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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Blue Orange" data-source="post: 9343594" data-attributes="member: 7025997">Right, but the author in a modern piece of work usually has the most influence, and is sometimes even around to talk about what they meant if the work is recent enough. Sometimes, as with George Lucas and Han shooting first, it's pretty clear they're trying to change their mind, but if Tolkien tells me Sauron isn't Hitler, well, fine, at least he didn't intend that. You can argue it came out subconsciously, and I might even agree with you, but at least authorial intent is one  interpretation. Of course, there are others.From what I've read on the subject (which is actually pretty cursory), the Well-Wrought Urn was from the New Critics, who were focusing directly on the text and writing against the historical school just before...Either way, who says we have to listen to them? I'm appreciating (or not) art and entertainment, not trying to get tenure at Duke. It's not like there's some sort of objective standard for how you should enjoy art. If you build a bridge in the wrong way, it falls down. If you interpret fiction or art in the wrong way, you...are doing something the artist didn't intend, or interpreting something in a way the current batch of tenured professors doesn't like. Gygax could go on all he wanted about correct D&D, but he couldn't stop everyone from making up their own rules in their own games. Maybe older forms of criticism are useful for some people--we just found someone who said they read the Divine Comedy for spiritual purposes, to bring them closer to God. I doubt anyone in a university faculty's done that since 1800, but it means something to the person who's doing it--and that's probably pretty much the way Dante intended it.I can like Baroque art better than Neoclassical, or swing better than rock (or rock better than rap), or decide I like AD&D better than 3rd edition...and enough people felt the same way to launch an Old School Renaissance that wound up influencing 5th edition. The actual Renaissance was an attempt to reject the newer medieval forms for the classics. You can go back if you want to, and sometimes it's even the way forward.</blockquote>

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