on overreading

[deicruxified]

i just remembered a thought way back in college when a professor wrote on my paper,

"this is not what i said... this is not what the book says. you are being highly critical. overreading.."

so then i was thinking how (or is it really possible?) accurate can we get on interpretations when it comes to reading texts especialy poetry, the bible (as what we've been discussing on the thread) etc..? is it all just based on the structures we had in our heads? our education, conditioning...? or can a text be really subject to a gazillion interpretation? how can you tell if a text has been over read?

[qwerty]

yeah unfortunatly this happens to me. I guess the reason is how you see what you read in your mind. Myself I create the images or will build a visual representation in my head. Apparently most people think in words or something similar and only visualise characters or tangible objects.

So the trouble occurs when the item is not built correctly (well their model is not build correctly because mine is right :))

The other thing may be that you relate to it on some level and build beliefs based on your experience. Sometimes people are like that with me - there is sometimes one person who I will build up in my mind and refuse to change the image when something they do contradicts it.

[Rei]

your prof was just being a jack ass... like lots of arts profs are.

Just because it's not what he thinks it is, doesn't mean it's a wrong interpretation. As long as you provided the reasoning behind it clearly enough, he couldn't have said you were wrong.

[deicruxified]

your prof was just being a jack ass... like lots of arts profs are.

Just because it's not what he thinks it is, doesn't mean it's a wrong interpretation. *As long as you provided the reasoning behind it clearly enough, he couldn't have said you were wrong.
at that time i never wanted to think so. poetry has always been hard to interpret but then the case at that time was different coz it's an essay reagarding positivism: "observations are theory-laden" which is really funny coz he gave me that remark...

it had me thinking if that's so then whatever we have been learning for the past decade in school are just perspectives of people reading books... so what's the sense of intelligence then? just to measure how many perspectives we've got in our memory banks?

on the other hand, linguistics wise, words are empty so why have a standard interpretation? waaaa :'( *headache*

[OneBadMother]

I always thought it was stupid how poems and fiction supposedly have a "right" interpretation. For that matter, why is it even important? Unless it's some sort of seminal piece in the history of something-or-other, there is just as good a chance that it has no higher meaning at all and that you're wasting your time as there being some deep psychological impetus. And how would you determine if it was "right"? Ask the corpse? Whether or not your teacher/professor thinks it is?

...and this is why I'm not an English major. <_<

[Rei]

...and this is why I'm not an English major. <_<

Agreed. *I'd rather be a science drone than have my ideas trampled on and kicked around by pompous profs. Besides, I'm a horrible writer anyway :-/

[deicruxified]

...and this is why I'm not an English major. <_<
if there's one mistake i have done in college, it's choosing literature as minor. i had the choice of taking psychology but at that time, i was thinking of hasting my graduation so there... the biggest mistake ever...

if they're gonna say that a certain literary piece is only grounded in a certain period when it was written would absolutely give injustice to the piece itself. if that's the case then literature has always been dead. one of my profs even mentioned that poetry should not inspire people to harm others... etc.. but h-e-l-l-o hello!?! there have been many literary works that have sparked a revolution but they just interpret it as "heroism" "love for country" "bravery" which is really strange... i do even think that some writers "over read" their texts... *sigh*

[matthew]

It probably helps to go to school in a country that isn't an idiocracy, where the liberal arts were cut out from the education of the mass populace by decision of the elite at the beginning of the 20th century. Just a hunch. It is true that professors do obtain a bit of identity-attachment to theory wherever you go. Sometimes though they have a point.

A piece and your interpretation of it can be thematically inconsistent.

Grading rubrics in literature studies should rely upon strength of argumentation.

The INTJ is a good reasoner in general (I wanted to write "Mentat" there, haha), but with faulty sources of information, or badly constructed principles of reasoning, any number of bad conclusions can be obtained.

[deicruxified]

The INTJ is a good reasoner in general (I wanted to write "Mentat" there, haha), but with faulty sources of information, or badly constructed principles of reasoning, any number of bad conclusions can be obtained.
exactly, but then there will always be solipsist who won't budge to any logical argument. anything should be put into consideration if it has logical explanation. in poetry for instance, the author may have written it based on his feelings in a certain event, for instance, love. but when another person reads it, he or she feels or intuits something else and has his or her reasons for feeling or intuiting so...

they say it would be injustice to a certain text to be misinterpreted but i do think it would be an injustice to have a text subjected to a limit of interpretation.

[Quincunx]

Though it's important to take into some consideration what the author meant while writing the work in question, if an analysis is well-structured and thought-out, I think it's immoral and unintelligent to criticize the student. In all honesty, I think I have written essays in which I have geniunely 'over-read,' or analyzed something that rreally WAS NOT in the text, but most of the time a little extra exegesis should be exciting and engaging, not deserving rebuke.

[justmeiguess]

I'm not sure it's possible to overread anything. I know I have read poems and interpreted them in what I thought was the only way possible only to discover that everybody else read it in a completely different way. I don't think that means my interpretation was wrong, (unless, as someone else mentioned, the logic did not follow) it's just that, as usual, I absconded from the norm and the popular.

I know what you mean about narrow-minded teachers though. A friend of mine once suggested that there was a gay sub-plot between Iago and Othello in that play. Our teacher just would not accept it. She just did not see it. However, that did not mean that it wasn't there. Afterall, not even the author can provide a full interpretation because there very rarely is one, due to a combination of their subconscious intent and writers' love of ambiguity.

Anyway, I tend to agree with author, Philip Pullman when he says:

The democracy of reading means that as soon as a book is published you [the author] lose control of how it's interpreted anyhow, and so you should. To tell someone else how to read your book is to fall into the temptation of fundamentalism.

[Nomad]

Interesting. One of the most intelligent humans I ever met had been to university (Harvard and Berkeley) and had two degrees is disparate fields, one a masters and one PhD. he thought his education was mostly a waste of time, because his professors only "closed doors, rather than keeping them open."

-Nomad

[Rohsiph]

Just because it's not what he thinks it is, doesn't mean it's a wrong interpretation. As long as you provided the reasoning behind it clearly enough, he couldn't have said you were wrong.

Ehh . . .

If a professor makes a claim that one is "overreading," as has been suggested, it is most likely because the author (assuming this is for some form of essay) has failed to properly point to clear examples from the text that prompted whatever thought. This is to say, he (or she) should be able to see, clearly and concisely, exactly why the author thinks such and such if the thought is deserving of any praise. I get the impression from the original post that this is not actually the case--that the thought in question certainly would have benefitted from additional textual support.

The professor is being highly unprofessional if the citation and reasoning is there, yet still makes a comment as pointed as what was construed in the op. I would certainly recommend calling the prof on this if it is indeed the case that he/she is being unprofessional--it's part of the word, professors need to be professional.

In my experience, most students (especially undergrads) really just suck at writing academic papers/essays--even in higher-level English classes, unfortunately. Always draw your thoughts back to a specific passage from your text--if a professor docks you for failing to do so, then the professor is simply doing his/her job.

I wrote the above before reading the second half of posts in this thread--

I grant that "extra exegesis should be exciting and engaging," but caution that such exegesis without support indeed should be rebuked especially at the undergraduate level: learning how to make and support arguments is much more important in academic discourse than is speculation. Speculation has its place, but usually isn't worth a grade (especially outside Philosophy).

[mrswentworth]

I have had that sort of experience before. I was reading a question for a comprehension and turned out I interpreted the question differently from the rest of the class and I was pretty sure there was an alternative way of interpreting it.