[Lalwendë]

Originally Posted by davem

But the point is that, unlike traditional tales, the Legendarium was written by a single man, with a biography. His experiences shaped him & produced the stories he wrote. Because of this we cannot leave his personal history, experiences & values out of any analysis.

Originally Posted by davem

You can either just enjoy the stories, or you can attempt an in-depth analysis of them - which must include Tolkien himself. Any analysis of a writer's work which attempts to account for it as if it had just appeared spontaneously, or as if it were reportage is bound to fail (imo).

It's becoming clear again to me that this all boils down to a fundamental difference in modes of criticism. On the one hand we have the post-structuralist school of "The Death of the Author" and on the other the classical school of thought which sought to discover what the Author really meant.

A post-structuralist would argue that there is little point in attempting to find out the truth by looking at the Author's life as how can we ever really know what he or she thought? they would also argue that much of what authors write is unconscious reflection of the world and so is beyond their control. A post-structuralist would also argue that the literal presence of a text puts up a huge wall between Author and Reader which the latter cannot peek over.

I've found a link to Roland Barthes' famous and influential essay The Death of the Author. Light reading it is not. But it is also compulsory reading for anyone studying English or Literature. And challenge it at your peril.

What is interesting is that much of what Barthes says in his essay would probably go against much of what Tolkien believed. For example:

In precisely this way literature (it would be better from now on to say writing), by refusing to assign a ‘secret’, an ultimate meaning, to the text (and to the world as text), liberates what may be called an anti-theological activity, an activity that is truly revolutionary since to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases—reason, science, law.

Although a post-structuralist would probably dismiss that point as irrelevant in any case.

It's also interesting that post-structural linguistics have entirely taken over from Tolkien's own discipline of philology in English language and linguistics departments, and it is post-structuralists such as Barthes, Chomsky and Saussure who put forth the kind of criticism which asserts that the Author's voice is irrelevant.

This type of criticism can be extremely useful in my opinion. Taking the example of Plath, many feminist critics take an incredible focus on her life, on her biography. The fact of her suicide soon becomes all important. The style, structure and language of her poetry soon becomes subsumed in psychological analyses of her mental condition and speculations about her marriage. Taking a Post-structuralist approach to her work can help the critic to focus on the words rather than the life.

But what I often wonder is if it is appropriate to take a post-structuralist approach with every Author? If we do, are we at risk of reducing all literature to mere slogans - I remember an entire tedious term of linguistics seminars spent analysing the one advertising slogan "It asda be asda"; I think our post-structuralist lecturer was trying to hammer his point home somewhat.

I also wonder how such post-structural theory is truly placed when it comes up against 'celebrity authors', such as Plath, Tolkien, Austen, those Authors for whom every aspect of their life is endlessly turned over by the fans, and who end up being viewed somewhat as demi-gods. Should we wholeheartedly embrace only post-structural theory in the face of such Authors? Or does that theory go against our natural inclination to know what the mid of the Author was, who lead us into such a sense of wonderment?

I think on the Downs we have some clear classicists, and some clear post-structuralists. I'm neither.