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Reading this summer

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Tom:

--- Quote from: loam on 12 Jun 2008, 02:37 ---A. I would argue that Advanved English would have to be an awesome class, based on irony points alone.

B. Anyone who thinks that hitchhiker's guide needs to be analyzed, over or no, needs to be shot.

--- End quote ---

A. More people at my school do this course than those who do the Standard course.

B. Yeah, the Board of Studies is a little wack.

jimbunny:
The New Critics had been focusing on the text alone a decade before Barthes. There are similarities between the New Criticism and post-structuralism, but what I think Barthes was after was the supposed individuality of the author-creator. One of the motivating ideas of post-structuralism is the denial of individuality (a hang-up of the modernists): both of the author and of the text (or of the individuality of meaning within a text). You're right that The Death of the Author is all about intertextuality, in the sense that "the text" gets redefined as something spread across and pieced together of many works and becomes not the product of a single person but a host of plugged-in mouthboxes that all speak the narrative of a particular period.

Of course, it'd be hard to give a fair summary of Barthes or most of the other post-structuralists, because they're so unbelievably, ridiculously dense. In the end, I can't help thinking that that's just a matter of convenience.

As far as good examples of post-structuralism go, I think J. Hillis Miller is usually pretty straightforward, relatively speaking. He's definitely guilty of the "riffing" rynne mentioned... but when your whole MO is that meaning in a text is fundamentally undecidable, that's probably to be expected. And some of that riffing is pretty interesting to read, I must say.

De_El:
Guys: this summer I am going to read the final volume of OMG Y: The Last Man.
 
Also as I am like 17 I was totally unaware of this whole "Death of the Author" business.  It seems like something I'd really enjoy arguing about. Non-fiction tyme? Perhaps. Although I';ve been really busy and still haven't finished The Idiot.

Lines:
I don't really agree with death of the author. I feel it's the same as the idea of death of the artist and as an artist, I feel it's kind of impossible to remove yourself from your work. You may be able to remove your opinions and emotions, but it's still your hand that creates it, be it art or literature.

Oli:
Arguably the readers/viewers/audience of the art have as much to do with the creation of and the meaning within art as the artist does.  Meaning simply because it is not up to the artist to say that their work is about X and only X because if I genuinely think it's about Y then, to me, it's about Y.  Creation because art is always created with an audience in mind, obviously however the artist can be their own audience.

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