Separation of Author and Poem

Dare I say that in some regards I think I like this whole notion of formalism. As an English major I have analyzed countless poems and other literary texts according to the historical time period at which they were written, or based upon the biographical data of there author. At times this has proven really quite absurd. Sometimes I honestly feel like we (English majors) are trained to analytically and scholastically make things up, things that probably don’t even apply to, or exist in, a given text. For this reason I am in some regards a fan of Wimsatt and Beardsley’s writing in their coauthored essay, The Intentional Fallacy. I realize that making that statement might make me liable to be disowned by must English scholars. Seriously though, this idea of the separation of the author from the text, I kind of like it. Sounds similar to the radical reformers notion of separation and church and state which by the way I also like. Even if a poem is well written its meaning can be interpreted in a variety of ways, but perhaps that is the beauty of this art form, it isn’t, after all, meant to be a thesis. Furthermore, when we analyze a poem with regard to its time period or the biographical background of its author we risk entitling it to things that aren’t really there, but perhaps things we would like to assume are there.

This is serious English departments have divided over such issues as Mark Krupnick suggests in his article titled Why Are English Departments Still Fighting the Culture Wars?:

“The usual explanation for the divisiveness in English is twofold. First, starting with the invasion of French poststructuralism in the 1960s, advanced literary interpretation changed from being formalist in method and traditionalist in ideology to a brand of French theory whose major distinguishing characteristic seemed to be that it required you to spend more time reading the theorists than reading the canonical texts of Western literature. The second major explanation for the culture wars is that they basically have been about politics, set off when '60s radicals took their battles from the streets into university departments.” Krupnick’s article is right on in my observation. Isn’t it seriously insane when you consider the reality that peoples careers and personal lives bank on their ideologies of the interpretation of literature?

Check out the above article in full: http://chronicle.com/free/v49/i04/04b01601.htm