PT 57.S2.Q24 - Great poems

lsat5ever

I have read the explanation on this question and am still having trouble.

P1: Sometimes a reader believes that a poem is expressing contradictory ideas
P2: No one ever means to communicate contradictory ideas

Conc: Meaning does not equal author's intention

I understood that the assumption rested somewhere in the fact that what the reader understood is not necessarily what the author intended to communicate.

However, the answer choice linked what the reader understood to the meaning of the poem. Even if it is true that what the reader believes is in fact the meaning of the poem, that would mean that the poem is contradictory. Because no one, including the author means to express contradictory ideas, wouldn't you only be able to conclude that the author didn't mean to express contradictory ideas? How can you conclude that meaning is not the same as the authors intention (it never says that meaning can't be contradictory, only that people don't intend to communicate contradictory ideas... what if they did by accident?)

Admin Note: https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-57-section-2-question-24/

Ashley2018-1

All because the reader believes something to be true about a work, that doesn't necessarily mean that it is. I don't think this stimulus, whether it be in the premises or the conclusion, is really about what the poem actually says. We don't really have confirmation either way that the poem is actually expressing contradictory ideas, only that the reader sometimes believes it does so and that the author never could do so purposefully.