‘Canonicity’: the Book or the Reader?

[Mister Underhill]

Another quick, woefully inadequate post:

I don’t know if I am dense or just getting tripped up on the metaphors and terminology in play here. Likely both.

I confess that I’m still puzzled at this tug of war between author and reader. Isn’t it natural for an author’s intentions – at least insofar as they are encoded (a dangerous word and probably the completely wrong one for the occasion, but I can’t think of a better one at the moment) within the text itself – to inform our interpretation of any text? Why must we be so vigilant in our resistance to the author’s intentions? What exactly is this completely independent interpretation the reader must generate in order to avoid becoming a mental slave of the author? What do we even mean by “interpretation” anyway? Are we really obligated to puzzle out what a writer’s – or a reader’s – interpretation of a text really reveals about them on some subconscious level? Isn’t our interpretation of the “true meaning” of their interpretation really revealing something about our own subconscious – and hence we soon find ourselves in a vicious, endless circle of unfathomable subtextual analysis?

I’ll be frank – none of it sounds like much fun.

It seems that there are at least certain broad-stroke “interpretations” of LotR which, if not universally “correct”, are at least inevitable.

P.S. -- "Ensorcelled" is indeed a most excellent word.