With such a diverse class, different angles were inevitable. Ideology and epistemology were catalysts for the affective forces particular works had on certain people. For example, the poem, "The Dance-, by William Carlos Williams, took on a number of different interpretations. A good amount of people thought it was symbolic of the mind jumping from thought to thought. I, on the other hand, thought that it was representative of relationships. It seemed to me that William Carlos Williams wrote this piece as a representation of his understanding that all things must come to an end. He seemed to be at peace with this awareness though, for he used a great number of soft words "the main objects were snowflakes, which draw associations with delicacy. This view of the poem is most likely rooted in past experiences I have had with relationships. Ultimately, my epistemology factored largely into the way I received this poem.
Keywords such as epistemology are what I see as the foundation for us understanding ourselves as readers. Their importance might go undetected initially, but I am sure that most people from the class are now realizing their pertinence and conduciveness to a more precise analysis of the reading process. .
One of the key ideas that we were taught within this list of keywords was that there are 2 ways in which meaning can be derived. The majority of the class was in favor of the reception theory, where they see meaning as coming from within the reader. It was acknowledged that meaning can be derived from the text itself, but people seemed to invest more in a work's significance to them. This could have been a large factor in how people approached the American literature that we were assigned. Some of the class may have never thought of meaning as existing outside of the text, possibly the byproduct of learning under professors such as the kind discussed earlier, where all must conform to "the only existing correct meaning- if they desired a fridge-worthy grade.
