[Milton-L] Symposium on Milton's Samson

[James Rovira]

Carl -- thanks for your post.  I don't think most would question the
presence of chiasmus and other devices in Milton's poetry, and that
their presence is intentional.  The thornier questions about authorial
intent have to do with questions of interpretation.  Observing a
structure and describing what it means are two different activities.
Furthermore, the real question about authorial intent has never been a
question about its existence, just about its importance: does the
author's intent for the text determine the meaning of a text?  I don't
think even C.S. Lewis would answer "yes" to that question.  He seemed
to leave the ultimate "meaning" of his work to a future community of
readers in at least one or two essays.  He can describe what he
intended to do with a text, and what he was thinking while he wrote
it, but if I recall he didn't feel he could dictate what it came out
meaning in the end, nor exhaust those meanings by descriptions of his
intent at the time.

Jim R