Author, Reader, or Text? (aka Canonicity Slapdown 2005)

[The Saucepan Man]

It's a no brainer really.

Some have questioned why there is not an "all of the above" category. This was my initial reaction too.

But then I realised that there is. It is that the meaning may be found in the experience of the reader. This covers each of the other categories and more.

The readers' views on the author's intentions, how the text should be analysed and interpreted, his or her enjoyment of it etc all fall within his or her experience of the book. If we feel compelled to divine the author's intentions, then that falls within our experience of the book. If we simply enjoy it as a darn good read, then that too is within our experience of it. Since our experience of the book as readers is dictated by and also dictates our approach to it, this in turn defines its meaning to us as individuals (which, of course, may change over time).

Simply put, a book can have no meaning save by reference to its effect on the individual. There can be no objective meaning which sits apart from the reader's experience. Of course, a group of individuals may share similar experiences of a book and may therefore agree on certain aspects of what it means. But no one individual reader's experience will ever be compeltely identical to another's, and so a book can never have one unified, objective meaning.

But what of the author, you may ask. What about the meaning that he or she intended? Well, the author is but an individual too, and so his or her intended meaning will simply fall within his or her individual experience. Provided that he or she is sufficiently skilled at communicating that intended meaning, then it may well form a part of many readers' experience too. But that will not necessarily be the case, certainly not with every reader.

And so I have voted, rather predictably, for the experience of the reader.