The Intentional Fallacy
The Intentional Fallacy Wimsatt And Beardsley
Intentional fallacy. 1. Intentional Fallacy INTRODUCTION Intentional fallacy,(a false idea that many people believe is true) term used in 20th- century literary criticism to describe the problem inherent in trying to judge a work of art by assuming the intent or purpose of the artist who created it. Introduced by W.K. Wimsatt, Jr., and Monroe C.Beardsley in The Verbal Icon (1954), the approach was a reaction to the popular belief that to know what the author intended—what he had in mind at the time of writing—was to know the correct interpretation of the work.