Tim, I agree with your:
“To then say that such a text is a 'reduced text' is to automatically prioritize the author's (or what someone in agreement with the author) writing over the reader's reading, when, in actual fact, they are identical texts. It is not a matter of 'pretending the allusions etc are unimportant' any more than pretending that they are important, it is a matter of what actually happens when the human reader encounters the inhuman text.”
Jamie, when you say:
“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.”
It’s not really a question of “pretending”; there is no pretence in operation. It is merley the consequence of the problematical nature of poetic language when it meets individual readers. Whether you “approve” of this or not, is beside the point. Value judgments and ideology shouldn’t really come into this.
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