The basic form of my question is: In the case of a work written by multiple authors, is one author's view ever more correct than another's?
As long as all the authors mutually agreed that they had equal rein over the fictional world within which their work takes place, I do not think so. If the authors divided up a work, so that one had jurisdiction over character development, another over geographical descriptions, etc., then perhaps. This would introduce a previously un-addressed idea into the discussion, however; the idea of permission to interpret. While, by the view I support, all non-contradictory interpretations are valid, I still think that the interpretation of the original author overrides these; that is to say, if the author writes a sequel which contradicts someone else's interpretation, the sequel is more 'true' than the interpretation. However, when one introduces the idea of multiple authors, the whole matter becomes much more complicated. What if the authors have a disagreement, and two of them write (incompatible) sequels to the original work? Possibly both sequels would be equally true interpretations, which overrode the interpretations of non-authors. I am not certain about this, however, and as such I would welcome any input.
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