Authorial Intent Quotes

“If there really is such a thing as turning in one's grave, Shakespeare must get a lot of exercise.”
― George Orwell, All Art is Propaganda: Critical Essays

“My father used to say that all protagonists were versions of the author who wrote them—even if it meant the author had to acknowledge a side of himself that he did not know existed. It just required courage.”
― Catherine Lowell, The Madwoman Upstairs

“Things belong to the people that use them, not to the people who create them.”
― John Green

“On the one hand we need the image of "the text" in order to focus on anything at all; on the other hand we use the metaphor of "reading" to signal that our apprehension of a text will always be partial, that we never quite reach the "text itself," a realization that has led certain critics to question the very existence of such an object.”
― Espen J. Aarseth, Cybertext: Perspectives on Ergodic Literature

“There are good theological reasons to reject making authorial intention the goal of the interpretation of Scripture. First, we must recognize that what has traditionally been considered authoritative for the church is Scripture, not the intentions, real or imagined, of the original authors. Yes, Christian interpreters throughout history have talked about what Paul or some other biblical writer may have meant to say, but that has traditionally not been taken to limit the meaning of the text to that intention. Thus, even if the psalmist intended to speak of David or some other king of ancient Israel, the church has always considered it legitimate to interpret the psalm as referring also—or even only or supremely—to Christ. Even if the human authors did not intend to affirm the Trinity in the first century, the church may legitimately interpret Scripture in Trinitarian terms. The church has traditionally not located the site of inspiration to be in the mind of the human author but in the text of Scripture itself. The shift to concentrating on the intentions of the human author is something that only happened in the modern era, with the rise of historical criticism.”
― Dale B. Martin, Sex and the Single Savior: Gender and Sexuality in Biblical Interpretation

“I am naked as I type this. I was naked writing the whole damn book.”
― Peter Watts, Echopraxia

“Now the raison d'etre of any work of art lies in the responses of those who see, hear, or read it, but its value lies only in the responses of those who are attuned to it; and in the realm of literature that means those who understand it. In its fullest sense, understanding means knowing its creator, the materials he worked with, what he did with them, and why. When one cannot know the author, one must be content with some knowledge of his milieu and his age. The reader who is content with his subjective reactions alone runs the risk of interpreting the work of art in a fashion which would evoke peals of laughter from the author. He also shows his lack of interest in the creative process which produced the work of art.”
― Roger Sherman Loomis, The Development of Arthurian Romance