Intentional fallacy

Intentional Fallacy
INTRODUCTION
Intentional fallacy,(a false idea that many
people believe is true) term used in 20th-
century literary criticism to describe the
problem inherent in trying to judge a work of
art by assuming the intent or purpose of the
artist who created it.

Introduced by W.K. Wimsatt, Jr., and
Monroe C.Beardsley in The Verbal Icon
(1954), the approach was a reaction to the
popular belief that to know what the author
intended—what he had in mind at the time of
writing—was to know the correct
interpretation of the work.
The intentional fallacy forces the literary
critic to assume the role of cultural
historian or that of a psychologist who
must define the growth of a particular
artist’s vision in terms of his mental and
physical state at the time of his creative

They asserted that an author’s intended
aims and meanings in writing a literary
work—whether these are asserted by the
author or merely inferred from our
knowledge of the author’s life and
opinions—are irrelevant to the literary
critic, because the meaning, structure
and value of a text are inherent within
the finished, free standing, and public
work of literature itself.

Reference to the author’s supposed
proposes, to the author’s personal
situation and state of mind is held to be
harmful mistake, because it diverts our
attention to such external matters, and
thus may cause the neglecting of the
internal constitution and inherent value of
the literary product.

Origin of Intentional Fallacy
As New Criticism develops in 1920s-1930s, the
critics do not consider the reader's response,
author's intention, or historical and cultural
contexts. In 1954 “The intentional fallacy” was
published, it argued strongly against any
discussion of an author's intention, or "
intended meaning." As the words on the page
were all that mattered; importation of meanings
from outside the text was quite irrelevant, and
potentially distracting.

Definition of an Intentional Fallacy.
M.H. Abrams : “A Glossary of Literary Terms”.
(page No: 175)
They asserted that an author's intended aims
and meanings in writing a literary work—
whether these are asserted by the author or
merely inferred from our knowledge of the
author's life and opinions—are irrelevant to the
literary critic, because the meaning, structure,
and value of a text are inherent within the
finished, freestanding, and public work of
literature itself.

Reference to the author's supposed
purposes, or else to the author's personal
situation and state of mind in writing a
text, is held to be a harmful mistake,
because it diverts our attention to such
"external" matters as the author's
biography, or psychological condition, or
creative process, which we substitute for
the proper critical concern with the
"internal" constitution and inherent value
of the literary product.

In C. Hugh Holman’s A Handbook to
Literature, it is similarly said that in
contemporary criticism the term is “used to
describe the error of judging the success and
the meaning of a work of art by the author’s
expressed or ostensible (apparent) intention
in producing it.” But it is also noted therein
that “Wimsatt and Beardsley say, ‘The
author must be admitted as a witness to the
meaning of his work.’ It is merely that they
would subject his testimony to rigorous
scrutiny in the light of the work itself”

J. A. Cuddon’s A Dictionary of Literary
Terms, we read: “The error of criticizing
and judging a work of literature by
attempting to assess what the writer’s
intention was and whether or not he has
fulfilled it rather than concentrating on
the work itself”.

William Kurtz Wimsatt, Jr. (November
17, 1907 – December 17, 1975) was an
American professor of English, literary
theorist, and critic. Wimsatt is often
associated with the concept of the
intentional fallacy, which he developed
with Monroe Beardsley in order to
discuss the importance of an author's
intentions for the creation of a work of
art.

Life and career
Wimsatt was born in Washington D.C.,
attended Georgetown University and,
later, Yale University, where he received
his Ph.D. In 1939, Wimsatt joined the
English department at Yale, where he
taught until his death in 1975. During his
lifetime, Wimsatt became known for his
studies of eighteenth-century literature
(Leitch et al. 1372).

He wrote many works of literary theory
and criticism such as The Prose Style of
Samuel Johnson (1941) and Philosophic
Words: A Study of Style and Meaning in
the "Rambler" and "Dictionary" of
Samuel Johnson (1948; Leitch et al.
1372).

His major works include The Verbal
Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry
(1954); Hateful Contraries (1965) and
Literary Criticism: A Short History
(1957, with Cleanth Brooks). Wimsatt
was considered crucial to New Criticism
(particularly New Formalist Criticism;
1372).

Perhaps Wimsatt’s most influential theories
come from the essays “The Intentional
Fallacy” and “The Affective Fallacy” (both are
published in Verbal Icon) which he wrote with
Monroe Beardsley. Introduced by W.K.
Wimsatt, Jr., and Monroe C. Beardsley in The
Verbal Icon (1954), the approach was a
reaction to the popular belief that to know
what the author intended—what he had in
mind at the time of writing—was to know the
correct interpretation of the work.

Why learning Intentional Fallacy
It reminds the readers to read the
“text” with different views, by
reading at content level and as well
with the author’s or narrator’s view.
So the readers will fully understand
the real meaning of the “text.”

I
1
The CLAIM of the author's "intention"
upon the critic's Judgment has been
challenged in a number of recent
discussions, notably in the debate entitled
The Personal Heresy, between Professors
Lewis and Tillyard.

Behind the critical observation of a literary
work lurks (to wait somewhere secretly,
especially because you are going to do
something bad or illegal) the desire to hang on
to the ‘intention’ of its author, to locate its
discernible (detect, visible, apparent) presence
and drag it to the centre – stage of inquiry.
Prof. Lewis and Tillyard have tried to
debunk (expose, to show that an idea, a
belief, etc, is false: to show that
something is not as good as people think)
this practice, to question its validity, but a
great deal yet remain to be done.

W.K. Wimsatt jr. & M.C. Beardsley firs tried
to discuss it in a Dictionary,(Dictionary of
World Literature, ed. Joseph T. Shipley
(New York, 1942), pp. 326-29)but constrains
of scope did not allow a fuller treatment;
however, the present essay takes up the debate
in all its dimensions. The fundamental point
stressed by them in the Dictionary and here in
the essay, is that the author’s intention or
design, ‘the author’s attitude to his work, the
way he felt, what made him write’ and scores
of related questions are not really relevant nor
desirable for judging for judging whether the
work is successful or not.

If we divide the critical attitude into two
large categories on this basic, namely the
classical imitation and romantic
experience, we will find that author’s
intention forms the central point around
which discussion is developed. The
primary goal is to arrive at the precise
intention of the author capable of opening
all doors to a proper understanding of his
work.

2
We argued that the design or intention of
the author is neither available nor
desirable as a standard for judge the
success of a work of literary art, and it
seems to us that is a principle which goes
deep into some differences in the of
critical attitudes. It is a principle which
accepted or rejected points to the polar
opposites of classical ‘imitation’ and
romantic expression.

It entails (make necessary) many specific
truths about inspiration, authenticity,
biography, literary history and
scholarship, and about some trends of
contemporary poetry, especially its
allusiveness. There is hardly a problem of
literary criticism in which the critic's
approach will not be qualified by his
view of "intention."

"Intention," as we shall use the term,
corresponds to what he intended in a
formula which more or less explicitly has
had wide acceptance. "In order to judge
the poet's performance, we must know
what he intended." Intention is design or
plan in the author's mind. Intention has
obvious affinities for the author's attitude
toward his work, the way he felt, what
made him write.

2
The concepts of “intentional fallacy” and
“affective fallacy” began with W.K.
Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley's essay
“The Intentional Fallacy” 1946). Literary
criticism at that time was heavily reliant on
author-biography approaches, and Wimsatt
and Beardsley put forward the radical idea
that for literary works arguments about
interpretation are not settled by consulting
the oracle that is the author.

The meaning of a work is not what the writer
had in mind at some moment during
composition of the work, or what the writer
thinks the work means after it is finished, but,
rather, what he or she succeeded in embodying
in the work. The “affective fallacy” (from an
essay published three years later in 1949) is
the idea that subjective effects or emotional
reactions a work provokes in readers are
irrelevant to the study of the verbal object
itself, since its objective structure alone
contains the meaning of the work

2
According to a famous argument by W. K.
Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, the intention
of the author is neither available nor desirable
as a standard by which to judge the success of
a work of literary art. The author's intention is
not available as a standard by which to judge a
work's success, it is argued, because "If the
poet succeeded in doing it [the intention], then
the poem itself shows what he was trying to
do. And if the poet did not succeed, then the
poem is not adequate evidence, and the critic
must go outside the poem."

The intentional fallacy is part of the arguments of
American New Criticism, which holds that the
proper object of literary study is literary texts and
how they work rather than authors' lives or the
social and historical worlds to which literature
refers. The “intentional fallacy” names the act of
delimiting the object of literary study and
separating it from biography or sociology. The
meaning resides in the literary work itself, and not
in statements regarding his or her intention that
the author might make. These statements become
separate texts that may become subject to a
separate analysis

The New Critics used the method of
“close reading” to arrive at interpretation
of a text. Close reading is the elucidation
of the way literature embodies or
concretely enacts universal truth. These
truths were called “concrete universals”.
Of course this method has since been
questioned and challenged on many
grounds, particularly the neglect of
context and the belief in universal truth.

Intentional fallacy is a literary term that
asserts that the meaning intended by the
author of a literary work is not the only,
and perhaps not the most important,
meaning of the piece. The term was first
used by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe
Beardsley in their essay "The Intentional
Fallacy." The notion has become central
to modern literary criticism and is an
important part of what is known as the
New Criticism.

When writing an author must call upon
both their understanding of the language
in which they write and their personal
experiences about reality to create a
work. Even the most escapist fantasy
must appeal to some shared
understanding in the reader to be
intelligible at all. A reader must also call
upon their understanding of language and
personal experiences in order to decode
meaning in a work

Intentional fallacy

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