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Haha someone didn’t get to say “first!”.
You just did.
My favorite occurrence of this was when we read “Strange Fruit” in English class, and I was one of 3 people who understood that it was about lynching instead of a bunch of trees with star fruit on them.
I think the Green Circle should be WAY bigger
Sorry if I’m wrong, but doesn’t that not matter? The point of this graph is that you never think the same way the author does…
well if the green one was bigger that means you thought it was A LOT MORE than what the author did. I think that there should be a third completely disconnected (and entirely LARGER) circle labeled “What the PROFESSOR thought meant”.
urgh!
“thought it meant”
I don’t think you understand Venn Diagrams.
I disagree. I thought the exact same thing.
Same thing goes with rock songs.
Books also. Sometimes, things are written just to be gross, with no deeper meaning at all.
South park much?
there should be another, huuuuuuuuge circle saying “what your english teacher thought they meant”
I thought they should replace the entire ‘what you thought they meant’ circle with the ‘english teacher’ one…
woops. I didn’t read this far before my comment above. …. I guess ‘ditto’s’ are in order.
They forgot “Teacher’s interpretation”.
That’s what I was about to say. Teacher interpretation needs to be way out in left field imho
There’s a story on MLIA where the author of a book came to talk at a school and one of the teachers that was obsessed with his book kept telling the students about the hidden meanings and symbolism and what not. The teacher asked the guy during the interview portion about how X symbolized Y and how he thought that up and the Author just goes, “Umm… what are you talking about?”
Indeed!
I had a friend who wrote a paper about a poem by a poet who was a family friend, and the teacher totally slammed him for his interpretation of the verse. My friend talked to the poet and the poet confirmed his interpretation and even enhanced it. The teacher wouldn’t believe it and gave my friend a bad grade anyway. The teacher was WAY too wrapped up in his own interpretation (that and he had been teaching it that way for YEARS).
First things first, literature is art and therefor open to interpretation. If the teacher thought that the message in the book was X and the author says it’s Y neither is wrong in the world of English literature. Any author who thinks their word will be worth merit to most critics is out of his mind. Most critics of English literature believe that the meaning lies elsewhere. Some say that it lies in just the text itself, some say it lies in the author’s life and what that author has had to say about the work of art, some say the meaning has very little to do with the written word, and some say it is only influenced by what was going on in the world at the time. The point is anyone can look at a painting and feel what they feel/see what they see and it’s not wrong. The same goes for literature. There technically is no right or wrong, it’s all about your interpretation. Now whether or not your teacher sees that is another story.
But more to the point, the author to many critics doesn’t know what he meant. More importantly the author doesn’t know the impact of their words.
Personally, I think any interpretation is correct as long as it’s not the literalist’s point of view.
So the author doesn’t know what he meant when he wrote it? I would beg to differ here. I’m pretty damn sure the aither knew what he was trying to get across when he wrote it, that’s kind of the whole point of writing it down in the first place.
Just because English teachers and critics want to assign more meaning to his writing than the author ever intended, that does not, in fact, change the authors original meaning. It just makes those english teachers and critics over analytical asshats.
Graph maker, please capitalize your graph correctly. Thank you.
Wow… I thought you were seriously being some type of nerd there, until I saw your name.
Both circles could coincide as “Legitimate Interpretations.”
I truly hate stupid English teachers who force their interpretation of a poem onto their students. I also hate authors who get angry when people interpret their work differently than they meant it. Anyone with a basic grasp of hermeneutic theory will realize that the literary work, as a pliable entity, can have no one “true” meaning that overrides all others. Yes, I am a nerd.
I like this graph a lot, but I think most people should realize that what the author meant doesn’t mean squat. If he/she couldn’t convey it clearly enough, it’s a bad poem.
I disagree, again. I’m doing that a lot here. I think that the author’s interpretation is perfectly valid, and if it isn’t immediately apparent, that doesn’t make a poem bad.
About the rest, I agree. Especially the nerd thing.
Or in word form,why AP English is still a waste of time. I can’t even begin to think of how many times this has entered my head…
A lot of poets don’t write with a specific meaning in mind and actually write with the purpose of having people interpret their work in their own unique ways. When I got my degree in Creative Writing, my professors always told us to never, ever sit down with the intention of writing something with a set “meaning” because more often than not it turns into something else anyway. So basically what I mean is, every interpretation of every work is valid.
The same goes for prose, honestly. Teachers have been lauding Fahrenheit 451 for decades as being anti-book-burning and anti-nanny-state, whereas Ray Bradbury, surprised by this, revealed that his intention had been to criticise how important television had become to people (but he liked the alternative interpretation as well).
This graph is a heinous representation of the art of English criticism. There are 4 ways to criticize literature and one is thinking EXACTLY the way the artist did. In fact that’s what you get shoved down your throat by most high school English teachers. You get told that the only true way to analyze the poem/novel/story/what have you is to look at it from the author’s point of view. Most people do no criticize literature that way. I just want to point that out. This Venn diagram is unrealistic.
Reminds me of my Lit. Analysis class last summer…although I think that was more due to the crazy professor than me. Just sayin’.
I think this could also apply to the bible…
ZING!
Win at life.