What do you think?
The Intentional Fallacy
W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley wrote in their essay The Intentional Fallacy: "the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art."[1] The author, they argue, cannot be reconstructed from a writing - the text is the only source of meaning, and any details of the author's desires or life are purely extraneous. Such thinking essentially states that the authors intended meaning and purpose for the exposition are fundamentally unnecessary to the reader’s interpretation. This view is extremely useful in a postmodern relativistic framework as it successfully makes the reader or the consumer of the story the only authority on its meaning as opposed to the author or creator of the work. The unfortunate side effect is that this view strips the artist themselves of all value; it implies that only the product of their creation is of any importance.
22 pages, Unknown Binding
First published January 1, 1946
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 27, 2019
"Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work. Poetry succeeds because all or most of what is said or implied is relevant; what is irrelevant has been excluded, like 'lumps' from pudding and 'bugs' from machinery."
July 29, 2015
There is a gross body of life, of sensory and mental experience, which lies behind and in some cases causes every poem, but can never be and need not be known in the verbal and hence intellectual composition which is the poem. For all the objects of our manifold experience, especially for the intellectual objects, for every unity, there is an action of the mind which cuts off roots, melts away context—or indeed we should never have objects or ideas or anything to talk about.
A perennial debate in literature is if an author’s interpretation should be respected regarding their own work, and if we should judge their work by the success of their intentions. Two scholars of the twentieth century New Critics, William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, organized the anti-intentional side into an essay titled The Intentional Fallacy. While not universally accepted or remotely full-proof, the polemic does posit some devastating points to the opposition, and is a must read for anyone interested. Let me preface by saying that while I am a stubborn anti-intentionalist, this essay actually challenged my viewpoint somewhat. The reason is that, while I was already familiar with the anti-arguments, I was not well-versed with the pros, and as Wimsatt/Beardsley invoked them for repudiation I felt their pull. Indeed this debate is still much alive and informs how we interpret/judge works today.
To summarize: a work of art comes from an artist: that is indisputable. And we assume that the artist had some sort of motivation, or intent, going into it. But whether or not that intent made its way into the work is irrelevant. If it did, than we should find evidence for it in the work itself. But if we find no evidence, then it didn’t, and as such the artist made a mistake. That mistake shouldn’t invalidate the work, but necessitate an interpretation different from the artist’s original intent. In either case the artist’s intent is superfluous. Plus, how could we validate this intent? What if, hypothetically, the artist was lying, joking, or forgetful? What then? The fact is there is no real connection between intent and interpretation, as art is not a transparent medium, and even if it was (prosaic communication) there is no guarantee that what you meant to say is what you actually said. All we can judge is the latter.
Well fine, but then should we judge a work by how successful the communication of the intent was? If it achieved its goal? Again no. First of all, how could we ascertain intent? If the artist is dead, then we need to rely on biographical/historical/psychological/sociological factors, which are not only glorified guesswork but take us away from, not towards, the text. Art needs to be respected as an autonomous object. If the artist is alive and honest and articulate, then fine, but that suggests a work’s intention is based off of private knowledge, which is a problem when a work of art exists in the public sphere. We cannot be expected to refer back to the artist every time, nor can they be expected to attach a note to their work explaining their intent. Not to mention an artist’s job is to create, not critique, and just because he is proficient in the former doesn’t make him an authority on the latter. He is simply one interpreter among many. No, intent is inferred from the only valid source, the work itself. But in either case, once we are sure of intent, we can’t simply judge a work by how well it achieves its goal. What if the work intended to be bad? Thus we use other criteria.
I like it. The current practice today, generally, is a compromise. The author’s interpretation sheds light on his work, but critics consider alternate points of view. Intent is simply one of many valuable tools of judging quality. But, in my view, the final authority should always be in the work itself, which I'm glad is supported here. Again, The Intentional Fallacy isn’t indestructible (Wimsatt/Beardsley have a hard time with allusions, for example, and don’t mention translations or mistakes in publishing) but it doesn’t have to be. It just needs to be more plausible than the opposition, which it succeeds in doing.
A perennial debate in literature is if an author’s interpretation should be respected regarding their own work, and if we should judge their work by the success of their intentions. Two scholars of the twentieth century New Critics, William Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, organized the anti-intentional side into an essay titled The Intentional Fallacy. While not universally accepted or remotely full-proof, the polemic does posit some devastating points to the opposition, and is a must read for anyone interested. Let me preface by saying that while I am a stubborn anti-intentionalist, this essay actually challenged my viewpoint somewhat. The reason is that, while I was already familiar with the anti-arguments, I was not well-versed with the pros, and as Wimsatt/Beardsley invoked them for repudiation I felt their pull. Indeed this debate is still much alive and informs how we interpret/judge works today.
To summarize: a work of art comes from an artist: that is indisputable. And we assume that the artist had some sort of motivation, or intent, going into it. But whether or not that intent made its way into the work is irrelevant. If it did, than we should find evidence for it in the work itself. But if we find no evidence, then it didn’t, and as such the artist made a mistake. That mistake shouldn’t invalidate the work, but necessitate an interpretation different from the artist’s original intent. In either case the artist’s intent is superfluous. Plus, how could we validate this intent? What if, hypothetically, the artist was lying, joking, or forgetful? What then? The fact is there is no real connection between intent and interpretation, as art is not a transparent medium, and even if it was (prosaic communication) there is no guarantee that what you meant to say is what you actually said. All we can judge is the latter.
Well fine, but then should we judge a work by how successful the communication of the intent was? If it achieved its goal? Again no. First of all, how could we ascertain intent? If the artist is dead, then we need to rely on biographical/historical/psychological/sociological factors, which are not only glorified guesswork but take us away from, not towards, the text. Art needs to be respected as an autonomous object. If the artist is alive and honest and articulate, then fine, but that suggests a work’s intention is based off of private knowledge, which is a problem when a work of art exists in the public sphere. We cannot be expected to refer back to the artist every time, nor can they be expected to attach a note to their work explaining their intent. Not to mention an artist’s job is to create, not critique, and just because he is proficient in the former doesn’t make him an authority on the latter. He is simply one interpreter among many. No, intent is inferred from the only valid source, the work itself. But in either case, once we are sure of intent, we can’t simply judge a work by how well it achieves its goal. What if the work intended to be bad? Thus we use other criteria.
I like it. The current practice today, generally, is a compromise. The author’s interpretation sheds light on his work, but critics consider alternate points of view. Intent is simply one of many valuable tools of judging quality. But, in my view, the final authority should always be in the work itself, which I'm glad is supported here. Again, The Intentional Fallacy isn’t indestructible (Wimsatt/Beardsley have a hard time with allusions, for example, and don’t mention translations or mistakes in publishing) but it doesn’t have to be. It just needs to be more plausible than the opposition, which it succeeds in doing.
August 15, 2025
In their paper “The Intentional Fallacy,” Wimsatt and Beardsley argue that “the design or intention of the author is neither available nor desirable as a standard for judging the success of a work of literary art.” Instead, they believe that one needs to look directly at the poem itself, what will be called the internal evidence, as the analysis of literary criticism.
They start their paper with 5 axiomatic claims. These can be summarized as: a poem does not come into existence incidentally, but that does not mean that the cause of the poem should be the standard for analyzing it; it is unclear how a critic would find out what the artist intended to do, what was in the mind of the artist; judging a poem is like judging a machine, in that it must work for us to judge it; a poem can be conceived of as the response of a dramatic speaker to the situation; and, the author’s intent is not something static, and it is always contextualized within a situation and open to change.
The authors then bring in a quote that states that the work of art is not the critics and that the poem belongs to the author, as the interpreter of meaning. However, the authors disagree with this quote because they do not think the poem is either the critics or the author’s. Rather: “the poem belongs to the public.” Once a poem is published, it becomes a social object of knowledge. Instead of viewing the poem as a class of experiences taken from the poet’s single experience, the poem is instead a system of norms extracted from every individual experience. Thus, this reduces the authority of the poet, rather shifting the authority to the text itself and the experience of the reader.
The authors then go on to critique Coomaray, who stated that there are 2 types of inquiry: 1. Whether the artist achieved their intention, and 2. Whether the work of art is worth preserving or should’ve been made at all. He states that the first is the artistic analysis, and the second is the moral analysis. However, Wimsatt and Beardsley argue that these are incorrectly labeled. Instead, the second inquiry is more fitting for the label of artistic criticism because only that question can distinguish art from murder.
The intentional fallacy, the authors state, arises from the romantic tradition. The Crociean system, a prime example of romanticism, inquires into both what the author intended in the work and how well the author succeeded in doing so. This commits oneself to an expressionist view of art, one in which art is seen as expressing the artist's experience, intention, and/or emotions. The authors reject both of these ideas.
A distinction is then made between internal and external evidence for the meaning of a poem. Internal evidence is public, and it is discovered through the linguistics of the poem itself. In contrast, external evidence is private; it is “not a part of the work as a linguistic fact.” Examples of external evidence are journals or letters discovered to be written by the author about his work or the motivation behind it. However, there is a third, intermediary type of evidence for the meaning as well: the semi-private meanings attached to words by a specific author. Internal evidence is what the authors say the evidence in literary criticism should be.
This intentional fallacy is as much of a contemporary issue as it is a historical one. The authors take Eliot as an example of a poet whose critics find it commonplace to trace the author in the readings as the only way to find their meaning. However, the authors think that Eliot’s allusions work through their suggestive power alone, and that one needn’t be familiar with exactly what Eliot is alluding to. Additionally, it was common for Eliot to include notes in his poems, and inquiry must analyze the integrity of the notes as part of the poem. Eliot included notes to not muffle the energy of the poems; however, the notes and their necessity with the poem could be equally muffling, suggesting a level of incompleteness to the text. If the text needs notes because the text does not contain what it attempts to convey, then the value of the text seems questionable. This seems to be a fault of contemporary poets planning too much: too much imposition of a set intent on a text may take away from the text itself and the experience of it.
The author’s lastly brings up an issue, one that is similar to the one posed at the beginning of Barthes’ “The Death of The Author:” in a line from a poem by Eliot, the text resembles a song by John Donne. The authors state that a question may arise as to whether Eliot was intending this allusion, or who was thinking about Donne – was it Eliot (the author) or Prufrock? However, the authors suggest that this is not a question concerning critical inquiry of the poem; “critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle.”
I find myself in heavy agreement with Wimsatt and Beardsley. However, there are a couple of criticisms that I believe can be made of this article.
Firstly, they seem to suggest that there is a precise point at which artistic criticism can occur: “Is the work worth preserving, and should it have been made at all?” However, this seems to equally apply to scientific or philosophical inquiry as well. Rather than stating that artistic criticism can’t be made, it seems more fitting that this is a symptom of them attempting to sharply delineate practical matters from aesthetic ones.
Secondly, while I largely agree with the authors’ that a primacy of the text in interpreting it is best, it seems that there is still something to be gained from the concept of authorial intent. For example, reading what the author was trying to do and contrasting that with the text itself or the public’s interpretation of the text seems like it could be valuable. Additionally, learning that a piece is politically charged that wasn’t made clear in the text could be an interesting inquiry, whether that bears on the meaning of the text or not.
They start their paper with 5 axiomatic claims. These can be summarized as: a poem does not come into existence incidentally, but that does not mean that the cause of the poem should be the standard for analyzing it; it is unclear how a critic would find out what the artist intended to do, what was in the mind of the artist; judging a poem is like judging a machine, in that it must work for us to judge it; a poem can be conceived of as the response of a dramatic speaker to the situation; and, the author’s intent is not something static, and it is always contextualized within a situation and open to change.
The authors then bring in a quote that states that the work of art is not the critics and that the poem belongs to the author, as the interpreter of meaning. However, the authors disagree with this quote because they do not think the poem is either the critics or the author’s. Rather: “the poem belongs to the public.” Once a poem is published, it becomes a social object of knowledge. Instead of viewing the poem as a class of experiences taken from the poet’s single experience, the poem is instead a system of norms extracted from every individual experience. Thus, this reduces the authority of the poet, rather shifting the authority to the text itself and the experience of the reader.
The authors then go on to critique Coomaray, who stated that there are 2 types of inquiry: 1. Whether the artist achieved their intention, and 2. Whether the work of art is worth preserving or should’ve been made at all. He states that the first is the artistic analysis, and the second is the moral analysis. However, Wimsatt and Beardsley argue that these are incorrectly labeled. Instead, the second inquiry is more fitting for the label of artistic criticism because only that question can distinguish art from murder.
The intentional fallacy, the authors state, arises from the romantic tradition. The Crociean system, a prime example of romanticism, inquires into both what the author intended in the work and how well the author succeeded in doing so. This commits oneself to an expressionist view of art, one in which art is seen as expressing the artist's experience, intention, and/or emotions. The authors reject both of these ideas.
A distinction is then made between internal and external evidence for the meaning of a poem. Internal evidence is public, and it is discovered through the linguistics of the poem itself. In contrast, external evidence is private; it is “not a part of the work as a linguistic fact.” Examples of external evidence are journals or letters discovered to be written by the author about his work or the motivation behind it. However, there is a third, intermediary type of evidence for the meaning as well: the semi-private meanings attached to words by a specific author. Internal evidence is what the authors say the evidence in literary criticism should be.
This intentional fallacy is as much of a contemporary issue as it is a historical one. The authors take Eliot as an example of a poet whose critics find it commonplace to trace the author in the readings as the only way to find their meaning. However, the authors think that Eliot’s allusions work through their suggestive power alone, and that one needn’t be familiar with exactly what Eliot is alluding to. Additionally, it was common for Eliot to include notes in his poems, and inquiry must analyze the integrity of the notes as part of the poem. Eliot included notes to not muffle the energy of the poems; however, the notes and their necessity with the poem could be equally muffling, suggesting a level of incompleteness to the text. If the text needs notes because the text does not contain what it attempts to convey, then the value of the text seems questionable. This seems to be a fault of contemporary poets planning too much: too much imposition of a set intent on a text may take away from the text itself and the experience of it.
The author’s lastly brings up an issue, one that is similar to the one posed at the beginning of Barthes’ “The Death of The Author:” in a line from a poem by Eliot, the text resembles a song by John Donne. The authors state that a question may arise as to whether Eliot was intending this allusion, or who was thinking about Donne – was it Eliot (the author) or Prufrock? However, the authors suggest that this is not a question concerning critical inquiry of the poem; “critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle.”
I find myself in heavy agreement with Wimsatt and Beardsley. However, there are a couple of criticisms that I believe can be made of this article.
Firstly, they seem to suggest that there is a precise point at which artistic criticism can occur: “Is the work worth preserving, and should it have been made at all?” However, this seems to equally apply to scientific or philosophical inquiry as well. Rather than stating that artistic criticism can’t be made, it seems more fitting that this is a symptom of them attempting to sharply delineate practical matters from aesthetic ones.
Secondly, while I largely agree with the authors’ that a primacy of the text in interpreting it is best, it seems that there is still something to be gained from the concept of authorial intent. For example, reading what the author was trying to do and contrasting that with the text itself or the public’s interpretation of the text seems like it could be valuable. Additionally, learning that a piece is politically charged that wasn’t made clear in the text could be an interesting inquiry, whether that bears on the meaning of the text or not.
September 10, 2013
Wimsatt has kept in the tradition of Foucault and Barthes in maintaining that the author or, more specifically here, the author’s intention is not significant for the interpretation of any piece of text. Who cares what the writer meant? It is not that the ‘authorial intent’ is unworthy in some respect, but the point is that we, as readers, can never know what it is, or can never be certain that it is what we think it is, anyway. Well. I don't agree completely. Some examples of confessional poetry do require a biographical study of the writer to know what a certain phrase really meant, though without it we can still come up with several meanings of our own, even if they're not what the writer really intended to mean. Which doesn't matter, anyway, according to Wimsatt and Monroe. Which is slightly weird.
January 22, 2021
An interrogative fallacy - 'whose opinion matters more, the person who produces the work or the person who consumes it?'
I stumbled upon this essay while reading Jordan Ferguson's book about J. Dilla's last album -Donuts. He was discussing the significance of the authorial intent vs the meaning the listener draws on his own from the songs.
'A non-lexical chant sampled on the song “People” is taken from “Mujhe Maar Daalo,” a track from the 1974 Hindi movie Geeta Mera Naam. The actual lyrics of the song, when translated to English, tell the story of a woman facing her demise, seeking to prove that life does not end with death. Is it even in the realm of possibility that Dilla knew that when he decided to sample that song? Only he knew. Whether the point was to make a grand statement on the nature of mortality, or assert how dominant his beat-making skills were, no one can say definitively what he intended.' You may want to listen and judge for yourself.
But the question Wimsatt and Beardsly pose over here is rather - be it one way or another, how does knowing the facts change the perspective of the reader? If a poem reaches its audience by the right amount of imagery and whatnot, to what purpose does the addition of notes or ancillaries of the like serve?
Theory indeed 'dries up poetry', to a certain degree, and the 'judgement of poems is different from the art of producing them'. To base the whole burden of explaining the intricacies and subtleties of a poem solely on acts of intentionality is out of place; at the same time, to dismiss intentionality entirely, as a 'fallacy', is equally narrow-minded, and goes head first into mysticism, which I do welcome in healthy, decent doses. But the paradox is, I'll say, that mysticism can't come by in 'decent' amounts - it is a matter of all or nothing. So when the authors opine that 'the evaluation of the work of art remains public; the work is measured against something outside the author' I can't give them that wholly. It is well known that writing is an act of ego, and no amount of personal fulfillment or injustice the reader senses, or poststructuralism can strip the author of its authorial intention. Let authors take responsibility and ownership. And let us not forget that it was Lenin who said 'ART BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE'.
I stumbled upon this essay while reading Jordan Ferguson's book about J. Dilla's last album -Donuts. He was discussing the significance of the authorial intent vs the meaning the listener draws on his own from the songs.
'A non-lexical chant sampled on the song “People” is taken from “Mujhe Maar Daalo,” a track from the 1974 Hindi movie Geeta Mera Naam. The actual lyrics of the song, when translated to English, tell the story of a woman facing her demise, seeking to prove that life does not end with death. Is it even in the realm of possibility that Dilla knew that when he decided to sample that song? Only he knew. Whether the point was to make a grand statement on the nature of mortality, or assert how dominant his beat-making skills were, no one can say definitively what he intended.' You may want to listen and judge for yourself.
But the question Wimsatt and Beardsly pose over here is rather - be it one way or another, how does knowing the facts change the perspective of the reader? If a poem reaches its audience by the right amount of imagery and whatnot, to what purpose does the addition of notes or ancillaries of the like serve?
Theory indeed 'dries up poetry', to a certain degree, and the 'judgement of poems is different from the art of producing them'. To base the whole burden of explaining the intricacies and subtleties of a poem solely on acts of intentionality is out of place; at the same time, to dismiss intentionality entirely, as a 'fallacy', is equally narrow-minded, and goes head first into mysticism, which I do welcome in healthy, decent doses. But the paradox is, I'll say, that mysticism can't come by in 'decent' amounts - it is a matter of all or nothing. So when the authors opine that 'the evaluation of the work of art remains public; the work is measured against something outside the author' I can't give them that wholly. It is well known that writing is an act of ego, and no amount of personal fulfillment or injustice the reader senses, or poststructuralism can strip the author of its authorial intention. Let authors take responsibility and ownership. And let us not forget that it was Lenin who said 'ART BELONGS TO THE PEOPLE'.
February 7, 2017
Way more potable than "Death of the Author." I agree with about 90% of their argument. Very convincing.
Read
December 16, 2022"And the history of words after a poem is written may contribute meanings which if relevant to the original pattern should not be ruled out by a scruple about intention."
June 24, 2024
something about pudding 🍮 and machines 🤖 (??)
May 22, 2026
don't fully agree but loved the burns
November 7, 2024
I guess? 3.5
May 5, 2022
If I have to suffer through New Criticism, I am at least going to give myself credit for it here. They're certainly right about the slippery slope of focusing on intentionality, which really can't be defined or found at all. However, it's not that hard to apply their intentional fallacy to this article, too...
January 21, 2016
This essay is no great matter, but it is simple and makes a fine point. It gives a firm perspective to begin critical examination of any piece of literature. A pastiche of critical opinions is not what critical enquiry means. This essay shows what we should seek when we seek the meaning of a literary work. It guards against being obsessed with the poet/author's "intended" meaning. It draws the fine line of distinction between the internal, private and historical meanings of a text.
This is the kind of essay one should be familiar with in the very beginning of literature course. I don't get why my university was saving it up for the final semester of Masters!
This is the kind of essay one should be familiar with in the very beginning of literature course. I don't get why my university was saving it up for the final semester of Masters!
March 13, 2014
It was quite a superb base for critically analysing Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and was a large part of my Extension English assignment this year, strongly recommend for anyone who is dunce enough to do that subject
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