Jeff,
You seem to have finally accepted that I have no commitment to any "ultimate 
single meaning" and also to have accepted that my qualification is not a 
contradiction. This small step has taken about 4 long emails, and I'm not 
even confident we have got that far. At this rate, and in this weather, I 
don't hold out much hope for any further agreements.

With the example of the tortoise and the wall I've tried to give an 
indication of what an unconvincing reading would look like to me. I'm 
touched to see you defend the integrity of that reading. And to find that 
your posture before a poem is prayerful solipsism. But it makes clear to me 
that any definition of what might be a more valid approach, even if I was 
capable of shaping a coherent one, would have to run a gauntlet of 
misconstructions from you, and would take weeks of work without much chance 
of being understood.

Via Terence Hawkes, you're now calling me a liberal humanist. Perhaps labels 
such as these make you feel safe, but really as I've never argued that 
either texts or readers are "stable and autonomous" I'm not sure why you 
should wish to apply this one to me. (Not that I mind that much - I've been 
called far worse things.)
You, on the other hand, have asserted the absolute autonomy of your 
responses to poems and their immutable quality. So maybe this is a label you 
should keep for yourself.
Likewise, since you introduced the value laden judgment of elitism to the 
conversation, you should be answering at the bar of Professor Hawkes. The 
aridity of his phrasing (“products of the unconscious process of 
signification”) and the vacuity of that concept should be punishment enough, 
only  I suspect that you'd enjoy it.

Going back to your essay, I notice in the Kenyon Review issue which Robin 
flagged, that Keston Sutherland puts together an identical constellation of 
New Criticism, Barthes, intertextuality with a similar sense of 
disappointment in her criticism. Is this a case of great minds thinking 
alike?

Jamie





-----Original Message----- 
From: Jeffrey Side
Sent: Wednesday, July 17, 2013 5:31 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: "Multiple Registers, Intertextuality and Boundaries of 
Interpretation in Veronica Forrest-Thompson"

Jamie,

I’m sorry see my attempts at getting you to clarify your statements as 
logic-chopping and misrepresenting your position.

You say, “I do not believe that "there is an inherent ultimate single 
meaning in a poetic text". I have insistently stated this”, and then you 
qualify this by saying “that there are some approaches to reading a poem 
that are more convincing than others is not a contradiction”. How then do 
you “decide” the “convincingness” of these approaches to reading a poem? 
From what you say about Larkin, I assume you would not recourse to 
extra-textual sources and authorities, or even to the known facts of an 
author’s life and opinions. If you don’t recourse to any of these (and you 
are quite right not to) how then do you come to a conclusion about the 
strengths and merits of any particular interpretation as being valid over 
any other one?

The New Criticism, of course, would attempt this from only the text itself. 
But this assumes that both texts and readers are stable and autonomous 
rather than, as one critic (Terence Hawkes) calls them, “products of the 
unconscious process of signification”. He adds that to assume that texts and 
readers are stable and autonomous is to operate under the “ideology of 
liberal humanism”, which is a value-laden ideology (hence my comments 
regarding your value judgment statements, which reminded me of a liberal 
humanist position). He goes on to say critics (and presumably he also 
includes readers) should be allowed to create “the finished work by his 
reading of it” rather than remain “simply an inert consumer of a ‘ready-made’ 
product”.

You mention Frost’s 'Mending Wall' saying:

“If I claim that in Frost's 'Mending Wall' the opening line "Something there 
is that doesn't love a wall" refers to tortoises, and explain that I happen 
to know that tortoises are particularly averse to walls, then, in the 
absence of any evidence I can adduce from the poem, any reader will have a 
right to say I'm completely off my trolley. You may well support me by 
saying that it is my right to take anything I want from a poem, and I'm 
grateful for your support, but I don't think you should be encouraging me.”

Why would any reader have a right to say you are off your trolley? What 
business is it of theirs anyway? For me reading is a private act, almost 
like prayer. To be concerned with the adverse opinions of other private 
readers would not make sense. If someone can see a link to frogs in the 
Frost poem, why not let them have that privilege? Texts are never stable and 
constantly shifting, therefore, single and authoritative meanings and 
interpretations are difficult to argue for.

You say:

“But this is a detour which you have introduced now with the most bizarre 
explanation. When you read my remark: “It’s arguable that pretending every 
interpretation is equally valid is not just a dumbing-down of the art but 
also patronizing to those people whom the person who cries ‘elitist’ is 
meant to be defending.” Your response, instead of addressing the 
implications of my remark, is extraordinarily evasive: "To me, your 
conclusion that debating the problematic nature of poetic language is a 
“dumbing-down” of art and “patronizing” are value judgment statements." Not 
only evasive but a false and deliberately distorting account of what I 
wrote: "debating the problematic nature of poetic language" is not what I 
called "dumbing-down" and "patronizing" - I called your use of the term 
"elitist" potentially so.”

In this you say:

“debating the problematic nature of poetic language" is not what I called 
"dumbing-down" and "patronizing" - I called your use of the term "elitist" 
potentially so”.

I’m afraid this is not accurate. What you said was:

“It’s arguable that pretending every interpretation is equally valid is not 
just a dumbing-down of the art but also patronizing to those people whom the 
person who cries ‘elitist’ is meant to be defending.”

Here, you say: “pretending every interpretation is equally valid is not just 
a dumbing-down of the art but also patronizing”. In this, you are not 
responding to my saying that to stop people being allowed to interpret poems 
freely would be elitist, but to my saying that people should be allowed to 
interpret poems freely, and your response is that to allow this would be a 
“dumbing down” and “patronizing”. No doubt you will say this is also logic 
chopping and misrepresenting your position.