Wimsatt and Beardsley
"The Intentional Fallacy"
(orig. 1946)
in
Margolis,
Philosophy Looks at the Arts
(Third ed., 1987)
[SK's comments]
[minimal proofreading]
[many italics omitted]
[367]
19.
The Intentional Fallacy
W. K. WIMSATT, JR. AND
MONROE C. BEARDSLEY
[...] [epigraph] [...]
I
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.
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 Dictionary1 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 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 a
[368]
literary criticism in which the critic's approach will not be qualified by his view of "intention."
