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> What does the author wanted to tell us with this story." Because -> The author never wrote that down. And deriving their intentions from a fictional text felt just like making shit up

It’s an exercise in engaging intellectually with the work. It’s not about knowing for a fact what the author wanted to communicate. Art is about engaging with human emotions and thoughts, not about deriving specific facts.

True, but that does not mean that the average teacher won't grade you badly if your interpretation is completely opposed to their and what was discussed during lessons.

Yeah, I had similar bad teacher experiences. But also had good ones who pushed us to come up with our own interpretations and defend them

There are bad teachers, sure. There are also bad students who think that the issue was that they weren't being taught when it was actually that they weren't trying to learn.

Bad teachers are the default, and good ones exception, maybe 10:1. It's an underpaid, overworked job mostly.

> Art is about engaging with human emotions and thoughts

Exactly. Still, that does actually not contradict what I wrote. You can still do this from a viewpoint of Structuralism, Formalism, Reader Centric Schools of Interpretation and Author Centric Schools of Interpretation.

Non of those are less intellectually" engaging with the work. Differently - and in my personal opinion more or less intellectually rewarding - yes. But not less or more.

It's not just the reader engaging in the work, but the author. If the author can't or is unwilling to put in any actual work, and also lies about it, I've lost all respect and interest in them. Saying you only care about the message and not the messenger is sort of like saying you only care about the words coming out of your friend's mouth but not your friend.

> I hated the question of teachers asking: "What does the author wanted to tell us with this story." Because -> The author never wrote that down. And deriving their intentions from a fictional text felt just like making shit up. You either hit the interpretation of your teacher or received a bad grade.

I think this might be the most pernicious strain of anti-intellectualism online: the idea that there is no subtext, that a text only communicates exactly what it lays out on the surface level. That's not at all what Barthes was saying; you've misunderstood him.

Writing is not a noiseless transmission of thoughts, and thoughts themselves are not totally uninfluenced by the outside world, and people do not always state exactly what they mean in the simplest possible words, and words are understood by the reader in ways that writers did not intend. At every stage, there is the possibility of subtext and context being present.

Your teachers weren't trying to get you to fix on the one perfect interpretation, because that idea (Barthes would agree) doesn't really make sense. Instead, they wanted you to interpret, explain, and justify in a complex and ambiguous space.

> That's not at all what Barthes was saying; you've misunderstood him.

Thanks for misrepresenting me. Or willfully miunderstanding me. But hey. No qualms here.

Just that I never said: > the idea that there is no subtext, that a text only communicates exactly what it lays out on the surface level.

Not sure though, what made you read that into my writing (and I am aware of the ironiy here). I actually read Barthes. And not only him. I actually used him and his ways of looking, together with thelikes of Genette and others when doing my thesis work (and before).

Because their depth and their way of looking at the depth within text was what fascinated me.

I always compared them to trying to understand the bones, the organs, the muscles and sinues of a text, compared to a surface level way we were taught in school. Combine that with a more culturally anthropologic way of looking at topics in literature and outside of it, more like Focault did (as an example) and my time in university was actually one that I cherrish deeply.

Edit: > Your teachers weren't trying to get you to fix on the one perfect interpretation, because that idea (Barthes would agree) doesn't really make sense. Instead, they wanted you to interpret, explain, and justify in a complex and ambiguous space.

I have to disagree here. My university teachers mostly did. In school, my experience sadly was quite different. In school there was in most cases and with most teachers only one correct way of interpreting a work of literature. Regardless how well you argued your interpretation.

But I actually love the discussion. Thanks for engaging my opinion.

> I hated the question of teachers asking: What does the author wanted to tell us with this story." Because -> The author never wrote that down. And deriving their intentions from a fictional text felt just like making shit up.

Then why does anyone write anything? Why did Orwell write 1984 instead of just making a 2 page bulleted list about how authoritarian regimes are bad?

Sure, an author can write something that is interpreted totally differently from what they meant, but that doesn't detract from the fact that they did have some intention behind what they wrote and it's worth exploring that.

There are lots of fun ways to experience literature or any art, and you can do multiple! I love reading a book and just considering it from the text alone, and then also considering it from in the context it was written. And then considering my own biases and how they might be similar or different to the author and how that might affect my interpretation.

I could probably enjoy certain LLM-generated art, but in far fewer ways.

What makes a story good except for something the author was trying to convey?