In Part One, we considered the two layers of interpretation (intention and results), their facets, their two modes of interaction (including meta-intent), and the two purist interpretations- to see only the results (death of the author) and to see only the intention (much less common except as an element of another approach. Today we’ll consider three further stances of interpretation, as well as some complicating elements, before wrapping up.

The third stance is what I term ‘casual.’ It’s where most readers fall. Every reader will make their own mix of the two layers and the facets of those layers, often slightly different for each story, depending on how the meta-intent matches with what is conveyed, how much the reader respects the author, and other factors. In a ‘casual’ analysis, the reader assembles his understanding of the story first from what it actually conveys, but he modifies this to a personal extent by incorporating the meta-intent he perceives (real or not) and the knowledge he has of the author’s intent exterior to the story.

More involved readers can do this consciously on some level; certainly with long-running (especially inconsistent) series, readers tend to have certain parts they consider ‘canon’ and others which are canon only insofar as they match this ‘primary canon.’ This may or may not match author intent. Many would consider The Silmarillion to be canon to The Lord of the Rings, but the first work is easily argued to be less canonical than the second, as it was never considered ‘complete’ by Tolkien (the published version was cobbled together by Christopher Tolkien after his father’s death). Or it could be framed not as a ‘less canon’ work but as a slightly different canon, so that The Lord of the Rings is roughly canonical to The Silmarillion when we’re looking at The Silmarillion, but the same is true of The Silmarillion when we consider The Lord of the Rings. Besides, where do we place the first edition of The Hobbit, a published work Tolkien stated to be imperfectly compatible with The Lord of the Rings, hence the edits Tolkien executed in order to fit it into that later work’s canon? For that matter, where do you place all the lore Tolkien wrote that is not in any of these three works but in his letters or notes?

This problem also appears in a million other instances. Comics are particularly fertile ground for examples; many are perfectly happy to assemble their own canon, semi-canon, and ‘technically canon but not because I don’t like them’ stories, even aside from official canonicity and retcons. Everybody, too, has their own canon based on which stories they’ve read, in a sense, as any story I haven’t read is in a sense not part of my canon, no matter its nominal status. Another area is with stories whose authors give out-of-story commentary. Rowling is a particularly famous example of this, giving a lot of Twitter¹ commentary over the years to alter or establish new facts, but other authors do the same (John McCrae,² for instance). Finally, it is an established fact that sometimes unconsciously but often consciously readers will decide which parts of the story they are willing to consider real (in the fictional reality), with the decision to ‘ignore’ a tragic or disliked ending being not uncommon. See: most of Star Wars (by runtime).

The casual approach thus blends awareness of intent with awareness of the story’s independent reality, taking what the reader wants from either. Sometimes the result is more enjoyable to the reader, sometimes more irritating. Often it mixes in some elements of the next stance we’ll discuss. Nevertheless, this is the standard approach to a story and honestly the sanest (if you have to choose just one), the most correspondent to reality. Of course, that’s easy to say; it can easily become ‘death of the author’ if the individual’s bias is sufficiently towards that layer of meaning, so it has many of the benefits and few of the downsides.

Nevertheless, the same caution must be given as was given for death of the author: just because it is viable and legitimate does not make it the exclusive path. A personal canon or a personal blend of the two layers will produce a personal interpretation, even if its one shared by many others who had similar biases, and any argument for such an interpretation must be made with the recognition that it is equal with other blends, other analyses, in validity (though not necessarily in suitability to purpose- like with death of the author, a particular blend may be more fitting for a certain situation, even if it is to an impassive observer no more valid).

The third stance is Critique. In critique, as defined here, comparison is made between the two layers. The author’s intent is considered and contrasted to the execution. Meta-intent is considered and contrasted both with stated intent and what the story itself conveys. As you have no doubt realized, there is something of Critique in the Casual stance; nevertheless, this merits a distinction. Critique is a tool anyone can and should use; we should ask our stories how well executed they are (though from an analysis perspective, going past interpretation, we should also discriminate on basis of moral purpose- what the author intends or achieves in communicating a particular worldview). This analysis is directed to determining the author’s skill in translating his intent into the story’s reality.

Critique has a purpose, but as can perhaps more clearly be seen with this than the others, it should not be made be-all and end-all. In the first place, it requires a clear analysis in the first two styles before it can be applied; in order to compare and contrast what each level offers us, we must know what each level authors, what the author intended (stance 2) and what he actually conveyed (stance 1). For authors, it should be a common path, as its focus lends itself well to learning the skill of writing- of transmuting intent into story.

While I have called this ‘Critique’, do not think that it encompasses all critique. As previously noted, it does not include the analysis of the moral level of the story, except insofar as that worldview is conveyed with more or less skill. Further, it does not critique the artistic element of the author’s intention, at least not as I have isolated it. A healthy critique of a story (barring the critic being explicitly focused on this element, on comparing the two interpretations) will analyze and weigh out the artistic merits of the intent layer and the conveyed layer both, with often some concern for where their merits differ, considering both that the intent may be more or less beautiful and that the way in which the story fails to convey an element of the intent may be a benefit or detriment to its beauty. It should also, for the Christian, include an analysis of the worldview presented by the story (for all stories present a worldview).

A final stance exists, one tailor-made to be dismissed: disengagement. More uncharitably, I could call it delusion. Here, rather than interpreting one layer or both, rather than deriving meaning from the communication, the reader shapes his perception exactly to his liking, his preconception, his intent. In its extreme, not generally seen, this is actual insanity, effective hallucination. More commonly, people follow a similar process to the Casual stance discussed above, except that instead of consciously excepting certain parts of the canon or choosing certain parts in an effort to shape the story as seems most beautiful (or most in line with the author’s intent or otherwise), they pretend that what they expect or desire is present.

The purpose of including this apparently useless stance is to highlight a danger of interpretation: seeing only what we desire to see. The casual reader, the critique, the death-of-the-author reader, all of them have the potential to interpret not a meaning present in the text or the author’s intention but their own meaning. If this ‘misinterpretation’ of the text is deliberate and presented as it is- such as when intentionally re-interpreting a work in the death of the author framework- it is legitimate, but critics in particular must be careful not to see what they want- whether they want the story to be better than it is (such as wanting to see Rings of Power have a sensical plot) or worse than it is (such as asserting that Samwise and Frodo had to be in a romantic relationship, despite how alien the idea is to work and author alike). We must keep clear eyes.

Interpreting a story can be undertaken for many purposes. It can be for enjoyment, and here a conscious but charitable ‘casual’ approach is generally mete. It can be to learn or to explain to another. In such an endeavor, doubling up on the first two approaches and combining them into ‘critique’ is a good path forward. It can be to communicate a worldview point or particular form of enjoyment (such as is expected in a ‘so bad it’s good’ movie), where death of the author, explicitly engaged in (so as not to lie about the author’s intent), is the best choice. Amidst all this, though, we must not lose sight of the fact that all of these are valid, but that they must all be undertaken with a clear sight (and when communicating them, a clear statement) of their methodology, purpose, strengths, and weaknesses.

God bless.

Footnotes

1 – Why rebrand it to X? Twitter was a better name.

2 – Author of a number of (apparently) very depressing webnovels totaling millions of words. I have not read more than the beginning of one of them, as though he seems a perfectly competent author I’m not interested in atheistic grimdark more than twice as long as The Lord of the Rings. I neither recommend nor particularly warn against his work, except to say that I’ve heard its serious about being grimdark, as well as that it is emphatically not Christian (showing this in implicit materialism, endorsement of sexual perversities, and the like).