Stephen Fry joins Hobbit cast as the Master of Laketown

[aelf]

I never understood why the pendulum has to swing in either direction in this sort of thing. Why can't we just look at both? The author meant this, but this meaning is there also, because of this context. Just because we get a meaning out of something that the author did not intend doesn't mean the author's intention is irrelevant, just like the author having a specific intention when creating his work doesn't mean that the message we get out of it is irrelevant. Both are equally so.

Indeed, but I'd go further and say that there are some things about the author's intentions that you simply can't ignore. That is to say, in a more precise way, that what you know of the author's intentions gives you no fixed or guaranteed answers about the interpretation of parts of the text, but it can tell you a lot about what he wanted to achieve in the text, especially when it's taken as a whole. Actually, it sounds almost trivial when put that way, but it does mean that you can say stuff like there is an obvious Christian subtext in The Chronicles of Narnia. And we know that without having to go into psychoanalysis or any self-imposed framework for interpretation because of what we know about C.S. Lewis (i.e. it's not really debatable).

 

[Dachs]

Kind of like how Rohan is an expy of the Anglo-Saxons and the Shire is an expy of plain old England?