
crush on him. Is it the fault of JKR's characterisation? Or are other things 
going on? I can only offer my opinion on this (obviously), as it's pretty 
subjective. each of us will create our own opinion about Cho's character after 
putting her through the "filter" of our own experience. ...She tells her story with 
events, including some interpretation by Harry. And even that interpretation>> 
is subject to our opinions of just how reliable we each find Harry to be.

Finally, MADEYE responds~
I thought this little piece of lit crit history might infotain.

Once upon a time (the twentieth century mostly. from the 1930s through 
the1960s) there was this group of literary critical dudes who called 
themselves The New Critics .

What, you may ask, made them so New? Well, I'll tell you. 

This Motley assortment of British and American lit profs were, like, way 
obsessed with the relationship between author, reader and text. they were 
way bummed by what they saw as the standard limitations that their 
colleagues were imposing on the interpretive process. They found the whole 
scene way Hufflefluffian.

Before the NCs, criticism tended to be more biographical and historical. The 
NCs wanted a bit more rigorous Ravenclaw action.  They were, like,dude! (the 
NCs were all surfers, you see) what about the text itself? shouldn't we be, like, 
separating the life of the author, like, from, like, the author's work itself?

Wimsatt and Beardsley were a couple of New Critics responsible for some 
very catchy phrases used to describe key aspects of this rad new approach: 
the affective fallacy and the intentional fallacy.

They define the intentional fallacy as the error (their word, not mine) of 
assuming a text means what its author intended it to mean.

Affective fallacy is the error (again: their judgemental term...don't shoot the 
messenger, now) of assuming a text's meaning can be described in terms of 
its effect on the reader.

"For Wimsatt and Beardsley, meaning was to be determined solely  from close 
reading of a text. Any one reader's private reactions to a text are likely to be 
biased and uncritical: a reader with certain personal associations will make 
connections that have nothing to do with the poem."

Wendy, for the last time:
I'm sure some of us take his opinions at face value as facts, while others 
consider his opinions with a varying number of grains of salt.<G>

madeyemood responds:
Wimsatt and Beardsley would only agree, ms. wendy...but what you think of 
as seasoning they would regard a little differently. They might have a bit of an 
attitude, I'm thinking. noses in the air, surfboards atilt, they would probably 
refer to an essential distinction  between truly critical reading and....an 
affectively fallacious one! The nerve!

seems to have been rather the revolutionary literary tool in its time.

madly yrs,
madeyemood