I don't think anyone here disagrees that you can get different interpretations of a text. However, I do disagree with the idea that all interpretations, even when you limit it to those that are not "wrong" in the sense of contradicting elements of the text, are equally valid and equally relevant. Surely the primary interpretation, the one receiving most attention, has to be the one the author intended - provided of course that that can be determined, and acknowledging that there may be disagreement on what it was the author intended.


See my reply to Tom on "boutade" as used in Dutch (and, one would presume, French).




So because authorial intent cannot be known 100% exactly, you immediately ditch the 90% or more that in many cases (admittedly not all) *can* be known. That is the problem I and many other people have with this.

And same here. It's silly to throw authorial intent overboard entirely just because it cannot be conveyed with 100% accuracy. There are very few things in this world that do attain that 100% accuracy. Obviously in some cases the authorial intent is *truly* unclear, and various intent-based readings are possible. But that's no reason to reject it for all cases.

I might as well say that the trend in academia trends towards nitpicking to the point of rejecting a common-sense concept like authorial intent entirely just because it's imperfect.