Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Vester]

No, Death of the Author is a bad idea if the author is explicitly entwined with the work. Ever read Haruki Murakami? Something like that. DOTA is nearly impossible with him.

[Pathos]

No, Death of the Author is a bad idea if the author is explicitly entwined with the work. Ever read Haruki Murakami? Something like that. DOTA is nearly impossible with him.

See, I've only ever seen that as a problem with translation works, like Kafka, since much of the meaning is lost in the the change in idioms and specific words. If I'm reading it in it's original language, and as long as it's not intensely derivative and referencing other works, you can generally get the jist of it ( or an interpretation that's probably more true than the original author's work, for yourself at least ) from reading it yourself.

And, yes, I'd count works such as Shakespeare to be of a different language. For obvious reasons.

[Vester]

Translation problems aside, Murakami does tend to put a lot of himself into his works, to the point that interpretation would be really hard if you don't know him. That Sharpie Cakes story comes to mind.

[piecewise]

I said that the analysis that Pathos put forth seems shoehorned in because the poem doesn't seem to have any deeper meaning. As Freud said, sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. But to actually properly analyze it I would have to know the ideals of the writer and the time frame of the writing.

I disagree. I think that being heavily invested in the public politics and beliefs of the authour may actually dilute our understanding of a piece. When I started university, my English prof was very adamant about not letting us know anything about authours before we studied their work.

I understand the reasoning for doing such a thing with new students since it's rather easy to be swayed before actually attempting to analyze a piece, but the reality (as I see it) is that to truly understand a work you must know both the work itself and the author. For me to confidently analyze a piece I would either need to see more of the author's work or know something about him. Otherwise I'll just kinda be swinging wild and trying to figure out which of possibly dozens of meanings can be affixed to the imagery of the poem.

As an example, would it really be possible to pick up on the complex and often obscure mathematic concepts of Carroll's works if not for our knowledge of his profession? Its possible, yes, but would be infinitely more difficult simply because we're not looking for them.

In my opinion this piece is simply horror of war, while Pathos seems to think its more whore of war.

[Pathos]

As an example, would it really be possible to pick up on the complex and often obscure mathematic concepts which Carroll's works if not for our knowledge of his profession?

In my opinion this piece is simply horror of war, while Pathos seems to think its more whore of war.

Well, Supermikhail is Russian and male and therefore a communist, vodka drinking Slav with a penchant for ze pretty ladies, so my theory spun from scratch is clearly the correct one.

As an example, would it really be possible to pick up on the complex and often obscure mathematic concepts which Carroll's works if not for our knowledge of his profession?

Probably, they'd just be one theory amongst many, though.

[piecewise]

As an example, would it really be possible to pick up on the complex and often obscure mathematic concepts which Carroll's works if not for our knowledge of his profession?

In my opinion this piece is simply horror of war, while Pathos seems to think its more whore of war.

Well, Supermikhail is Russian and male and therefore a communist, vodka drinking Slav with a penchant for ze pretty ladies, so my theory spun from scratch is clearly the correct one.

As an example, would it really be possible to pick up on the complex and often obscure mathematic concepts which Carroll's works if not for our knowledge of his profession?

Probably, they'd just be one theory amongst many, though.

Which is the problem of course. You can throw out all sorts of theories about the meaning of the text but it usually takes a good understanding of the author to choose which one is the "most correct". Personally, if we didn't know Carroll's identity I highly doubt that mathematics would really come up in the debate in any great way.

[Pathos]

Oh, the only time I can think of a person needing to know the author's opinion on things is political works, like ( and it horrifies me to call this a "political work", when it's really just an author wankfest ) Atlas Shrugged.

But that's just because it's like reading a god damn parody.

[Grakelin]

Atlas Shrugged isn't a political work.

It's Ayn Rand jerking over a piece of paper for 1000 pages.

[piecewise]

Atlas Shrugged isn't a political work.

It's Ayn Rand jerking over a piece of paper for 1000 pages.

And sadly she somehow managed to get 3 of those sticky masturbatory spurts published.

[Boksi]

When will John Galt shut the fuck up?

[piecewise]

When will John Galt shut the fuck up?

When people bow down to his awesomeness and let him do whatever the fuck he wants because he's awesome.

[Pathos]

When will John Galt shut the fuck up?

A friend of mine thought it was a satire of how capitalists talk about how great capitalism is all the time.

He was wrong.

[Qmarx]

The thing about literary analysis is that you don't get marks for being right, you get marks for the process and the foundations of what you've said.

If Saved By the Bell was a Christian allegory for you, then it is not 'wrong'. There is no right or wrong, just stronger or weaker choices.

It's hard to explain the difference, but after you've seen a few analyses/performances/whatevers, you will start to understand.

Gah.  Stop.  Just... Stop.  I know that in the seedy areas of the internet you frequent it's perfectly fine to make death threats about people you haven't met, but it was far over the line to look up his real life address and start stalking him.  Seriously, that's just creepy.  And the long list of things you're planning on doing... just wrong.

I believe I've made my point.

[Jackrabbit]

Except you do need to support your analysis. Sherlock Holmes did this and he didn't exist, so you should do it too.

[FelixtheCats]

 I like it 

 for some reason I imagined george carlin reading it as beat poetry, to an applause of finger snaps.