{"id":201,"date":"2016-11-16T01:17:03","date_gmt":"2016-11-16T06:17:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/?p=201"},"modified":"2016-11-16T01:19:52","modified_gmt":"2016-11-16T06:19:52","slug":"meaning-in-literature-where-all-hell-rightfully-breaks-loose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/essay-2\/meaning-in-literature-where-all-hell-rightfully-breaks-loose\/","title":{"rendered":"Meaning in Literature: Where All Hell Rightfully Breaks Loose"},"content":{"rendered":"

One man\u2019s hunger to inspire. A love of mankind. A tragedy. Loneliness. These words speak of an innocence vandalized and a dream crippled in a special character who goes by the name Wing Biddlebaum. His story, titled \u201cHands,\u201d is one among many to come to life in the pages of Sherwood Anderson\u2019s 1919 short story anthology, <\/span>Winesburg, Ohio<\/span><\/i>. It is a remarkable collection of stories that juxtaposes both community and isolation and both love found and love lost in the lives of individuals who strive so hard to exult life and humanity–only to be made so useless in the very communities that need them most. Their silenced voices beseech readers and it wasn\u2019t long before I lent them my ears, heart, and soul. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cHands\u201d is as much the story of Biddlebaum as it is mine. And I say this not to claim for myself Biddlebaum\u2019s experiences out of my empathy for him. Instead, I am claiming ownership of the particular presentation, or <\/span>reading<\/span><\/i>, of \u201cHands\u201d that I used to open this discourse. I \u201cown\u201d my reading of an author\u2019s literary work because it is a product of my deliberate <\/span>construction<\/span><\/i> of what the work means. I say <\/span>constructing<\/span><\/i> as opposed to <\/span>discovering<\/span><\/i> or <\/span>receiving<\/span><\/i> the meaning of a work, almost as if it was solely upon <\/span>myself<\/span><\/i> and needing nothing else to come up with such meaning. But, if this is true, it seems thoroughly radical but entirely possible to say that my meaning comes to exist with little regard for who the author is, let alone what they may have intended to communicate. But I wasn\u2019t prepared to do away with the very figure who has always been a central part of all my experiences reading. The author was my intimate interlocutor. My mentor and alter-ego. Dare I suddenly trivialize Anderson\u2019s role in the meaning of his own work. But, god forbid, could I be deluding myself? That is, do authors really not matter? <\/span><\/p>\n

French literary theorist Roland Barthes seems to think so. For him, the beginning of narration marks the death of the author. Words cannot be any more than \u201cthe very practice of the symbol itself\u201d (Barthes 142). The text is purely verbal, performative, and autonomous, essentially having a life of its own independent of the author (Barthes 145). Wimsatt and Beardsley take this this claim further saying that a work of literature simply <\/span>is<\/span><\/i>, and not representative or indicative of the author\u2019s intent (1375). That is, to get any inkling of the author\u2019s intent is to go back to the <\/span>text<\/span><\/i> itself, to ask how well the <\/span>words<\/span><\/i> succeed in showing authorial intent (Wimsatt and Beardsley 1375). In presenting my meaning of \u201cHands,\u201d then, I am forced to make room for the role of the text as the grounds for justifying my interpretation. It is not Anderson to whom I owe my interpretation, but to the verbal condition of the text. <\/span><\/p>\n

But what exactly <\/span>is<\/span><\/i> this verbal condition of the text? Barthes writes that it is \u201ca tissue of quotations drawn from innumerable centres of culture\u201d (146). Wimsatt and Beardsley trace its origin in the text\u2019s syntax, readers\u2019 common, default understanding of language, all existing literature, and in culture (1381). And E. D. Hirsch describes it as \u201cthe vital potency of language itself\u201d (18). It might help to look at a line from \u201cHands\u201d to help demonstrate what these theorists might mean by verbal condition. For example, my understanding of the following lines, <\/span>\u201cThe story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name,\u201d comes, first and foremost, from my understanding of the denotations and connotations of words such as \u201cstory\u201d and \u201chands\u201d, the logical strucutre of English grammar, the figurative implications of personified \u201chands\u201d, and the cultural framework within which Biddlebaum can be a character, be defined by his hands, and possess a name (Anderson 10). It would follow that my understanding of those lines as referring to the meaning of Biddlebaum\u2019s hands exists because I find the words themselves and their attached linguistic implications in the two lines I\u2019ve just read. And yet, in this interpretive process, the authorial intent is absent, or at best, on the fringes of the textual origins of meaning. The text becomes self-sufficient and inevitably public once it is published, no longer owned or dependent on the very author who brought it into existence (Davies 68). <\/span><\/p>\n

But as much as we seem to credit the text for its role in the meaning of a work, I find that the credit may actually be going to the reader. <\/span>Barthes keenly points this out in admitting that despite the array of different writings and cultures housed in the public object we identify as the text, the reader is the one and only who can and does bring together all the different parts of a text by recognizing all of its diverse origins and possible meanings that none of the characters in the text or the author can recognize (148). It would be as if I as a reader was in a position to identify the many different ways of understanding the meaning of \u201cHands.\u201d But I wouldn\u2019t be, as Barthes says, <\/span>deciphering<\/span><\/i> some secret, ultimate meaning in the text, but <\/span>disentangling<\/span><\/i> the kinds of writing that come together and make possible the text titled \u201cHands\u201d (147). The meaning of \u201cHands\u201d for which I eventually settle emerges from my deliberate choice of what kinds of writing I have disentangled from the collection that is \u201cHands.\u201d Thomas Karshan eloquently articulates the birth of meaning as the \u201cenigmatic combination with the reader’s expectations and the assumptions of the linguistic context in which one reads it” (202). The meaning that I thought encapsulated \u201cHands,\u201d then, is an agreement between myself and the text; Anderson has neither given nor been expected to give permission for me to state the meaning of his work. <\/span><\/p>\n

Yet, what unsettles me is that arguments such as these — positioning readers as \u201cdisentanglers\u201d and mere partners with the text — try to distance the reader from the structural implications of the text. But are readers really so distant, if at all, from the text just because the text is an autonomous, public linguistic piece? Hirsch attempts to restore the role of the reader by claiming words would be nothing without someone to understand them (13). Any reading I develop upon reading, say, the following line from \u201cHands\u201d, \u201cIn the darkness he [Biddlebaum] could not see the hands and they became quiet,\u201d rests on my able to distinguish those words as meaningful from aimless markings on a page, or even as purely grammatical and syntactical placeholders (16). The text and all its verbal glory are still there but they amount to nothing were it not for the reader who makes the words bear value and give them \u201cverbal unity\u201d (Sartre 30). <\/span><\/p>\n

But the reader does more than just make the text \u201ccome to life.\u201d Theodor Adorno writes that \u201cThe work of art becomes an appeal to subjects, because it is itself nothing other than a declaration by a subject of his own choice or failure to choose\u201d (78). The reader <\/span>declares<\/span><\/i> the work of literature according to their <\/span>choice<\/span><\/i>. Here, Adorno introduces a different approach, one that hits closer to how I come to appreciate \u201cHands,\u201d to understanding the relationship between the work of literature and the reader. The work of literature is an object that appeals to readers, depending on their preference that is wholly free-willed. This relationship returns the focus back onto the reader by whose preferences the text fulfills its role to impact the reader. In other words, the meaning that has stood out to me as <\/span>aesthetically interesting<\/span><\/i> from my reading of \u201cHands\u201d supersedes not only authorial intent but the text as well. <\/span><\/p>\n

To speak of aesthetic interest, however, is to speak of the goals that readers expect to reach after reading a work of literature. So far, I have shown that readers construct meaning from the text by interpreting the text regardless of the author\u2019s intentions. But Knapp and Michaels push back saying interpretation of a work only follows if there was a speaker trying to communicate a message (53). This assumes that the reader only interprets a text in order to figure out what the speaker, or the author, is trying to say. But figuring out authorial intent, if that is even possible, is only one among many goals: the text\u2019s aesthetic success being one of them. More importantly, authorial intent need not be prioritized over any other possible reading of the text as some kind of <\/span>standard<\/span><\/i> for judging the success of the text.<\/span><\/p>\n

Frankly speaking however, I initially read \u201cHands\u201d with the hopes of discovering what hidden meaning Anderson had in store for me and formulated a meaning that I thought was the closest approximation of, if not exactly, what Anderson intended to communicate. And I think it is safe to say that the casual reader wouldn\u2019t act too differently when picking up a novel at the bookstore. You may have also experienced those innumerable times in middle school where teachers ask, \u201cWell, what do you think the author is trying to tell us?\u201d and \u201cWhy does your interpretation seem more correct than another\u2019s?\u201d Perhaps years of being conditioned to not only seek authorial intent but also treat it as the correct and only way of understanding a text made me hesitate to abandon the author completely from the meaning of a text. But even more interesting is the underlying assumption that there <\/span>needs<\/span><\/i> to be some correct, single way of interpreting a text. Richard Shusterman gives a very compelling account of why many think this need exists:<\/span><\/p>\n

to deal only with the intention of the author…provides, at least in theory, a single, determinate, unchanging focus and standard for all different readings or interpretations of the work to converge upon and be judged by their fidelity to such intention\u2026[for] Without it there is simply too much freedom, indeterminacy, and instability in the public linguistic conventions governing meaning. (67, 69)<\/span><\/p>\n

His insight reveals something understandably compelling. And yet, what is so interesting about this attachment to what Shusterman terms \u201ccognitive monism in interpretive intentions,\u201d is the undeniably aggressive and almost competitive hunt to discover the best reading of a text. And this was not the kind of attitude I wished to hold in my meaning of \u201cHands.\u201d All this time, I was only constructing meanings to eagerly capture what I presumed already existed, lying-in-wait, deep within the text; as if my \u201csuccessful\u201d seizure of the text\u2019s \u201ctrue\u201d meaning echoed Caesar\u2019s own Veni, Vidi, Vici! But it never crossed my mind that this meaning might merely be a projection of what <\/span>I<\/span><\/i> hoped to gain from \u201cHands\u201d and what the implications of the purely verbal condition of the text have led me to believe. <\/span><\/p>\n

For E. D. Hirsch, to do away with interpretive monism is to commit to a \u201cchaotic democracy of \u2018readings\u2019\u201d (13). For him, the absence of some \u201cdivine criteria\u201d parametrized by authorial intent by which readings can be judged leaves us too unmoored and \u201creject[s] the only compelling normative principle that could lend validity to an interpretation\u201d (14). His view, then, completely undermines the validity of my reading of \u201cHands,\u201d but I can\u2019t say I\u2019m inclined to agree with Hirsch by deeming my interpretation as invalid. To agree with Hirsch would mean I could not settle for how I\u2019ve appreciated \u201cHands\u201d as a story of a community of isolated individuals. My own interpretations would constantly need to be scrapped for what was the \u201ccorrect\u201d way of appreciating \u201cHands\u201d by determining Anderson\u2019s intent, which is a task that Wimsatt and Beardsley claim is not only unwanted, but impossible (1375). <\/span><\/p>\n

What Hirsch seems to disregard in latching onto matters of truth and correctness is the importance of a work\u2019s aesthetic rewards for readers. Davies emphasizes reading with this goal of aesthetic interest in mind and argues that aesthetically pleasing accounts of a work of literature bypass the complications ensuing from Hirsch\u2019s strict criteria for the \u201cbest\u201d reading. For Davies, readers seek a reading of the text that is most aesthetically rewarding to them, which justifiably functions independently of the author and whatever aesthetic reading they preferred (65). On this note, if my reading of Biddlebaum as a pitiful character whose desire to inspire children to dream was wrongfully misunderstood by his community is what I find most aesthetically pleasing about \u201cHands,\u201d that is the end all be all. Furthermore, if I am moved by \u201cHands\u201d as being <\/span>a story that not only beseeches the compassion of its readers, but compels readers to be more present in their lives and in those of others, I am again more than welcome to hold that view without objection. For there is no standard to which aesthetically pleasing accounts can or should be judged; truth has no place in aesthetic interest.<\/span> While in Hirsch\u2019s sense, my readings are not valid, in Davies\u2019 sense, my readings are aesthetically rewarding and perhaps even aesthetically superior to the author\u2019s intention, thus, restoring the \u201cvalidity\u201d in my readings that Hirsch seems to care so much about. <\/span><\/p>\n

Recognizing the importance of aesthetic value in works of literature is, however, a way in which not only multiple readings of a work of literature can retain their dignity, but also retain the dignity of authors by respecting them in the ways they actually do matter. That is, while I believe it is ultimately the reader who ends up determining the meaning of a work, and is fully justified for doing so, it is the author who is accredited for bringing into existence works of literature, which are simultaneously works of art, that are willfully made public in the hopes of interesting their readers. Sartre calls this hope to interest as \u201cdeepest tendencies\u201d which are motivations that dictated the author to construct their work; but I do not go further to try and guess or idolize Anderson\u2019s \u201cdeepest tendencies\u201d (26). In other words, while I reserve the right to be confident and justified in my interpretation of \u201cHands,\u201d I also recognize that the story is purposeful and not some random salad-bowl of words. Anderson created an aesthetic presence deserving of my attention meant to be read, pored over, reflected upon, and enjoyed. And to this respect, he matters. <\/span><\/p>\n

Works Cited<\/span><\/p>\n

Adorno, Theodor. \u201cCommitment.\u201d [1974] <\/span>New Left Review<\/span><\/i>, Trans. Francis McDonagh, n.d. p.78.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Anderson, Sherwood. \u201cHands.\u201d <\/span>Winesburg, Ohio<\/span><\/i>. New York: E. W. Huebsch, 1919. 7-17. <\/span><\/p>\n

Barthes, Roland. \u201cThe Death of the Author.\u201d <\/span>Image – Music – Text<\/span><\/i>, Ed. and trans. Stephen Heath. <\/span>New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 142-148.<\/span><\/p>\n

Davies, Stephen. \u201cThe Aesthetic Relevance of Authors\u2019 and Painters\u2019 Intentions.\u201d <\/span>The Journal of <\/span><\/i>Aesthetics and Art Criticism<\/span><\/i>, vol. 41, no. 1, 1982, pp. 65\u201376.\u00a0<\/span>www.jstor.org\/stable\/430824.<\/span><\/p>\n

Hirsch, E. D. \u201cIn Defense of the Author.\u201d <\/span>Intention Interpretation<\/span><\/i>, Ed. Gary Iseminger. Temple <\/span>University Press, 1992, pp. 11\u201323, www.jstor.org\/stable\/j.ctt14bs87q.5.<\/span><\/p>\n

Karshan, Thomas. \u201cDeaths of the Authors.\u201d <\/span>Shades of Laura: Vladimir Nabokov’s Last Novel, <\/span><\/i>The Original of Laura<\/span><\/i>, Edited by Yuri Leving, McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2013,\u00a0<\/span>201\u2013204, www.jstor.org\/stable\/j.ctt32b8m4.23<\/span><\/p>\n

Knapp, Steven and Walter Benn Michaels. \u201cThe Impossibility of Intentionless Meaning.\u201d <\/span>Intention Interpretation<\/span><\/i>, Ed. Gary Iseminger. Temple University Press, 1992, pp. 51\u201364, <\/span>www.jstor.org\/stable\/j.ctt14bs87q.8.<\/span><\/p>\n

Sartre, Jean-Paul. \u201cWhat is Literature?\u201d [1905]<\/span>\u201cWhat is Literature?\u201d And Other Essays<\/span><\/i>, Ed. <\/span>Steven Ungar. President and Fellows of Harvard College, 1988, pp. 25-47. <\/span><\/p>\n

Wimsatt, William K. and Monroe C. Beardsley. \u201cThe Intentional Fallacy.\u201d [1946] <\/span>The Norton <\/span><\/i>Anthology of Theory and Criticism<\/span><\/i>, Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. W.W. Norton &\u00a0<\/span>Company, 2010. 1374-1387.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One man\u2019s hunger to inspire. A love of mankind. A tragedy. Loneliness. These words speak of an innocence vandalized and a dream crippled in a special character who goes by the name Wing Biddlebaum. His story, titled \u201cHands,\u201d is one … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1316,"featured_media":202,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-essay-2"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1316"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=201"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":206,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/201\/revisions\/206"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.williams.edu\/engl-209-fall16\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}