r may develop a sense of this connection the character has with the stars from the text itself, but by knowing specifics about the author’s life, one expands his or her understanding of this connection into its true magnitude. Saint-Exupery wrote of the stars in each and every one of his books. In which, they all represent a form of spiritual comfort for the main character, which is often a man on a quest for knowledge. Conversely, the reader would not come to the same conclusion, if he or she relied upon other extraneous information. The knowledge that Saint-Exupery was for instance a mail carrier pilot, that he was educated in Jesuit schools in Switzerland, or that he was fond of performing imitations of Victor Hugo at the dinner table would offer little insight into the intent of the author in this specific case. It is thus up to the reader to decide which information would either help clarify or further inform the reader of the true intentions of the author. In using the idea of intentionalism in moderation, the reader is allowed to recognize certain helpful pieces of outside information, while rejecting those that seem irrelevant.Livingston would agree that excessive extra-textual information about the author and his intentions, either private or professional, would not help the story’s aesthetic integrity, that is the story’s soundness and literary value. It might be argued that a well-written text does not need external reports to establish the meaning of explicit or implicit story content. However, just as some intentions may not be conscious, the same could be said for the familiarity with concepts that aid the reader when reading a story. To use one of Livingston’s examples, the author Zola captures perfectly the life struggle of labourers in the late 19 century in his book, Germinal. It is by reading the text one hundred years after its original publication, that the reader finds it essentia...
