The Intentional Fallacy

A detailed Summary of The Intentional Fallacy

'The Intentional Fallacy', written by Wimsatt and Beardsley, suggests that a critic commits the aforementioned fallacy when they concern themselves with the authorial intention of a poet in writing a piece of work. The intentional fallacy, they say, is:

A confusion between the poem and its origins . . . it begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological causes of the poem and ends in biography and relativism.

and whilst not denying the possible presence of such an intention on the part of the poet, they do not recognise the relevance or value of searching for, or analysing it, when examining a text. They argue that a poem must function independently of an authors design and purpose, as a reader would have no knowledge of their

supposed intention in writing the poetry to start with, and therefore that essentially a poem exists on its own, with its meaning only discovered through examination of the linguistics and grammar.

Ghastly statue with one gray toe / Big as a Frisco seal

may seem surreal until one consults Butscher's biography on Plath and learns that Otto Plath (Sylvia's father) recognition of his illness started when 'he developed a sore on his toe in the middle of 1940 and neglected it completely until he required hospitalisation'.

which basically means that any critical questions one may have cannot be answered effectively by consulting the intentions of even still living authors.

However critics seen acknowledging this fact would be accused of committing the Inten

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Approximate Word count = 514
Approximate Pages = 2 (250 words per page double spaced)

Category: English

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The Intentional Fallacy

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