Comment by megy
6 years ago
I mean, so? She writes poems. Why should that mean she is good at analyzing poems? Are game players good at writing games, and vice-versa? Are people who eat a lot good at cooking? Are runners great at designing shoes?
6 years ago
I mean, so? She writes poems. Why should that mean she is good at analyzing poems? Are game players good at writing games, and vice-versa? Are people who eat a lot good at cooking? Are runners great at designing shoes?
I agree that the author doesn't get to dictate the reading of a poem (nor does the test-maker), but these questions are usually formulated to explicitly reference the intentions of the author (the "author's purpose"). Although, now that I look at a few, it looks like the common language is "The author most likely did so-and-so in order to...".
But more honest language ("What does this line mean?") would erase the veneer of objectivity; hermeneutical questions do not have "right" answers you can pick from a list of multiple choices.
> But more honest language ("What does this line mean?") would erase the veneer of objectivity; hermeneutical questions do not have "right" answers
"When you say it honestly, it looks bad. So don't say it that way".
Not targeting at you, obviously you are explaining the thought process of the exam maker, but that kinda shows the issue with them.
They looked at the question and realize that there's no right answer for these kind of question to be made in to a multiple choice question. But instead of changing the test to something else, or making it a free text answer, they choose to play with wording of the question to hide the problem with it.
Poetry is a form of art. The artist has their own meaning behind their work. Art has its own meaning to the person viewing reading hearing it. If one person gets different meaning and feeling from art, to another person, who is right and who is wrong? Neither. You can use it to understand how someone interrupts the art but you can’t fail them because their interruption was different to yours.
No one is "good" at analyzing poems. There are no objective standards for determining quality of analysis (beyond the trivialities of proper spelling and grammar).
Death of the Author is a bullshit idea. The only person who knows what the writer's intention was when writing a piece of literature is the author him/herself. Any alternative interpretation is fanfiction at best.
Would the question(s) be better if it asked it in a different way, i.e.
instead of "Dividing the poem into two stanzas allows the poet to―" the question could ask "The division of the poem into two stanzas has the effect of-"
rather than presuming to know what the author's intent was.