I addressed ‘death of the author’ quite early on in this blog’s career, and frankly, when I reviewed that article a half a year later, I was unimpressed. Thus, today I’ll be returning to the topic, giving what I believe will be a more balanced assessment. The simple fact which ‘death of the author’ works off of is the tripartite nature of communication, how it produces two different sets of results. Communication is made of three parts: communicator, communicated, and communicated to. The first, in the case of a book, is the author; the second is the story itself, and the third is the reader. From this set we get the two basic layers of end-results: the author’s intent and what the communicated story says in itself.

Before evaluating the basic interpretative positions that spring from these two layers, we should note two elements which will become important. First, both layers have facets of difference within them which mean different people will receive different meanings. In part this rises from the difference between different readers; some people will simply understand certain parts of the story better or worse than others. More variance will rise in situations with more than one author; indeed, depending on persnicketiness, even a singular author is likely to change some element of his intent over time, either consciously or through not remembering everything perfectly. Differences will also exist between what elements the readers consider relevant, what parts of the story they emphasize, what sequels or prequels they know about or consider canon, what supplemental material, author statements, or biographical information they know or care about.

Second, these two layers have two primary interactions with each other. On the one hand, they can be compared and contrasted; what is conveyed by the story alone can be compared to what the author seems to intend, discrepancies noted and coherencies admired. On the other hand, the line between them can blur. One of the primary ways a reader discerns author intent is through the story itself, what it conveys of the author’s intent. This is not the same as what the story conveys, mind you, though heavily connected. A story can clearly intend that a character be perceived as a wise mentor to the protagonist while conveying the idea that he’s actually a malicious schemer (while I have not read the series, I am under the impression that the Harry Potter books had this effect on some readers regarding Dumbledore). Both the author’s intent and the actual impression are conveyed by the story; for convenience, we’ll be calling this ‘meta-intent’ today.¹

Stances

First, let’s look at Death of the Author itself. Under this lens at its peak, the intent of the author is utterly disregarded. In some cases, this means considering only the story in question, in others the entirety of the stories connected to that story by a shared fictional world.² In its purest form, this stance does not consider meta-intent; only that which is truly internal to the fictional world is considered.

Such an analysis has certain merits. Death of the author works well for furthering an understanding of the work, for instance. In some cases, people intentionally reinterpret a work contrary to the author’s intent; this reinterpretation is sometimes congruent to what the story separate from the author conveys. An example of this done poorly is Starship Troopers, a near libertarian political treatise in novel form which has popularly been considered a pro-fascism screed (for mostly aesthetic reasons). An example of this done well is the Starship Troopers movie (the first one), which was made with the intent of satirizing the fascism the director assumed to exist in the original work and accidentally endorsed much of the original’s libertarianism.³

The pitfall of death of the author is when an adherent declares it as the one true stance. This is a legitimate way of looking at a story, so long as it does not assert that it is the only right way. Considering only what the story conveys is not inherently superior to considering also what the author intends; it must be kept as one among equals, alongside other useful, legitimate perspectives. It has a purpose, and while it is acting on that purpose, it is a tool to maintain in our tool chest. Each useful stance must be viewed not as a pinnacle but as a part of assembling a comprehensive understanding of the story (where this comprehensive understanding, consisting of each analysis separately and cross-referenced, is greater than any individual part). This does not mean, however, that a death of the author analysis is not the best analysis for a particular situation or purpose, whether of explanation, enjoyment, or proselytism (to religion, politic, or otherwise); often it is, and often it is not.

The second stance to consider is what I will term ‘intent of the author.’ In this analysis, rarely seen in its purist form, not the actual story but what the author intended by the story is analyzed. Perhaps the most mundane example is when a mother looks at the rather incoherent stick figures which her child has labeled as ‘mom, dad, brother, and doggy (and me)’. While recognizing the remarkably lack of a resemblance to their intention, this mother will generally assess them in terms of intent (as well as the artist’s capability) and be much flattered. It’s the thought that counts.

As we can see, this analysis is not particularly common as a primary. If somebody assesses a movie by saying, ‘It was amazing how the hero saved all those people from death,’ and you know said hero actually only saved them from stubbing their toes, even if the authors clearly intended the stubbed toes to count as mortal wounds, you’re not going to give that analysis much weight (and you shouldn’t). No, this analysis, in its purest form, is useful (very useful) as a part of another, more balanced analysis, one mixed with analysis of the layer of what the story conveyed in actuality.

Here it will benefit us to distinguish between different means of assessing intent. First, we can assess intent by looking for in-story clues; this is finding the meta-intent, as I have termed it. Second, we can assess intent through knowing what the author said his intent was. Third, we can assess intent by inferring from knowledge of the author what he intended (somewhat shakier than first, except in the clearest situations- we can be confident, for instance, that an author with a long history of hating murderers is not advocating rewarding murderers).

These first two stances are the purist paths. In the first, we see only the author’s results, and at most we may account for meta-intent, the intent the story communicates amidst carrying out said intent. In the second, we see only the author’s intent, possibly as it is communicated in meta-intent. As we have noted, both are viable but neither is everything. Each has a purpose (though the first has greater independence). Next week we’ll consider three more stances (to hit five total), rounding it all out.

Footnotes

1 – Early installment weirdness, such as I feel whenever I read Bilbo’s approach to Rivendell in The Hobbit, or as can be found in elements of The Book of Lost Tales, are related to this, and recognizing it requires recognizing this phenomenon.

2 – Two romance novels which consider each other canon (or in which one is considered canon by the other but not vice versa) are in a shared fictional world as much as the most epic of high fantasy.

3 – To be clear, I have not read or watched either; much of my analysis here is based on this video. Also, Heinlein, from what I hear of his other works, was quite far from a Christian or a role model (his writing has a rather depraved viewpoint on sex).