ABSTRACT
The artist's intention is a series of psychological states or events in his mind: what he wanted to do, how he imagined or projected the work before he began to make it and while he was in the process of making it. One set of problems concerns the role of intention in evaluating the object. The other concerns the role of intention in describing and interpreting the object. It is the simple thesis that must distinguish between the aesthetic object and the intention in the mind of its creator. The consequences that follow from making a distinction between aesthetic objects and artists' intentions are very important, but they are not all obvious, because they depend upon a general principle of philosophy that is often not kept steadily in mind. In literature, the distinction is most often erased by a principle that is explicitly defended by many critics, and tacitly assumed by many more.
