How can we be sure that we understood the exact meaning of a work of an author? Is there any way to be sure we understood what the author wanted us to understand of her or his work?

The second question is easy, at least for living authors. If you want to know what they intended readers to get out of their work, you can just ask them.

Mind you, what they intended may or may not be the same as the meaning of a literary work.

The first question, on the other hand, is problematic in another way.

It may fall into what literary critics call the biographical fallacy, i.e., thinking authorial intent alone is what matters, which ignores the various problems raised by reader-response theory.

The biographical fallacy assumes:

The work has an exact meaning.

That meaning is singular.

That meaning comes exclusively from the author and not primarily or partly from the reader.

That readers do or should react to the work in the way the author intended.

To illustrate, take this quick parable about a sculptor and a handyman.

Suppose I’m a sculptor. I really admire my neighbor, who is a handyman.

I want to communicate with my neighbor by making a sculpture in his honor. As a creator, I want to acknowledge my neighbor’s specific talents as a handyman, so the sculpture I build will be of a giant hand. I intend this to symbolize his strength and skill in hands-on work.

I also want to acknowledge my neighbor’s accomplishment of finishing his second hand-built house, which he built all by himself. So, as I design my sculpture as a gigantic hand, I leave the clutched hand shaped in a strong, firm fist. Then, I count over to the second finger, to represent the second house, and I leave that finger extended while all the other fingers are closed tightly.

My intent was to honor my neighbor’s abilities, and his second house in particular, but he looks at it and turns beet-red. He starts sputtering angrily, and he claims all he sees is a giant hand flipping him the bird. He interprets my wonderful sculpture as an insult. I’ve built a giant hand in my yard, facing toward his house, with the middle finger raised.

I (the creator) protest that he should not be offended! My sculpture praises his craftmanship. Of course it means … blah blah blah.

The handyman (the audience) disagrees. He says it’s an obscene gesture.

In fact, all the other people on the block also see my sculpture as flipping the neighborhood off. So, I explain my purpose to all of them, repeatedly.

They universally think it’s dumb, and that it means something else beyond what I intended. If I wanted to emphasize the number two, they argue I should have had the hand raising two fingers upward like a peace-sign or victory-sign rather than just taking the second finger alone and raising it.

Which of us is right? Am I as an author/creator correct because I intended some effect? Or are the hundreds of viewers correct because they know that for most people in America, a raised middle finger is an insult?

If you commit the biographical fallacy of interpretation, you assume that the creator’s intent trumps the reaction of all the readers or viewers that exist at the moment. In fact, it trumps all those that ever will exist. For such interpreters, that’s where the meaning comes from exclusively or primarily. The significance of literature is nailed down at the moment the creator intended it.

If you are an adherent of reader-response theory, you think the audience’s reactions are what matters, and that a symbol that originally meant one thing may mean something entirely different in a different context, culture, or time-period. For you, the meaning comes from the act of viewing the art now rather than what the author thought or tried to do yesterday when he first built it. The readers build the meaning through the act of interpretation, and that resulting meaning can be unstable and mutating.

Another example: for an ancient Roman audience, a cross is a symbol of degradation and torture. It was a symbol to mock the criminal before he dies slowly and painfully. For a modern Christian, the cross is now a symbol of Christianity’s hope or resurrection, so they plaster it over all their churches. Does the fact that an ancient Roman intended one thing by the symbol mean that the dead man gets to veto particular living meanings 2,000 years later? Does the author get to rise from the grave and declare that any other use of the iconography is all a mistake? Does context never make a difference?

If so, reading literature doesn’t become an act of engagement with the text, and it doesn’t become a way of relating it to one’s own life and one’s own current culture, and it doesn’t become something that requires thought or contemplation. Instead, if literature only depends on the author’s original intended meaning alone, it becomes an exercise in memorizing biographical details. It puts meaning in a straitjacket.

I’m not saying we should disregard the author’s intent, mind you. By all means, consider it! Moderation in all things, including moderation.

However, we certainly should not claim the author’s intent trumps the actual effects the art has on other people, even good or bad effects he may have not intended.

So, back to your question: “can we be sure that we understood the exact meaning of a work of an author?” My answer is, we often can be sure what a living author intended in a literary work, and we often cannot know what a dead author intended in a literary work. In both cases though, the author’s intent doesn’t matter nearly as much as what the text actually does to living readers, whether intended or not.

Unintended side effects are also part of meaning.