{SpamScore: ssss}Re: [Milton-L] interpreting poems variously [wasSatan etc.]

[Carrol Cox]

Matthew Stallard wrote:
> 
> Professor Flannagan makes a clear and outstanding point. If someone wishes
> to persist in thinking that a poem can be interpreted any way one likes,
> that's up to them, but please, let us not go so far as to assert that all
> interpretations are equally valid or good. Surely, all interpretation must
> be subject to some rationale, subjective or otherwise. Frankly, some
> interpretations are just really, really, really, really bad.

The phrase "anyway one likes," is of course ridiculous, and it is
unfortunate that the thread was introduced in that way. No one ever sits
down before a closed book ans says to herself, "I would like to
interpret the third poem in this book as being a blistering satire on
the practice of eating ice-cream bars wtihout a napkin." And then
proceeds to interpret Wordsworth's Ode to Duty as a blisering satire on
the wrong way of eating ice-cream bars.

But I suggest that a useful exercise would be to spend a whole 8 hours
browsing through volumes of _Milton Studies_ from volume 1 to the
present;, and _then_ try to argue that all responsible scholars and
critics of PL agree on the one true meaning of the poem.

As a matter of simple empirical fact, most poems _can_ be because they
_are_ interpreted in many different ways, even when all the intepreters
are in total agreement with Professor Flannagan. That is a more
interesting question to explore. Why do critics who agree on how to
interpret and agree on avoiding misinterpretation and who also deny
vigorously that one can interpret a poem "anyway one likes," STILL end
up all disagreeing on what a given poem means?

Carrol