deceit Little Lost Riding Hood Why cry, when tears drown your smiles, When truthfulness defiles The very reason of lying? 031120 ... Dafremen Is what you assume after interpreting the story, finding it to be false and speculating on the intentions of the author. Start reading, interpret away, but realize this.. the only intentions you are going to find are based upon your own motivations and perceptions. 031120 ... Death of a Rose dont' (past tense) yourself 031120 ... stork daddy the death of the author is only interesting in its ability to allow the reader the active construction of meaning where as historically that had been seen as something less than objective and sane. This new, freeing development, does not mean however that writers do not have intentions, or that it is purposeless to try and find them, or that, indeed, they have never been correctly uncovered. 031120 ... stork daddy to say...the only conclusions you'll ever draw are your own is to say there's no point in telling a fable. communication isn't that desolate, you just have to be pragmatic about it. 031120 ... Dafremen But when personal opinion about the author is mixed in with the message, by all means, the fable's meaning can and IS distorted by the reader, not the author. A perfect example, was Du Champ's toilet. It was entered on the basis of his name, yet it was a f**king toilet. People are forever placing their biases against or for people on the works created by those people. If the Pope had done the infamous "Piss Christ" by Andre Serrano, people would have come up with some completely different interpretation of what the artist meant. Except the Protestants, of course, who would have been pointing and saying.."See? We told you so! Didn't we tell you?" When people read anything, it would be nice if the piece could remain what it is, but NOOOOO. They have to stick their biases in because monkeys do that. Speaking of which, how goes the blather_stalking business these days? 031120 ... stork daddy i stalk you because i seek to help the misguided. i can't help it...it's my calling. and the point still remains...a piece of art does not exist in a vacuum because words and signs do not exist in a vacuum. and so the larger picture must be looked at. certainly older works must be looked at in the context of their authors understanding of words of those times, and the motivations driving them. all communication is based on a consensus agreement of what words essential and secondary and tertiary meanings are and so on and so forth. you can't really separate the author from the negotiation of meaning that exists. meaning may get distorted, and perhaps that was the author's intention, perhaps it was not, but meaning may get distorted either way. i prefer a reading which takes all relevant factors into consideration before agreeing ats to what communication has taken place. in my mind, looking at the author's intentions is just another avenue of inquiry, another mode of understanding, rather than limiting it. 031121 ... _ didya ever wonder if there was a whoblathes ? 031122 what's it to you? who go blather from