Authorial Intention

An accessible, full-color OT survey textbook focusing on the message of each book: Written from an irenic, evangelical perspective, this Old Testament survey is designed to unpack what the biblical authors most intended to communicate in the Scripture that Jesus read. As the corresponding volume to the previously published WHAT THE NEW TESTAMENT AUTHORS REALLY CARED ABOUT (Kregel, 2008), it is well-suited for use in a college, seminary, or church contexts. Students of the Bible will find this full-color textbook accessible and engaging.

WHAT THE OLD TESTAMENT AUTHORS REALLY CARED ABOUT is gospel-centered, portraying the Old Testament as the foundation for a fulfillment found in the New Testament. Each chapter is written by an Old Testament scholar who is a skilled teacher at one of the finest evangelical schools across North America and specializes in the biblical book covered.

Readers will find:
• Introductory issues (who, when, where, why) condensed to one-page snapshots of essential information at
the beginning of each chapter;
• The clarity of the biblical message enhanced through nearly two hundred high-resolution photographs, over
eighty charts and tables, and twelve color maps;
• Very readable text, appropriate for broad audiences;
• A format simpler and intentionally shorter than many other surveys, making it a very manageable textbook for a single semester Old Testament survey course or a useful guide to accompany devotional reading of Scripture.

Reading a narrative text is or provides an experience. In this article, I attempt to see how this common claim about reading fits into the intentionalist model of narrative David Herman has developed in his "Narrative Theory and the Intentional Stance" (2008). I do so in two theoretical moves.

In this article I begin by comparing and contrasting our reading practice regarding acrostics with our practice regarding allusions and intertexts, looking in particular at the problematic notion of authorial intention; I suggest an approach that assumes that ancient learned readers were on the look-out for acrostics, just as they were for allusions, and that they would test them for significance (as we imagine they did for allusions). I then apply this approach to the beginning and end of the Aeneid, and the beginning of the Metamorphoses, exploring how our reading of these well-studied passages changes if we pay attention to the acrostics and telestics that this process unearths. I note among other things how the presence of ILUS, of ARMA and a man, and of a Horatian MUS and a Vergilian ERATO can enrich our reading of the text. I close with an old and particularly controversial acrostic in Eclogue 4 (CACATA) that presents a potential challenge to my approach.

Occasioned by critique and criticism of the Critical and Synoptic Edition of James Joyce's Ulysses (edited in three volumes by Hans Walter Gabler with Wolfhard Steppe and Claus Melchior, New York and London 1984), this is a reflection on, and in its turn a critique of, principles and practices of scholarly editing. Specifically, the Anglo-American orientation in the 20th century towards bibliography, and towards copy-text editing with its claims to fulfilling authorial intention, is scrutinized in the light of alternative perspectives on the discipline.

Für manche Zwecke ist es hilfreich, die Auslegung der Werke eines Autors von der Rekonstruktion seiner Lebensumstände zu trennen. Eine solche Abgrenzung von Leben und Werk ist jedoch nur bis zu einem gewissen Punkt sinnvoll. Sie wird wahrscheinlich zu weit getrieben, wenn wir uns vornehmen, den Autor vorübergehend beiseite zu lassen, um das Werk zuerst aus seinen Strukturen heraus zu verstehen. Denn es ist unklar, wie wir die Strukturen eines Werks analysieren wollen, ohne den Autor zu berücksichtigen, der sie mit sprachlichen Mitteln aufbaut. Einige einflussreiche Erzählforscher lassen sich indes von der Vorstellung leiten, man könne die Eigenschaften einer fiktionalen Erzählung beschreiben, ohne den Autor einzubeziehen. Sie finden es angemessen, den Autor auszuklammern und ihn grundsätzlich vom werkimmanenten Erzähler zu trennen. Diese Denkweise bestimmt seit längerer Zeit die literaturwissenschaftliche Auslegungspraxis. Auch das Verständnis von Kleists Erzählungen hat sich dadurch erheblich verändert: Viele Interpretationen wären ohne die Voreinstellung, dass die Erzählungen einen fiktiven Erzähler haben, nicht entstanden. Im Folgenden wird die These entwickelt, dass die ungeprüfte Annahme einer gesonderten Erzählstimme zu Missverständnissen führen kann. Die betreffenden Interpretationen und das Bild, das sie von Kleist entwerfen, müssen neu durchdacht werden.

Generally, textual analysis minimises the intention of the creator in the conclusions that the researcher draws in order to avoid falling into the 'intentional fallacy' (Wimsatt & Beardsley 1946), which is when a reader expects the author or creator of a text to have had a specific plan for the text's interpretation and succeeded in achieving that plan. The 'death' of the author was said to give more interpretive freedom to the viewer. In fanart, however, the intention behind the work is important because it arguably establishes a point of reference for the viewer to understand the image. The intention of this paper is to propose and model an interpretive methodology for fanart that reflects whether a text falls into one of three categories: homage, collaboration, or intervention. By modelling this method, it is the researcher's hope that other scholars may use and develop it, as well as start a conversation in the scholarly community about how certain fanart works are created, inspired, and received depending on their relationship to the originary text. This paper argues that in order to properly analyse fanart, a recognition of the author's intention and where it stands in the community is necessary.

In this paper, I argue that only divine authorial intent can ground meaning, whether it be because of our limited access to human authors, the limited nature of human (authorial) intentionality, or in our access to the divine meaning of Scripture through the Holy Spirit, and in God's unique ability to ground textual meaning and intend fully all of what he means.

This article examines the techniques used by Anne Frank in revising her diaries for what she intended to be a post war publication. The article begins by reviewing the scholarly and political contexts in which the Diaries are normally discussed. It then shows the extent to which Frank’s revisions of her diaries (from the “a” to “b” versions) were the result of a conscious rethinking of the work’s purpose and audience and begun only after several months’ deliberation. Finally, the article looks at the nature of the revisions Frank made to the content of her diaries, focussing primarily on the first few months. In these entries in particular Frank shows a willingness to alter the known facts of her history in order to improve the plot and emotional impact of her experiences. She shortens time-lines, reduces the number of characters, and deletes and adds events and dialogue all with an eye towards emphasizing the extraordinary nature of the events that had overfallen her and the degree to which they allowed for the development of her latent ability as an author. In rewriting the Diary as Het Achterhuis, Frank was not simply revising: her second version is an artistic reworking of the raw material in her daily journals, a reworking that reflects clear literary goals.
Key terms: Anne Frank; book history; authorial history; revision practices; authorial intention; diaries; Bildungsroman; children’s literature.

Abstract creationism about fictional characters is the view that fictional characters are abstract objects that authors create. I defend this view against criticisms from Stuart Brock that hitherto have not been adequately countered. The discussion sheds light on how the number of fictional characters depends on authorial intention. I conclude also that we should change how we think intentions are connected to artifacts more generally, both abstract and concrete.

In this article, I seek to develop a genetic/diachronic approach to the phenomenon of authorial revision, and to the interpretation of texts that exist in multiple versions. In all such cases, the reconstruction of textual meaning cannot be separated from the reconstruction of the process through which the text in its ‘final’ form came into being; furthermore, an understanding of the author’s intentions in (re)writing cannot be entirely separated from an understanding of his/her motives for (re)writing. This article is divided into three sections. In the first section, I consider recent trends in editorial and literary theory that aim at characterising texts in terms of processes rather than products, in order to uphold the equal dignity of each version without losing sight of its connectedness to other stages in the history of the text. In the second section, I discuss how Quentin Skinner’s views on meaning and context apply to cases of authorial revision, and I
suggest that some key aspects of Skinner’s contextualism need to be reconsidered. In the concluding section, I focus on a case study in order to demonstrate the operational value of such a genetic and motive-based approach to authorial revision: more particularly, I seek to show how a close examination of Jean Bodin’s rewriting practices in the Methodus (15661572) and the République (1576) can throw new light on his shift from a concept of limited sovereignty to one of absolute sovereignty.

According to a common though not universally accepted opinion, works of narrative fiction are made up of statements uttered by a fictional narrator who must be distinguished from the author. In what follows, I demonstrate that this assumption has led to misinterpretations of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften. In the first section, I examine the view, held by several distinguished scholars, that there is a fictional narrator in Die Wahlverwandtschaften. Two main problems of the respective interpretations are exposed. First, they fail to substantiate their claims about the existence and particular traits of the narrator. Second, they fail to clarify the very point of introducing him. In the second section, I challenge the general assumption that it is reasonable to postulate a narrator while ignoring, temporarily or permanently, the author’s purposes. The third section suggests that it is rather misleading to apply the term ‘narrator’ to the author of the novel. One may of course call Goethe the ‘narrator’ of Die Wahlverwandtschaften, but there is little point in doing so. In the final section, I draw attention to some aspects of Goethe’s novel that have previously been neglected and that can be more easily recognized once one refrains from assuming that there is a fictional narrator in the novel.

Compared with the ongoing debates in modern text criticism, problems concerning music editing – in particular with regard to nineteenth and early twentieth-century music – has only received scant attention. The present article seeks to explore the theories of editing modern texts with the editing of Nielsen’s musical works. There are three main sections: the first presents modern Anglo-American discussions on understanding the complexities of authorial intention and its function in an editing process. Though Gregg’s copy-text method (1950) is still very much in use, modern text critics, notably McGann, have often argued in favour of a different approach towards the concept of ‘authorial intention’, seeking to include the social context or setting; according to Tanselle, however, no satisfactory method has been proposed which could take these aspects into consideration. The second section deals with the understanding of Carl Nielsen and Intentionality the work-concept of music. This leads to the proposal of distinguishing between score, notation and performance when dealing with musical works. The distinction is made between those elements which are part of the work and those elements which rely on performance and performance practice conventions. The article concludes with three case studies of Nielsen’s works illustrating the complex problems concerning the determination of authorial intention – final as well as original – and the employment of versions. The works dealt with are Symphony no. 1 (1894), Masquerade (1906) and Andante tranquillo e Scherzo for string orchestra (1887).

It is commonly thought that authors can make anything whatsoever true in their fictions by artistic fiat. Harry Deutsch originally called this position the Principle of Poetic License. If true, PPL sets an important constraint on accounts of fictional truth: they must be such as to allow that, for any x, one can write a story in which it is true that x. I argue that PPL is far too strong: it requires us to abandon the law of non-contradiction and entails a radical revision of otherwise ordinary commitments about truth in fiction.

Bible study takes careful reading, observation, ability to follow an author's thinking in a given text. Our purpose with the biblical text before us is to discover not only the author's message and intent but also God's message. God speaks through His inspired human agency. This article provides an approach to any book of the Bible for delineating the author's message, intent, and application. Our purpose is to discover all of these. While this article focuses on the Letter to the Hebrews, its approach can apply to any one of the 66 books of the Bible or any literary work. This article highlights a general approach, thereby not delving into detailed hermeneutical principles.

                                                        Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Using Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan novels as case study, this article presents a cognitive approach to fictionality and authorial intention using Text World Theory and Mind-Modelling. It investigates two forms of ontological distortion: readers’ (mis)classification of the novels’ genre (as autofiction or autobiography) and the problem posed by the author’s pseudonymic identity. The analysis has three parts: first, I conduct a Text World analysis of the novels’ syntactic/stylistic similarities to autobiography and, in doing so, reveal its ontological structure; second, I consider the ontological liminality of narration and the ways in which readers build an authorial mind-model of Ferrante; thirdly, I explore the assessment of critics and/as readers of the text’s fictionality and the impact of Ferrante’s pseudonym on perceptions of authorial intentionality and the authorial mind-model. Ultimately, I argue that a cognitive approach offers greatest insight into readers’ interpretations of authors and of fictionality.

This essay aims to show how the development of close reading, and more specifically its relationship to authorial intention, is itself historically contingent on technological development. In historicising New Criticism through the lens of its context within an economy of technological development, the essay asks how newly available technologies might impact and perhaps alter some of New Criticism’s essential tenets about the nature of close reading, particularly its relationship to the author. The argument focuses specifically on Roland Barthes’s landmark essay, ‘The Death of the Author’, as we confront new technologies and a new technological context in which authorial intention may be newly accessible. Introducing one such technology, proteomic literary forensics, which allows scholars to identify intimate information about the life of the author at the time of composition, I argue that underlying methodological assumptions of close reading, particularly the constellation of interpretive practices foregrounded by the idea of the ‘Death of the Author’, may limit the possibilities of literary inquiry, particularly for cultures of literature that seeks to reckon with the marginalisation of voices and groups of people. Finally, this essay seeks to demonstrate the way that authorial intention might productively be brought into practices of close reading.

In the face of the growing influence of postmodern culture, the Christian Church is wrestling with new ideas which relativize meanings of texts, sometimes in alarming ways. This thesis is an effort to reconcile relativity of meaning in interpretation by synthesizing a few tenets of reader-response theory with Ludwig Wittgenstein’s theory of meaning as expressed in his work on aspect perception. The result is a model of meaning which acknowledges reader experience as the primary engine for interpretation, although not to the neglect of authorial intent, appropriate methodology, and universal truth. The model ultimately offers a framework and language for understanding the mechanics of interpretation as well as a paradigm for evaluating one’s own attitude, or hermeneutical disposition, toward authors, readers, texts, and interpretation.

The main aim of this article is to offer a possible interpretation of meanings attached to ruins as image and metaphor in Brodsky’s essay writings, or, to be more precise, in Homage to Marcus Aurelius (1994), an essay that sets its narrative world in the ruined world that surrounds the narrator, elicits an ambivalent sense of time, and provokes complex thoughts of history as an eternal cycle and dialectic process. I will expand the well-established thesis according to which Brodsky’s writing is structured on an image of time as irretrievability and irreclaimability, which, in his writings, reverberates and re-creates an experience of continuous failure to discipline the memory, thus making any return impossible. Moreover, my aim is to show that the approach to Brodsky’s essays from the perspective of an analysis of ruins can offer us much more: for example, it can offer valuable insights into his understanding of the agency of the authorial modernist voice in literature. Where, in a work of art, is the writer’s voice located? What does it mean to see and to write, and what does it mean to read? What role, in this process, is assigned to tradition, “eternal values”, and cultural heritage?