Interpretation of literature often pivots on the tension between meaning fixed in the text and meaning inferred from the the author’s purpose. The term “intentional fallacy” names one extreme in that tension. In this article, we define that concept, trace its lineage, survey challenges, and see whether authorial intent still commands any space in contemporary reading.
What is the intentional fallacy?
The phrase was first coined by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley in their 1946 essay “The Intentional Fallacy.” They argued against the critical practice of interpreting or judging a poem (or any literary work) by appealing to what the author meant or intended. Instead, they proposed that a work should stand on its own terms, and that recourse to an author’s mental states is both unreliable and extraneous.
They famously wrote 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.” Their rationale: an author’s intention may never be known with certainty, and even if known, it might unduly constrain or distort interpretation by privileging one reading over many potential ones.
Wimsatt and Beardsley distinguished internal evidence (what appears within the text—vocabulary, syntax, imagery) from external evidence (biographical facts, letters, author statements). They warn that relying on external evidence risks sliding into mere speculation or biographical criticism.
Because the term is often used in opposition to appeals to authorial intentions, it intersects with related notions such as the “affective fallacy” (the error of evaluating a work by the emotional response it evokes in the reader).
The Critique of Authorial Intent
At its root, intentional fallacy challenges the authority of authorial intent in interpretive work. But to understand why this challenge arose, we must examine how authorial intent has been theorized—and contested.
Defining Authorial Intent
Authorial intent refers to the purpose, aim, or meaning that an author has in mind when producing a text. In hermeneutics, proponents of intentionalism hold that a valid interpretation must align (or at least not contradict) those intentions.
Within intentionalism one can distinguish actual intentionalism (the meaning is tied to the author’s actual mental intention) and hypothetical intentionalism (the meaning is what an ideal reader infers the author must have meant).
E. D. Hirsch argued that interpretation must return to the author’s original intention as the anchor of meaning. In Validity in Interpretation (1967), he contends that a work’s meaning is fixed by what its creator sought to express, not by what later readers may derive from it. His central claim rests on a distinction between meaning—the author’s intended communication—and significance—the changing relevance that later ages attach to it.
“The meaning of a text is that which the author meant by his use of a particular sign sequence; it is what the author meant, not what the text means to us or to someone else.”
page 8, E. D. Hirsch, Validity in Interpretation (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967).
Through this definition, Hirsch positioned himself against the prevailing anti-intentionalism of mid-century criticism, arguing that without reference to the author’s intended sense, interpretation risks drifting into relativism.
Objections From New Criticism and Beyond
Wimsatt and Beardsley’s intentional fallacy critique became a cornerstone of New Criticism, which emphasized close reading, text autonomy, and resistance to biographical or historical substitution.
Poststructuralist theorists such as Roland Barthes in “The Death of the Author” went further: once a work is published, the author’s authority dissolves, and meaning proliferates through the reader’s engagement. In that view, authorial intent becomes irrelevant.
Yet some later critics argue that entirely dismissing authorial intention is too dogmatic. John Farrell, in The Varieties of Authorial Intention (2017), tries to rehabilitate a moderated, pragmatic notion of intention, still anchored in the work but open to an author’s communicative choice.
In recent defenses, authors’ intentions are seen as illuminating but not determinative: they may guide interpretation, especially when evidence is strong, but they should not supersede textual reading.
How the Intentional Fallacy Functions in Literary Reading
The concept of intentional fallacy explains how critical judgment operates within reading. It shapes the methods by which interpretation proceeds—how readers separate authorial claims from textual evidence, how they justify their analyses, and how they navigate the space between what a work expresses and what an author may have intended. Its influence becomes clearer in several key practices that guide literary reading:
- Avoiding hidden authorial imposition: When critics assert that this poem means X because the poet intended Y, they risk conflating their own interpretive moves with factual knowledge. That move may mask power: critics can privilege particular readings as “author-approved.” Intentional fallacy warns against that imposition.
- Focusing on textual evidence: By sidelining authorial intent, a reader emphasizes close reading—attending to language, structure, rhetorical devices, and ambiguities. The text itself becomes the arbiter, and meaning emerges from the interplay among its parts. In this mode, every line, metaphor, or turn of phrase carries its own significance apart from external biography.
- Multiplicity of meaning: If meaning resides not in authorial intention but in how a text can be read in various contexts, then interpretations proliferate. A poem can hold multiple, even conflicting senses without contradiction, so long as they do justice to the text. Intentional fallacy paves the way for reader-response, reception theory, and poststructuralist pluralism.
- When authorial intent might still appear: Though intentional fallacy cautions against appeals to authorial intent, certain cases invite it: where an author’s letters or annotations clearly resolve ambiguity; where an author’s cultural position imposes constraints that cannot be ignored; or in textual editing, where recovering the author’s final version matters. The key is that the author’s intention can be a supplement, not the foundation.
Tensions and Trade-offs: a Balanced Perspective
Although the intentional fallacy has shaped modern criticism, the debate remains unresolved in many quarters. A few tensions deserve highlighting:
- An outright ban on authorial intent risks ignoring valuable historical or biographical context that can enrich understanding, particularly in politically or socially sensitive texts.
- Total freedom of interpretation can lead to incoherence: if any reading is allowed, some readings might contradict internal textual constraints.
- Some authors do leave explicit commentary or drafts; to refuse that evidence entirely may seem dismissive of their labor as communicators.
- Even when critics reject appeals to authorial intention, their linguistic choices and frameworks may implicitly embed normative assumptions about meaning, purpose, or coherence.
Thus, many contemporary critics adopt a mediated approach: they begin with the text, interpret on its basis, but remain open to authorial evidence when it genuinely clarifies or constrains. In that practice, authorial intent becomes one voice among others—never the sovereign.
Further Reading
Authorial intent on Wikipedia
On the Intentional Fallacy by Reginald Shepherd, Poetry Foundation
Key Theories of Wimsatt and Beardsley by Nasrullah Mambrol, literariness.org
Why is authorial intent no longer considered while analyzing a text? on Reddit
