the predominant interpretation of Rosebud?

[tonyw]

One article in a past historyt of CINEMA JOURNAL did make a very good case for the emotional revelation of "Rosebud" as being a key part of the film. It appeared during the last 20 yars and I'll have to look it up. The MLA International Bibliography may also be a good source for those much quicker on the trigger.

[Colmena]

Is it this one?:

Cinema Journal Winter 1987
Fiery Speech in a World of Shadows: Rosebud's Impact on Early Audiences, 3-26
Robin Bates, Scott Bates

Abstract: Although many critics no longer take it seriously, the Rosebud search in "Citizen Kane" provided a means for liberal male viewers in 1941 to confront and come to terms with their major political, aesthetic, and psychological anxieties. To reconstruct "Citizen Kane's" initial reception is to increase our admiration for this complexity.

[Wellesnet]

Here is Orson Welles's own interpretation, from the Wellesnet Main Page:

http://www.wellesnet.com/?p=5252

From Wellesnet Facebook, here's an excerpt from "This is Orson Welles":

Welles: "Rosebud” was Mank’s, and the many-sided gimmick was mine. Rosebud remained, because it was the only way we could find to get off, as they used to say in vaudeville. It manages to work, but I’m still not too keen about it, and I don’t think that he was, either. The whole schtick is the sort of thing that can finally date, in some funny way.

Bogdanovich: Toward the close, you have the reporter say that it doesn’t matter what it means -

Welles: We did everything we could to take the mickey out of it.

Bogdanovich: The reporter says at the end. “Charles Foster Kane was a man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn’t get or something he lost, but it wouldn’t have explained anything”

Welles: I guess you might call that a disclaimer – a bit corny, too. More than a bit. And it’s mine, I’m afraid.

[Wellesnet]

The Guardian offers an interpretation of the meaning of Rosebud:
http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/ap ... ne-rosebud

[Colmena]

Thanks for the link.

In this essay Bradshaw concludes by linking "Rosebud" to the death of Kane's son and first wife-- which Roger Ryan and I discuss in this same thread 3 years ago.