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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Flyspeck23" data-source="post: 2778916" data-attributes="member: 10648">It's a long way from "the author's intent isn't the only thing that matters" to "all interpretations are equally valid", because they aren't. If somebody argued that Narnia was an allegory for mud wrestling, that person would have a hard time to get others to agree.Nobody would argue that you can read Christian alegory into Narnia if that's what you want. But whether the author said this was his intent or not doesn't matter, really.What this boils down to is a definition of what's literature. I wonder... if literature can be compared to the translation of a name, why do authors write narrative books featuring a more or less obscured version of their intent? Why don't they just say what they have to say?And what exactly was Lewis' intent? Did he want to demonstrate that Jesus, while being a peacful guy most of the time, can be a true lion when faced with great evil? Or did he want to demonstrate that there's always a time and place for mud wrestling? Or what?Who in this thread made you think they have an "idiotic scorn for authors"?</blockquote>