Authorial intent in Wimsatt and Baerdsley’s essay ‘The Intentional Fallacy’

Pages: 752-754
Aishwarya Puri (Department of English, University of Delhi, Delhi)

The question of author’s intent behind writing a literary work hadn’t been more scintillating than in the twentieth century when Wimsatt and Beardsley thwarted its agency over the act of interpretation of a text. They disqualify the role of authorial intent in gauging the merit and “judging the success” (Wimsatt & Beardsley, 29) of a literary work. ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ published in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry does not investigate into the point in question but states its position and seeks out to convince the reader about it. In this essay I have also attempted to look at the question of a critic’s or interpreter’s authority over the interpreted meaning of the text. This question has been a point of debate for ages and Wimsatt and Beardsley have very objectively tried to decode its complexity. My attempt would be to look at all these pertinent questions in light of Wimsatt and Beardsley’s original text. I have supplemented my arguments by inputs from a wonderfully curated and composed essay called ‘Wittgensteinian Intentions’ by Colin Lyas. The essay helps me rope in engaging arguments regarding the text and the authors’ external memoirs to substantiate their point of view in the essay.