Snape, Snape, Loverly Snape...and authorial intent

[Shelley]

No: HPFGUIDX 148250

Nora wrote:
>
> Err, not according to my friends over in English, any more.  I do try
> to ask them what the trends in that field are, although it tends to
> involve too much beer.  I've been told that deconstruction is mostly
> dead, 'cultural studies' is where it's at


Shelley: Hi Nora,

I'm an historian currently employed as a research fellow at an English
Department, so I hang out with literary sorts a bit.  And I agree with you
that Deconstructionism and post-structuralism are no longer dominent trends
in and of themselves in most departments.  But rather than saying
Deconstructionism and post-structuralism are dead, I'd say literary theory
has incorporated certain insights offered by such theorists as Derrida and
Foucault, and moved on.  I have a hard time imagining cultural studies
existing without notions of texts being multivalent, intertextual, etc.

And before that, Leslie wrote:

>  It just calls
> > into question that the author is the "authority" on their own work.
> > Much of the time, authors are not consistently in control of of their
> > own meanings or intentions.
>
>
I think there would be very few literary scholars currently in the field who
would disagree with that statement.  In fact, if there were only a single,
author-imposed reading of a text, literary studies as a field wouldn't
exist.

Nora/nrenka:

> Snape exists as a complex creation largely from the efforts of the
> reader.

  I would never say that's not profound and significant--it's

> essential to the act of reading, which is a cooperative enterprise
> between the reader and his assumptions and the text which the author
> has created.
>

Shelley: Well, exactly, and the range of interpretations a reader can walk
away with are a product of that process and the multivalency of any good
piece of fiction.

And yes, Shape's ambiguity is due in no small part to JKR's craft and
intentions and I agree with you totally in the way you astutely unpacked her
process of creating that ambiguity through the contrast of Harry's pov and
DD & Hermione's verbalized alternate opinions.  And certainly, JKR may close
down some speculative possibilities about all of these characters in the
next book.  And I think you're right, the ambiguity probably won't survive
book seven.  But I bet you anything violently disparate readings of Snape
still will-- because opening up multiple meanings is nature of how texts
work.

And I'd like to, as an aside, point out that I've recently seen fans have
radically different readings of DD's character and Harry's-- who is the POV
character...

Shelley
--
In his experience, no good had ever
come of happy and smiling Gryffindors.
_Pansy's Volcano_ by BlueMidget


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