Intentional Fallacy

 

[alert-primary] Intentional Fallacy  [/alert-primary]

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        The term "INTENTIONAL FALLACY" refers to what is considered to be the mistake of interpreting or evaluating a work in light of the author's intention, design, or plan when writing the work. The phrase was first used in "The Intentional Fallacy" (1946), which was later reprinted in Wimsatt's  The Verbal Icon (1954). 

        It is argued that the author's intention is irrelevant because the meaning and value are found in the actual text—the made object—which is the finished and free-standing work itself. This is true whether the author has expressly stated his intention in commenting on his work or whether his intention is simply inferred from the work itself. Any mention of the author's stated or implied goals and general mindset is actually deceptive because it diverts our attention from the text to "external" topics like the author's biography, his psychological state, or his creative process, which we often mistake for the "internal" structure of the work as a whole. 

        Critical theorists have engaged in a lot of discussion about this idea, which has been widely adopted by contemporary proponents of objective criticism. The maker of a work has direct access to information about what went into its creation that may be extremely relevant to our own interpretation and evaluation, so it stands to reason that if we have an author's statement about his intentions when writing a work of literature, that statement has a special status as evidence.

        Although the author's stated intention has a privileged status, it does not have a conclusive status as evidence because it must be verified by reference to the text itself and must be qualified, if necessary, or even rejected, if a different reading better fits the structure and specifics of the work in question. Regarding a "intention," which is solely derived from the text of the work, that term is simply another way of saying that the poem's internal structure serves as its organising principle.