Self-study
Literary critic: Support The meaning of a literary work is not fixed but fluid, and Support therefore a number of equally valid interpretations of it may be offered. ███████████████ █████████ ███████ ████████ ███████ ██ █ ████████ ████ ██████ ████ ███████████ ███████ ██ ███ ██ ███████████████ ████ ███ ████████ ███ ████████ ███████████ █████ ███ ██████████████ ██ █ ████████ ████ █████ ████ █████ ███ ██████ ████ █████ ███ ███████
What the Critic Argues
The critic's conclusion is that any interpretation of a literary work tells us more about the critic than about the writer. The conclusion is a comparison. Interpretations reveal more about one party (the critic) than about another (the writer).
How does the critic get there? Two ideas drive the argument.
First, the critic asserts that interpretation means imposing meaning on a work, not discovering meaning in it. The critic isn't pulling meaning out of the text the way an archaeologist pulls a fossil out of the dirt. The critic is putting meaning onto the text.
Second, because interpretation imposes rather than discovers, an interpretation doesn't have to engage with what the writer was trying to say. If you're projecting your own reading onto a poem, you don't have to ask what the poet meant.
From these two ideas, the critic concludes that an interpretation tells us about the critic (the one imposing the meaning) more than about the writer (whose intentions don't have to come into it).
Anticipation
The conclusion is a comparison: an interpretation tells us more about the critic than about the writer. For that comparison to hold, both sides of the comparison should be supported.
Half 1: An interpretation reveals less about the writer. The premises provide support for this. If interpretations don't need to engage with the writer's intentions, then they may not reveal much about the writer.
Half 2: An interpretation reveals something about the critic. The premises never establish this. We're told the critic imposes meaning on the work, but imposing meaning could in principle be a purely mechanical act that tells us nothing about the imposer. The act of imposition doesn't automatically tell us anything about whoever's doing it.
So the critic must be assuming that imposing meaning does reveal something about the person doing the imposing. Without that assumption, interpretations might tell us nothing about either side, and the conclusion's comparison falls apart.
15.
Which one of the following ██ ██ ██████████ ████████ ██ ███ ████████ ████████ █████████
a
There are no ████████ ██ █████ ██ ███████████ ███ ████████ ██ █████████ ███████████████ ██ ████████ ██████
Not necessary. The critic never said every interpretation is equally valid. She said that "a number of equally valid interpretations" may be offered. That leaves room for plenty of invalid interpretations to exist alongside the valid ones.
The trap pulls on the phrase "equally valid interpretations." A student might think this phrase makes sense only if there's no way to distinguish good from bad interpretations. But validity criteria can exist, knock out the bad readings, and still leave a tier of equally valid interpretations at the top.
b
A meaning imposed ██ █ ████████ ████ ████████ █████ █████ ███ ████████████
Necessary. The conclusion is a comparison, and (B) supplies the half the premises don't supply. When a critic imposes meaning on a work, that imposed meaning reflects facts about the critic. That's what gets the conclusion to the "tells us about the critic" side.
What happens if we negate (B)? The negation: a meaning imposed on a literary work does not reflect facts about the interpreter. Then interpretations are floating, ownerless acts that tell us nothing about the critic. The claim that interpretations tell us "more about the critic than about the writer" collapses, because we'd have no reason to think interpretations tell us about the critic at all. Since the negation kills the argument, the critic must be assuming (B).
c
A writer's intentions ███ ████████ ██ █ █████ ██████████████ ██ ███ ████████ █████
Not necessary. The argument never connects a writer's intentions to whether an interpretation is valid. The premise about intentions says only that interpretations don't need to consider them, which is a claim about what interpretation requires, not about what makes an interpretation valid.
d
The true intentions ██ ███ ██████ ██ █ ████ ██ ██████████ ███ █████ ██ █████ ██ █ ██████ ██ ████ █████
Not necessary, because whether a critic can ever know the true intentions of the writer is not relevant. What matters is that a critic’s INTERPRETATION does not need to consider a writer’s intent. A critic might personally know the writer’s intention; but a critic’s interpretation of a work doesn’t need to consider it.
e
The deepest understanding ██ █ ████████ ████ ████████ ████ ███ ████ ███ ████████ ████████
Not necessary. The argument has nothing to do with the "deepest understanding" of a literary work. The conclusion is about what an interpretation reveals (critic versus writer), not about how to achieve a deep reading. Whatever the deepest understanding requires, it falls outside the scope of the argument entirely.