ABSTRACT
W. K. Wimsatt is Professor of English at Yale University, where he has taught since 1939. 'The Intentional Fallacy' (first published in 1946) and 'The Affective Fallacy' (first published in 1949) are reprinted here from his book The Verbal Icon: studies in the meaning of poetry (Lexington, Ky., 1954). His other publications include The Prose Style of Samuel Johnson (New Haven, 1941), Hateful Contraries: studies in literature and criticism (Lexington, Ky., 1965), and Literary Criticism: A Short History (New York, 1957), written in collaboration with Cleanth Brooks. Monroe C. Beardsley has taught philosophy and aesthetics at Yale, Mount Holyoke College, Swarthmore College and Temple University, where he is now Professor of Philosophy. His publications include Aesthetics: problems in the philosophy of criticism (New York, 1958), and Aesthetics from Classical Greece to the Present (New York, 1966). CROSS REFERENCES: 6. T. S. Eliot
Wimsatt and Beardsley The intentional faJ/acy
COMMENTARY: Frank Cioffi, 'Intention and interpretation in criticism', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, n.s. lxiv (1963), pp. 85-106 Stanley Fish, 'Literature in the reader: affective stylistics', New Literary History, ii (1970), pp. 123-62
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 [1939], between Professor Lewis and Tillyard. But it seems doubtful if this claim and most of its romantic corollaries are as yet subject to any widespread questioning. The present writers, in a short article entitled 'Intention' for a Dictionaryl of literary criticism, raised the issue but were unable to pursue its implications at any length. We argued that the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art, and it seems to us that this is a principle which goes deep into some differences in the history of critical attitudes. It is a principle which accepted or rejected points to the polar opposites of classical 'imitation' and romantic expression. It entails 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'.
