Authorial Intent: Literary fiction often does not originate with an idea or thesis, making so-called “authorial intent” only the author’s retrospective interpretation.

In thinking about my last post, on the reasons that some great novels are hard to understand, I came across a Wikipedia entry on the various schools of thought about how to know and value what the author intended: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Authorial_intent

However, many authors of literary fiction do not start from an idea or thesis. They may start with an image, a feeling, or a line that pops into their mind. And if they don’t start from an idea or thesis, how can they be said to have had an intention?

You might argue that authorial intent comes during the writing of the novel, as characters and story develop. Don’t writers say that they know what they think when they see what they write? But that is not authorial intent, but authorial, retrospective, interpretation.

What about the intentions of the author’s muse and other alternate personalities? They might have ideas or theses, which may, for all practical purposes, be the authorial intent. True. But these personalities may not agree with each other, meaning there would be no, one, intention.

I prefer to interpret what the author did not intend.