"Just as much of the emotional power that teddy bears and security blankets have come from their tacitly evoking the caring presence of those who have given them to us, so likewise much of the emotional power of art comes from their tacitly evoking the caring presence of authors" (Wilhelm and Novak, 2011, 96).
Chapter 5 of Teaching Literacy for Love and Wisdom is all about love. The love that we the readers apparently have for the authors who provide us with our literary nourishment.
While I agree that studying the author of any given text may open avenues of interpretation that were unavailable before, I feel that the idea that "the caring presence of authors" is necessary to generate the "emotional power of art" is simply not the case.
In Roland Barthes' seminal 1967 essay, The Death of the Author, it is argued that assigning a text to an author, and restricting interpretation through an analysis of him or her, sets a limit on the text. Barthes goes on to argue that a reader must separate a text from its author in order find meaning. As such, each of us "kills" the author by interpreting his or her text under our own lenses. We become the authors of meaning.
The analogy provided by Wilhelm and Novak, in which the emotional tethers of teddy bears and security blankets are tied to the relationship of author and book to reader, is ripe with error.First, the problem of the analogy itself: The emotional tether created by a loved one giving you a teddy bear or a security blanket does not correspond with the author releasing a text for the world to read. Obviously without the author there is no text, but just because the author created the text does not mean I have an emotional connection to him or her. For instance, if my mother gave me a teddy bear, it is a connection between my mother and I that is being strengthened, not one between myself and the child laborer who stuffed the bear.
Second, any emotional power attributed to art is reliant on one's personal experiences. The words provided by the author have no meaning to me until I give them meaning. I can do this without the tacit knowledge of the author's origins or identity.
All that knowledge of the author can supply me is another perspective - one that may effect my emotional connection to the work, but not one that creates it.
I have to agree with you Joel that just because we read a text that might draw some emotional response for us but that doesn't mean that I have a connection with the author. I like your analogy about the teddy bear and the child laborer who stuffed the bear.I think in some books having some perspective on the authors identity or presumed meaning for the text can be helpful but I think that you only develop meaning from the text through your own experiences. I completely agree with you that perspective is the only thing that knowledge of the author can bring.
ReplyDeleteI also agree with what you are saying. I think you make a good point when you say that any emotional power attributed to art is a result of our own experiences. We do not need to know about the author in order to create meaning. However, it can sometimes be beneficial to know about the author and look at the work through the different perspective this offers. But the emotional power of art is not the result of the caring presence of the author. I think that the text puts too much focus on this and not enough on how our personal experiences give meaning to the text.
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