The Intentional and
Affective Fallacy by Whimsatt and Beardsley
William Kurtz Wimsatt Jr. (November 17, 1907 – December 17, 1975) was an
American professor of English, literary theorist, and critic.
Wimsatt is often associated with the concept of the intentional fallacy,
which he developed with Monroe Beardsley in order to discuss the
importance of an author's intentions for the creation of a work of art.[1]
Wimsatt was influenced by Monroe Beardsley, with whom he wrote some of
his most important pieces.
Wimsatt also drew on the work of both ancient critics, such as Longinus and Aristotle, and some of his own contemporaries,
such as T. S. Eliot and
the writers of the Chicago
School, to formulate his theories, often by highlighting key ideas
in those authors' works in order to refute them.
Wimsatt's ideas have affected the development of reader-response
criticism, and his influence has been noted in the works of writers
such as Stanley Fish, and
in works such as Walter Benn Michaels'
and Steven Knapp’s
“Against Theory” (Leitch et al. 1373-1374
Aubrey
Beardsley was a 19th-century English artist and illustrator. He was associated
with Oscar Wilde and the Aesthetic movement in art .
Aubrey
Beardsley was born on August 21, 1872 in Brighton, Sussex, England. With only
minimal art training, Beardsley was commissioned to illustrate an edition of
Malory's Le Morte Darthur.
His
highly erotic illustrations for Oscar Wilde's Salomé won
him notoriety but lead to a loss of work after the Wilde scandal. Beardsley,
who had contracted tuberculosis at age 6, died in 1898 at age 25.
Wimsatt and Breadsley have made best-known accusations of fallacy found in literary criticism based on writer’s intention and reader's response. International fallacy is a kind of mistake of deriving meaning of the text in terms of author’s intention, feeling, emotion, attitude, biography and situation. It is the error of interpreting a literary work by reference to evidence according to the intention of the author.
International
fallacy means the confusion between the poem and its origin. It is the fallacy
because an author is not the part of the text; instead, text is public but not
private.If a critic interprets text in terms of
author’s biography, this interpretation is called subjective interpretation or
criticism. But for Wimsatt and
Beardsley criticism should be objective and textual, critic should not go
beyond the text. Author can't control
the text as soon as he writes. It becomes public. The critic should not
interpret the allusion in terms of author’s intention.They claim that
author's intended meaning is irrelevant to the literary critic. The meaning,
structure, value of text is inherent with in the work of art itself; it is an
object with certain autonomy.
Affective fallacy
means the confusion between the poem and its result. It is a way of
deriving meaning of the text interims of affect of product up on the reader. Affective fallacy is
the error of evaluating a text by its effect. As a result of this
fallacy, criticism ends in impressionism and relativism and objective criticism
becomes almost impossible.Theories of
catharsis, therapy, didacticism etc, fall under the affective fallacy because
they judge the poem in terms of its effect on the reader.
Wimsatt and
Breadsley view that text constitutes language. The meaning of test is public,
not personal.The effect of the
text varies from person to person and from reading to reading.Thus if the critic
depends on the meaning produced by a single reader it will be a kind of
mistake.As a text is an autonomous entity, the best
way of deriving meaning is to analyze linguistics elements such as syntax,
semantics etc, since the work of art has its own anthological status, and it
should not be judged through the parameter outside the text. Wimsatt and
Breadsley criticize the tradition of expressive criticism as intentional
fallacy and pragmatic criticism as affective fallacy. They believe that a work of literature or text
has ontology of its own. It is not only an
autonomous object but also complete in itself. So it has no need to take
support of writer's intention and reader's affective response to assert its
being. It can have its
meaning with in itself, by its own structure. So its own being should be the subject
of critical study.
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