There are movements in literary theory that say we must take into account the author’s life, and there are movements which say we must not. i like to think that an artistic work is a snapshot of a moment (or year or decade) in the creator’s life. I just went to Silverlake Yards for the first time and finished reading The Magus within the span of a day. This combination of experiences would have me create something different now that i would have at another time. And having had these experiences will make me create something different in the future than I would have in the past or in a different future without these experiences.
Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
“It is literary theory that formulates the relationship between author and work; literary theory develops the significance of race, class, and gender for literary study, both from the standpoint of the biography of the author and an analysis of their thematic presence within texts…literary theory in recent years has sought to explain the degree to which the text is more the product of a culture than an individual author and in turn how those texts help to create the culture.”
“The ‘New Criticism,’ so designated as to indicate a break with traditional methods, was a product of the American university in the 1930s and 40s. ‘New Criticism’ stressed close reading of the text itself, much like the French pedagogical precept ‘explication du texte.’ As a strategy of reading, ‘New Criticism’ viewed the work of literature as an aesthetic object independent of historical context and as a unified whole that reflected the unified sensibility of the artist.”