Blog Response to Prompt 4

The writer writes a book based on a story that came to them. Saying that the story is fiction, the author comes across the idea by some exposure or experience. Through this experience, the author then builds upon it. This is where the author adds a bit of make-believe to the original idea. This all happens because of the writer's creative intelligence building upon what is already real. So when the writer puts this story into a book, he is transforming his ideas into a foundation. This is not a foundation for anyone except the reader. Think of it as what the author went through to come up with this story in the first place. They were exposed to something, then built a story upon it. When someone reads through a book, they don't have the authors prior thoughts on the story. The reader ends up interpreting the story in another fashion than the author did. What might have been a joke in the author's eyes can be an insult in the reader's eyes. With this knowledge, the writing process gets much more complicated. How do you keep everyone on the same page? If words gain multiple meanings from person to person, how do you keep it in a generalized area? There are many things about this concept that make writing a bit worrisome. The nature of reading is an imperfect one. There will never be only one meaning to something. A book can be portrayed in many ways because of individuality. This is what makes up reading and writing.

#6

The symbolic level of a text is all the deeper meanings an author embeds into the story. Authors do not write stories just to entertain, they write stories to impart their life experience onto their audience. Foster presents several archetypal symbols to illustrate this concept, such as a walk to the grocery store symbolizing a quest and characters eating together symbolizing communion. The greatest works are ones that are wholly symbolic, such as the works of Shakespeare or Hemingway.

    Reading at the symbolic level is an acquired skill that is developed over time. You must be constantly considering the author's overall purpose of the story, but also what role each miniscule detail plays in forming that purpose.An additional hurdle in this process is deciding what the symbol means. Symbols, by nature, have multiple interpretation (if they only had one they would be allegories). This factor can both help and hurt the aspiring scholar trying to figure out an author's purpose.

    There are countless ways to read at the symbolic level. Foster gives the example of considering the story within the historical context of the time period it was written in. You could consider he story through political context, cultural context, social context, and so on. Essentially, you must take into account the forces affecting the story not stated within the story.

Blog Response to Prompt #7

7. Where or how does ambiguity come into play in a reader’s experience? How might ambiguity work within a piece of literature (or art of any kind?) How does it impact our understanding, and appreciation of a text?

Ambiguity is involved in a reader’s experience because each part of a text does not only mean one definite thing. Because each reader will have different backgrounds and experiences each reader will get different things out of the same text. This does not mean that only one of the reader’s assumptions are true or correct. In fact, all reader’s assumptions can be correct. This is because ambiguity is a part of literature, which is a good thing. Without ambiguity we could not teach the same texts over and over again. Without ambiguity we could not discuss the various meanings of literature because there would only be one meaning. Ambiguity within a text allows each reader to apply their own experiences and backgrounds to each text they interact with. Because of this, we can each experience a text in different ways, which allows us as a whole to enjoy a text in different ways.

Blog Response to Prompt #4

4. Foster talks about the relationship between the reader and the writer suggesting that “reading is an event of the imagination... a reader’s imagination is the act of one creative intelligence engaging another (the writer’s). How does this occur? What does this suggest about the nature and process of reading and writing?

Reading is an act of imagination because it requires the reader to interact with the text and picture the described scenario. Because of this, reading is highly individual; no two readers will have the same experience from the same book. This is not only due to how readers picture each scenario, it is also due to what each reader gets out of the reading experience. No two readers will have the same literary experience and background. No two readers will have the same personal background. And no two readers will have the same intellectual capability. Because of this, every reader will get something entirely different out of the text. Likewise, each individual reader engages with the author in a different way. Just like the reader, the author’s literary background, personal experience and intellect affect what they put into the text. Despite this however, each reader may not pick up on what exactly the author intended. But when a reader does pick up on these things, it creates a personal engagement between the author and the reader.