JKR's Opinion

[a_svirn]

No: HPFGUIDX 179870

I am reposting it because I snipped Carol too early at first.

Re: JKR's Opinion 

> Carol:
>
> Authorial intention is problematic for a number of reasons, among
them
> that much of the writing process is unconscious,

a_svirn:
Is it though? I wonder how it can be possible. I suppose Ginny when
she wrote "enemies of the Heir beware" on the wall did it
unconsciously, but her circumstances were somewhat unique. To write a
coherent chapter, let along the whole series unconsciously is a bit
of a stretch, I'd say.

> Carol:
so an author is not
> always aware of her own intentions, not to mention that the
intentions
> may change as she writes. Even if she's aware of her own intentions,
> she may not have succeeded in conveying them to the reader.

a_svirn:
Here you give three contradictory statements at once. The first one
seems to me rather patronising – obviously you exempt literary
critics from the charge of not knowing one's own intentions. It's
only poor authors who are at mercy of their subconscious and cannot
account for theirs. Literary critics (i.e. all of us, listers, to
some extent) on the contrary are fortunately rational – they know
their own mind, they know how authors' minds work (or do not work as
the case may be). The can see between the lines right through
authors' subconscious and fish in its murky depths the meanings and
intentions to which the authors themselves are oblivious. I suppose
it may be true in some cases – when the author in question is lousy
and the critic in charge is brilliant. Then again, why would a
brilliant critic waste his or her time on a lousy author? And here is
another question I always found intriguing – do critics not have
subconscious? If they do, how come they are so very different from
authors? How can they be sure of their own intentions? Or we of
theirs?

The second statement suggests that authors do know their intentions
(hooray!), but their natures are notoriously fickle – they change
constantly. This has certainly been known to happen, but it does not –
normally – mean that the final product is incoherent. Shakespeare
obviously intended at some point to include the Falstaff character in
a play about Henry V, but then discarded the idea. Count Tolstoy
intended for one of his main characters in the War and Peace to
become a Decembrist (a noble rebel), but he ended up making him a
contented family man instead. Yet both Shakespeare and Tolstoy were
presumably in their right mind and in a possession of all their
faculties when they changed their minds. All the more interesting for
us to speculate why did they do so, and what had influenced their
choice. The change of an author's intentions is not something
unimportant it is what makes their works even more interesting to
contemplate.

Unlike the first two of your statements your third suggestion is not
so much a general statement on literary work, but an assertion that
it can be at times unsatisfactory. *Shrug* . Obviously it can. But it
doesn't mean that an author's intentions don't count. Even to state
that Rowling has failed to make Ginny "spunky and funny", you'd have
to recognise that she had this intent in the first place and
presumably was aware of it in her own mind. Otherwise we can't even
hold her responsible for her own failure.

a_svirn