Sometimes, but for the most part, not really. It depends on the specific analytical philosophy being used, and the specific claims being made. Most analysis isn’t claiming “this is true,” so much as “this is interesting.”
To take an example someone mentioned upthread, let’s look at “The Wizard of Oz is an allegory for the free coinage of silver.” If the claim is that this was intended by Frank Baum, that’s a (potentially) falsifiable claim. And biographical analysis, where you look not just at the work itself, but at the author’s journals, correspondence, contemporary accounts of the author written by other people, and so forth, is certainly a valid approach to interpreting literature.
But “The Wizard of Oz can be interpreted as an allegory for the free coinage of silver,” is a slightly different claim. It’s not making a statement of intent, it’s making an observation of similarity. The interpretation works, at least at a superficial level: the “yellow brick road” leading to a false utopia is the gold standard, the shoes (ruby in the movie, but silver in the book) are the silver standard that provide the true path home. The interpretation fits, sort of, whether it was intentional or not.
Where the analysis fails is that it’s not very interesting. It reduces the book to the level of an editorial cartoon, with all the components carefully labelled. It ties the book to a specific, defunct political issue that most people barely remember from high school history classes. “The cowardly lion is William Jennings Bryant!” Jesus, who cares?
Which is the other problem with authorial intent. What if someone finds a lost Frank Baum diary, that explicitly confirms that he intended The Wizard of Oz to be an allegory to 19th century economic policy? Is that now the required interpretation every time you read it, or can you ignore what the author intended, and just enjoy the book on its own merits?
Very much what I think about the whole thing except worded better and with better examples. I think interpretations succeed and fail on their own merits and the author can screw themself.
When the Ken Burns documentary on Hemmingway was on PBS last spring, my daughter, who received a degree in creative writing about 15 years ago, mentioned that in all the American Lit classes she had taken in high school and college, she had never once been assigned any of Hemmingway’s works.
I was shocked that someone who was considered one of The Greatest American Authors (and important enough to merit a Ken Burns documentary, no less!) had fallen so far out of favor that he isn’t even sampled just 50 years after he died
I’d be shocked, too, enough to ask her to clarify whether she meant she just hadn’t been assigned any of Hemingway’s books. Arguably his greatest works were the best of his short stories.
Probably a large part of it was his misogyny. I think another large part of it was that (from what I can remember) a lot of what she read was from women, African-American, and Latinx authors, and virtually all of it except for Salinger, post-1960.
I told her that I would have thought Hemmingway would be studied at least for his literary style - short, direct, even terse. Her response was a slight sneer and, “Yeah, journalism.”
My degree and a large chunk of my career were in journalism. It was like a knife through my heart!
There actually isn’t much of a plot. I read it about 20 years ago, and all I remember is a bunch of boring, pretentious American expatriates leaving Paris to do boring, pretentious things while on holiday in Spain.
