Another way of looking at this issue? Works of literature have often struck real readers in very different ways. One person reads X and thinks it's about Y, another thinks it's about Z. How is it possible not to get *exactly* the same things out of the same words? What is it about language that it's so open to interpretation .... even when you're just talking about the sentences real people speak to each other? Let alone plot or characters or whatever.
It doesn't take professional masturbation to notice that people interpret things very differently. Whether the author "intended" them to or not.
Much of literary analysis is simply an attempt to figure out how and why people can read so differently.
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Date: 2008-01-28 05:41 pm (UTC)It doesn't take professional masturbation to notice that people interpret things very differently. Whether the author "intended" them to or not.
Much of literary analysis is simply an attempt to figure out how and why people can read so differently.