Watson, ''Are Poems Historical Acts?''

"The oddities of Thomas's diction exist only in relation to mid-twentieth-century usages outside his poems. If we are anxious to pretend that poems could ever 'exist independently of the author's intentions,' we had better banish all idea of the norm" (32).

http://blogs.setonhill.edu/AngelaPalumbo/2009/02/allofmyclassesarerunningtogeth.html

"What did the poet intend it for?" --whether stage or study, whether court audience or popular-- the answer seems in principle likely to be useful to the extent that it is accurate" (Watson 31). Click here!

Question: What’s the Point?
Answer: Read Watson’s Essay!
“If it sometimes helps, it does not follow that it always helps” (33).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/GretaCarroll/2009/02/question_whats_the_point_answe.html

I Think Watson Has Learned Something from Sherlock
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/EricaGearhart/2009/02/i_think_watson_has_learned_som.html

what is normal? seriously!?
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/BethanyMerryman/2009/02/the-norm.html

He could have never thought that!
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JodiSchweizer/2009/02/could_shakespeare_have_thought.html

On Broadway

“‘What did the poet intend it for?’ –whether stage or study, whether court audience or popular-the answer seems in principle likely to be useful to the extent that it is accurate. This is surely a good question to ask, and anybody who objects at this point that the search for a author’s intention is necessarily a fallacy should be sent about his business” (Watson 31).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/JennaMiller/2009/02/on-broadway.html

"If we are anxious to pretend that poems could ever 'exist indenpendently of the author's intentions,' we had better banish all idea of the norm" (Watson 32).

“It is often suggested that a poet has done enough if he fully performs what he set out to do,”

Tea Time! (or is it soup?)
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/EllenEinsporn/2009/02/would_you_care_for_some_tea_de.html

"...to demand of the historical critic that he should in all circumsstances limit himself to seeing in a Shakespeare play only as much as the dramatist himself might have seen and in something like the very terms in which he would have seen it is to ask, in large measure, that literary studies should be stopped.

"...but to demand fo the historical critic that he should in all circumstances limit himself to seeing ina Shakespeare play only as much as the dramatist himself might have seen in something like the very terms in which he would have seen it is to ask, in large measure, that literary studies should be stopped" (Watson 33). Only Shakespear can have an idea of what he truly meant, and it would be silly for us to only try to figure out what he meant. A work means different things to each person that reads it.

“Oscar Wilde spoke of the work of art as having ‘and independent life of its own’ which may ‘deliver a message far other than that which was put in its lips to say,’” (Watson 30).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/BethanyBouchard/2009/02/a_matter_of_opinion.html

“‘What did the poet intend it for?’ - ...This is surely a good question to ask, and anybody who objects at this point that the search for a author’s intention is necessarily a fallacy should be sent about his business” (Watson 31).
http://blogs.setonhill.edu/CoreyStruss/2009/02/the_tempest_as_a_story_of_just.html