Literary Analysis

I'm an idiot about literary analysis, but I'm trying to get better. A discussion on an electronic mailing list has me confused about some things.

What is being analysed? My guess is it's the work, which is what is what is on the paper. That would mean what was/is in the author's mind isn't rightly a part of that analysis. It would be rightly part of a discussion of that work, but not the analysis.

Is it appropriate to assume the author has control over, or even awareness of, all the literary aspects of her work? Confusion about the role of a "muse" in a work's creation has me wondering this. Would an author never feel something is right without knowing why? Or, would the writer ever feel it is right for one reason when it is right for another reason?

My last confusion is about who analyses. (One author made the point on-list a little while back that his responsibility to a work is only to write it. Interpretation is an interplay between what was written and the reader, and he leaves it to each reader to decide meaning.) Each reader will bring with her a different life and glean meaning by laying that writing over a different interior landscape. In that case, how could every reader come away with the same interpretation? How could one be right and another wrong? One might be more sophisticated, I guess. Maybe that's what scholars mean by "right" and "wrong".

Maybe these kind scholars will answer some of these confusions in follow-up posts.