"What does the author want to express?" This is the most frequently asked question by English teachers. Children's shoes often look silly. At this time, it is the teacher's turn to show his level. "This novel tells ... revelation ... worship ... criticism ...", as if all these connotations were wrapped in oiled paper, just waiting for us to unravel them carefully. But in fact, writing is full of foreshadowing and camouflage, both pointing to the author's real intention, but it also increases the possibility of over-interpretation.

Margaret Atwood, a Canadian novelist and award-winning writer, thinks that this way of thinking completely misses the point. Meaning is the word itself, not the hidden meaning in the work. Atwood recently published The Descendants of the Witch, which is a contemporary interpretation of Shakespeare's masterpiece The Tempest. In an activity held by the New York Public Library, an English teacher asked Antwood if he ever wanted readers to analyze the hidden themes and meanings in his writing.

"What high school teachers teach is wrong. Only the teacher understood the book and then began to analyze it on the blackboard. This makes us feel that the author clearly wants to express a meaning, but he has to use a bunch of nonsense to pave the way, "Antwood said. ""So the conclusion is: What does the author want to express? This guy is too poor to tell the truth. He must be very pompous. He does have a problem with expression. "

Antwood believes that the significance of any literary work lies in that people can distill it into a simple theory. "I'm not a Platonist," she said. "I don't think the meaning of the work is elsewhere, and then I have to use a bunch of empty words to express it. I believe that the meaning lies in the language itself, and the reader himself is the master of the text. "

Everyone's interpretation of literary texts is slightly different, which is caused by different personal experiences and different preferences for different chapters. Antwood says there is a scope for explanation. For example, King Lear is not a comedy.

"But in this range, the angle of interpretation and the level of meaning are almost infinite, because every reader is talking about bringing himself in," she said. "Reading is a very interactive thing."

Then the question is, what kind of * * * sound does the author want to evoke when writing? If the author doesn't have "analysis on the blackboard" in his mind, how can so many meanings and foreshadowing be presented in his works? Antwood also said that it mentioned that Shakespeare reversed the iambic pentameter of three witches in Macbeth. In their words, the word "Macbeth" is a bit abrupt in the sentence and seems to surpass other words.

"It's a bit like music, no one will pay attention to it consciously, but if the actors know it, it will be very useful," said the questioner. "But the real question is, does the author know?"

Antwood made a decisive conclusion about this, which Shakespeare must know. "He may not have tried hard to do it, but he still knows the influence of every word. This is intuition. It's a bit like' this curtain doesn't match the sofa'. "

Text: Xu Shu/Fried Egg Network

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