Teaching works by dead authors only

[snopes]

Comment: I just read on the website tvtropes.org that
there may be an English department that only allows works by dead authors
to avoid the embarrassment of an F paper being agreed with by the author.
Do you think you could check this?

ETA: Here's what the TV Tropes page says:

This troper (and probably you too, as it's almost certainly an urban legend) was once informed that his English department had an official policy of not letting professors teach works by anyone who was still alive, as it was quite embarassing that time a student sent his F-paper to the author, who wrote back to agree wholeheartedly with his analysis.

[Insensible Crier]

This is basically unverifiable unless we can know the standards and policies of every English department in existence or you can somehow find someone this happened to. I know it's not true in my school experience. We read plenty of books by authors that were and are alive. I can't remember them all but I know we read Bridge to Teribithia and The Face on the Milk Carton and those authors are still alive. In college we read The Man Who Owned Vermont by Brett Lott for a literature class and I know he's still alive.

[snopes]

It's not quite the same thing, but I once took a college English course ("Study of Fiction"), and I had a good sense that on the midterm the instructor
was going to ask us about a Rudyard Kipling story which she had assigned as reading but hadn't discussed in class. I had no clue how to interpret the story, so I went to the library, found a book by a prominent Kipling scholar, read his analysis of the story, and memorized the key points. Sure enough, the instructor asked us about that story on the exam, so I regurgitated the gist of the Kipling scholar's analysis.

When I received my exam back, I found that I had gotten an A- overall. In all the sections of the test where I had analyzed other works off the top of my head, the instructor had given me A's. On the Kipling section, however, she had given me a D, circling in red pen all the points I had made and adding comments such as "WRONG!," "NO!" and "YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT THIS." I wasn't sure whether I should be relieved or mortified at the thought that I hadn't really earned the D; the Kipling scholar had.

- snopes

[Tarquin Farquart]

Why would it matter what the author thought?

[snopes]

Originally Posted by Tarquin Farquart

Why would it matter what the author thought?

Really. There are perfectly valid (in a literary criticism sense) Marxist interpretations of Shakespeare, even though I suspect Will himself would deny ever having been a Marxist.

- snopes

[Tarquin Farquart]

Originally Posted by snopes

Really. There are perfectly valid (in a literary criticism sense) Marxist interpretations of Shakespeare, even though I suspect Will himself would deny ever having been a Marxist.

Fair point, although surely the author's interpretation is just one of many.

[Natalie]

Originally Posted by snopes

Really. There are perfectly valid (in a literary criticism sense) Marxist interpretations of Shakespeare, even though I suspect Will himself would deny ever having been a Marxist.

- snopes

Similarly, I've read in various places that Ray Bradbury does not consider Fahrenheit 451 to be about censorship, but rather about the negative effects of television. I would argue, though, that if thousands of people read a book and think it is about censorship, then in a way it is about censorship.

[Hero_Mike]

Originally Posted by snopes

Really. There are perfectly valid (in a literary criticism sense) Marxist interpretations of Shakespeare, even though I suspect Will himself would deny ever having been a Marxist.

- snopes

On the contrary - I firmly believe that Shakespeare was a Marxist. I also think his favourite would have been Groucho.

No, wait, let me get that...

[Ramblin' Dave]

Originally Posted by snopes

When I received my exam back, I found that I had gotten an A- overall. In all the sections of the test where I had analyzed other works off the top of my head, the instructor had given me A's. On the Kipling section, however, she had given me a D, circling in red pen all the points I had made and adding comments such as "WRONG!," "NO!" and "YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT THIS." I wasn't sure whether I should be relieved or mortified at the thought that I hadn't really earned the D; the Kipling scholar had.

The exact same thing happened to me once in high school, only it was the Cliff's Notes on Hamlet that let me down. To be fair, they're just about as impenetrable as the play itself is.

[Arriah]

Well, the OP is certainly not universal, my lit class used Harry Potter last year. In that class we were encouraged to use others interpretations to back up our own ideas.

[Natalie]

Originally Posted by Arriah

Well, the OP is certainly not universal, my lit class used Harry Potter last year. In that class we were encouraged to use others interpretations to back up our own ideas.

Isn't that SOP for literature classes? I only took one in college, but we were supposed to support our interpretations with published theories/analysis/critiques. IIRC, though, the author's personal analysis wasn't given any more weight than other literary theorists, though.

[Tantei Kid]

Originally Posted by snopes

It's not quite the same thing, but I once took a college English course ("Study of Fiction"), and I had a good sense that on the midterm the instructor
was going to ask us about a Rudyard Kipling story which she had assigned as reading but hadn't discussed in class. I had no clue how to interpret the story, so I went to the library, found a book by a prominent Kipling scholar, read his analysis of the story, and memorized the key points. Sure enough, the instructor asked us about that story on the exam, so I regurgitated the gist of the Kipling scholar's analysis.

When I received my exam back, I found that I had gotten an A- overall. In all the sections of the test where I had analyzed other works off the top of my head, the instructor had given me A's. On the Kipling section, however, she had given me a D, circling in red pen all the points I had made and adding comments such as "WRONG!," "NO!" and "YOU'RE WRONG ABOUT THIS." I wasn't sure whether I should be relieved or mortified at the thought that I hadn't really earned the D; the Kipling scholar had.

- snopes

I'm surprised that could happen. Unless the scholar say (using the Jungle Book for a Kipling work) thought Baloo was some sort of chipmunk and wrote his interpretation that way...? Or did the professor really think that there was only one good way of looking at pieces?

[RealityChuck]

Hell, at American University, they teach honors students a course that covers a book by a contemporary author and invite the author to take part.

Here at Siena, I can find courses teaching Conor McPherson and other living authors.

I've seen the idea mentioned ironically, but never seriously.

[damian]

How can a person have a wrong interpretation of a book?

Interpretation (n): an ascription of a particular meaning or significance to something

Who's to say that is not how you interpret a story?