A lot depends on who you ask as, among a number of critics, there is something called the Intentional Fallacy (a text cannot be explained by relying on the author's intent as the final word). Myself, I am of the opinion that the text is the intent: where an author says elsewhere that their intent was to write X in writing a text, such statements are comments (or commentary) on the text, not an actual statement of intent about it. An analogy would be if I hit a baseball, and it breaks a window, then saying "I did/did not mean to break the window" is a statement after the fact, rather than a statement of actual intent.
What this means is the author is not the final arbiter of the meaning of a text; the reader is, albeit as guided by the text itself. We can say that the meaning of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" is to repent and follow the Christian religion, but doing so ignores the textual evidence that points to another, more secular reading of humanity's place in the cosmos. Another way of saying it is that the reader derives the meaning of the text from its context. So if a text says "hound," the context is of a general type of dog; if it says "Hound of the Baskervilles" it refers to a specific hound, defined by the words of the text.
That said, there is no, 'one true meaning' of a text. There are many readings, some more attuned to what the text says, many less attuned. There are also more skilled readers and less skilled readers, as there are more skilled critics and less skilled critics. This is partly why the skill of close reading has been important in both modernist and postmodernist critical theories, as it focuses the reader/critic on the text rather than what is assumed about (or read into) the text.
What this means is the author is not the final arbiter of the meaning of a text; the reader is, albeit as guided by the text itself. We can say that the meaning of H. P. Lovecraft's "The Call of Cthulhu" is to repent and follow the Christian religion, but doing so ignores the textual evidence that points to another, more secular reading of humanity's place in the cosmos. Another way of saying it is that the reader derives the meaning of the text from its context. So if a text says "hound," the context is of a general type of dog; if it says "Hound of the Baskervilles" it refers to a specific hound, defined by the words of the text.
That said, there is no, 'one true meaning' of a text. There are many readings, some more attuned to what the text says, many less attuned. There are also more skilled readers and less skilled readers, as there are more skilled critics and less skilled critics. This is partly why the skill of close reading has been important in both modernist and postmodernist critical theories, as it focuses the reader/critic on the text rather than what is assumed about (or read into) the text.
