Meaning in Literature In reading literary works, we are concerned with the ’meaning’ of one literary piece or another. Howev

Meaning in Literature
    Good morning. In today’s lecture we shall discuss what meaning is in literary works. When we read novels, poems, etc. we invariably ask ourselves a question, that is, "What does the writer mean here?" In other words, we are interested in finding out the meaning. But meaning is a difficult issue in literature. How do we know what a work of literature is supposed to mean? Or what its real meaning is? I’d like to discuss three ways to explain what meaning is. Number One: meaning is what is intended by the author. Number Two: meaning is created by and contained in the text itself and Number Three: meaning is created by the reader.
    Now let’s look at the first approach, that is, meaning is what is intended by the author. Does a work of literature mean what the author intended to mean? And if so, how can we tell? If all the evidence we have is the text itself and nothing else, we can only guess what ideas the author had according to our understanding of literature and the world. In order to have a better idea of what one particular author means in one of his works, I’d suggest that you do the following. First, go to the library and read other works by the same author. Second, get to know something about what sort of meanings seemed to be common in literary works in that particular tradition and at that time. In other words, we need to find out what the literary trends were in those days. And last, get to know what were the cultural values and symbols of the time. I guess you can understand the author’s meaning much more clearly after you do the related background research.
    Now let’s move on to the second approach to meaning, that is, meaning is created by and contained in the text itself. Does the meaning exist in the text? Some scholars argue that the formal properties of the text, like grammar, diction, uses of image and so on and so forth, contain and produce the meaning, so that any educated or competent reader will inevitably come to more or less the same interpretation as any other. As far as I am concerned, the meaning is not only to be found in the literary traditions and grammatical conventions of meaning but also in the cultural codes which have been handed down from generation to generation. So when we and other readers including the author as well are said to come up with similar interpretations, that kind of agreement could be created by common traditions and conventions of usage, practice and interpretation. In other words, we have some kind of shared basis for the same interpretation. But that does not mean that readers agree on the meaning all the time. In different time periods with different cultural perspectives, including class, belief and worldview, readers, I mean, competent readers, can arrive at different interpretations of texts. So meaning in the text is determined by how readers see it. It is not contained in the text in a fixed way.
    Now the third approach to meaning, that is, meaning is created by the reader. Does the meaning then exist in the reader’s response? In a sense, this is inescapable. Meaning exists only insofar as it means to someone. And literary works are written in order to evoke sets of responses in the reader. This leads us to consider three essential issues. The first is, meaning is social, that is, language and conventions work only as shared meaning. And our way of viewing the world can exist only as shared or sharable. Similarly when we read a text, we are participating in social or cultural meaning, so response to a piece of literary work is not merely an individual thing, but is part of culture and history. Second, meaning is contextual. If you change the context, you often change the meaning. And last, meaning requires reader competency. Texts constructed as literature have their own ways of expressions or sometimes we say styles. And the more we know of them, the more we can understand the text Consequently, there is in regard to the question of meaning the matter of reader competency as it is called the experience and knowledge of comprehending literary texts. Your professors might insist that you practice and improve competency in reading and they might also insist that you interpret meaning in the context of the whole work. But you may have to learn other competencies, too. For instance, in reading Mulk Raj Anand’s The Untouchables, you might have to learn what the social structure of India was like at that time, what traditions of writing were in practice in India in the early 1930s, what political, cultural and personal influences Mulk Raj Anand came under when constructing the imaginative world of this short novel.
    OK, you may see that this idea that meaning requires competency in reading, in fact, brings us back to the historically situated understandings of an author and his works, as we mentioned earlier in this lecture: to different conventions and ways of reading and writing and to the point that meaning requires a negotiation between cultural meanings across time, culture, class etc. As readers you have in fact acquired a good deal of competency already, but you should acquire more. The essential point of this lecture is that meaning in literature is a phenomenon that is not easily located, that meaning is historical, social and derived from the traditions of reading and thinking and understanding of the world that you are educated about. Thank you for your attention.