1. The Intentional Fallacy Wimsatt And Beardsley
2. The Intentional Fallacy

Wimsatt and Beardsley, from'The Affective Fallacy'. The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does), a special case of epistemological skepticism, though usually advanced as if it had far stronger claims than the overall forms of skepticism. Wimsatt and Beardsley were New Critics: The Extreme Version. In two famous co-authored essays—'The Affective Fallacy' (1949) and 'The Intentional Fallacy' (1954)—these American wonder critics put out the idea that if a work of art is good enough, it will stand the test of time. A good poem is a good poem—always and forever. New Criticism: Affective and Intentional Fallacies. With regard to intentional fallacy, Wimsatt and Beardsley stated, 'Critical inquiries are.

Affective fallacy is a term from literary criticism used to refer to the supposed error of judging or evaluating a text on the basis of its emotional effects on a reader. The term was coined by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley in 1949 as a principle of New Criticism which is often paired with their study of The Intentional Fallacy.

Concept[edit]

The concept of affective fallacy is an answer to the idea of impressionistic criticism, which argues that the reader's response to a poem is the ultimate indication of its value. It is the antithesis of affective criticism, which is the practice of evaluating the effect that a literary work has on its reader or audience. The concept was presented after the authors had presented their paper on The Intentional Fallacy.

The Intentional Fallacy Wimsatt And Beardsley

First defined in an article published in The Sewanee Review in 1949, the concept of an affective fallacy was most clearly articulated in The Verbal Icon, Wimsatt's collection of essays published in 1954. Wimsatt used the term to refer to all forms of criticism that understood a text's effect upon the reader to be the primary route to analyzing the importance and success of that text. This definition of the fallacy, if strictly followed, touches on or wholly includes nearly all of the major modes of literary criticism, from Ovid's docere delictendo (to teach by delighting), Aristotle's catharsis, and Longinus's concept of 'transport' to late-nineteenth century belles-lettres and the contemporary Chicago Critics. For Wimsatt, the fallacy led to a number of potential errors, most of them related to emotional relativism. A view of literature based on its putative emotional effects will always be vulnerable to mystification and subjectivity; Wimsatt singles out the belletristic tradition exemplified by critics such as Arthur Quiller-Couch and George Saintsbury as an instance of a type of criticism that relies on subjective impressions and is thus unrepeatable and unreliable.

For Wimsatt, as for all the New Critics, such impressionistic approaches pose both practical and theoretical problems. In practical terms, it makes reliable comparisons of different critics difficult, if not irrelevant. In this light, the affective fallacy ran afoul of the New Critics' desire to place literary criticism on a more objective and principled basis. On the theoretical plane, the critical approach denoted as affective fallacy was fundamentally unsound because it denied the iconicity of the literary text. New Critical theorists stressed the unique nature of poetic language, and they asserted that—in view of this uniqueness—the role of the critic is to study and elucidate the thematic and stylistic 'language' of each text on its own terms, without primary reference to an outside context, whether of history, biography, or reader-response.

In practice, Wimsatt and the other New Critics were less stringent in their application of the theory than in their theoretical pronouncements. Wimsatt admitted the appropriateness of commenting on emotional effects as an entry into a text, as long as those effects were not made the focus of analysis.

Reception[edit]

As with many concepts of New Criticism, the concept of the affective fallacy was both controversial and, though widely influential, never accepted wholly by any great number of critics.

The first critiques of the concept came, naturally enough, from those academic schools against whom the New Critics were ranged in the 1940s and 1950s, principally the historical scholars and the remaining belletristic critics. Early commentary deplored the use of the word 'fallacy' itself, which seemed to many critics unduly combative. More sympathetic critics, while still objecting to Wimsatt's tone, accepted as valuable and necessary his attempt to place criticism on a more objective basis.

However, the extremism of Wimsatt's approach was ultimately judged untenable by a number of critics. Just as New Historicism repudiated the New Critics' rejection of historical context, so reader-response criticism arose partly from dissatisfaction with the concept of the text as icon. Reader-response critics denied that a text could have a quantifiable significance outside its being read and experienced by particular readers at particular moments. These critics rejected the idea of text as icon, focusing instead on the ramifications of the interaction between text and reader.

While the term remains current as a warning against unsophisticated use of emotional response in analyzing texts, the theory underlying the term has been thoroughly eclipsed by more recent developments in criticism.^{[citation needed]}

Wimsatt and Beardsley[edit]

'The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does), a special case of epistemological skepticism [ .. which ..] begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem and ends in impressionism and relativism [with the result that] the poem itself, as an object of specifically critical judgment, tends to disappear.' Cid episode 7 september 2013 dailymotion movies.

'The report of some readers .. that a poem or story induces in them vivid images, intense feelings, or heightened consciousness, is neither anything which can be refuted nor anything which it is possible for the objective critic to take into account.'

Wimsatt and Beardsley on an ideal, objective criticism: 'It will not talk of tears, prickles or other physiological symptoms, of feeling angry, joyful, hot, cold, or intense, or of vaguer states of emotional disturbance, but of shades of distinction and relation between objects of emotion.'

'The critic is not a contributor to statistical countable reports about the poem, but a teacher or explicator of meanings. His readers, if they are alert, will not be content to take what he says as testimony, but will scrutinize it as teaching.'

Sources[edit]

• Barry, Peter (2009). Beginning theory; an introduction to literary and cultural theory, 3rd edn, Manchester: Manchester University Press.
• Keast, William (1954). 'Review of The Verbal Icon.' Modern Language Notes 8 (1956): 591–7.
• Mao, Douglas (1996). 'The New Critics and the Text Object.' ELH 63 (1996): 227–254.
• Wimsatt, W.K & Monroe Beardsley, 'The affective fallacy', Sewanee Review, vol. 57, no. 1, (1949): 31–55.
• Wimsatt, W.K. with Monroe Beardsley (1954). The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Lexington: University of Kentucky Press.

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]

• 5Theories
• 6Major works

Life and career[edit]

Wimsatt was born in Washington D.C., attended Georgetown University and, later, Yale University, where he received his Ph.D. In 1939, Wimsatt joined the English department at Yale, where he taught until his death in 1975. During his lifetime, Wimsatt became known for his studies of eighteenth-century literature (Leitch et al. 1372). He wrote many works of literary theory and criticism such as The Prose Style of Samuel Johnson (1941) and Philosophic Words: A Study of Style and Meaning in the 'Rambler' and 'Dictionary' of Samuel Johnson (1948; Leitch et al. 1372). His major works include The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry (1954); Hateful Contraries (1965) and Literary Criticism: A Short History (1957, with Cleanth Brooks). Wimsatt was considered crucial to New Criticism (particularly New Formalist Criticism; 1372). He was a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Influences[edit]

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.

Influence[edit]

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).

Approach[edit]

Wimsatt was interviewed, along with Walter J. Ong, S.J., of Saint Louis University, by Sheila Hough on the 327th edition of the radio talk-show Yale Reports, broadcast on May 24, 1964, by WTIC-Hartford. (Professor Wimsatt had received an honorary doctorate from Saint Louis University in 1963.) Ms. Hough asked Professor Wimsatt a question that still resonates today: 'Is literature taught in complete isolation from its author, Mr. Wimsatt -- don't you consider the person who wrote it?'

Wimsatt replied: 'I do, of course. Your question, I think, was prompted by that very fine essay of Father Ong's, 'The Jinnee in the Well-Wrought Urn,' which you read in his book The Barbarian Within [1962: 15-25]. It first appeared in Essays in Criticism at Oxford some years ago [1954], and was in part, I believe, an answer to an essay written many years ago, about twenty at least, by a friend of mine, Monroe Beardsley, and myself, called 'The Intentional Fallacy.' I would like to pay Father Ong the compliment of saying that I think that his essay 'The Jinnee in the Well-Wrought Urn' is the only sensible response that has ever been written to that essay of ours.'

As a staunch formalist critic, Wimsatt believed in the authority of the poem: any analysis of a poem must centre on the text itself (Leitch et al. 1371-1372). He outlines and advocates (particularly in his two influential essays written with Monroe Beardsley, “The Intentional Fallacy” and “The Affective Fallacy”) an “objective criticism” in which the critic essentially disregards the intentions of the poet and the effect of the poem on the audience as the sole (or even the major) factors in analyzing and evaluating a poem (Davis and Schleifer 43).

Wimsatt does allow for a certain degree of variation in the analysis of poetry and does not necessarily contend that there is only one possible reading for any given poem. He allows, for example, for what he calls the “literary sense” of meaning, saying that “no two different words or different phrases ever mean fully the same” (Verbal Icon xii).

Much of his theory, however, appears to stem from an ambivalence towards 'impressionism, subjectivism, and relativism” (Leitch et al. 1373) in criticism. In Hateful Contraries, Wimsatt refers to a “New Amateurism,” an “anti-criticism” emerging in works such as Leslie Fiedler’s “Credo,” which appeared in the Kenyon Review. “The only reservation the theorist need have about such critical impressionism or expressionism,” says Wimsatt, “is that, after all, it does not carry on very far in our cogitation about the nature and value of literature…it is not a very mature form of cognitive discourse” (Hateful Contraries xvi).

Indeed, Wimsatt is concerned with ensuring a level of legitimacy in English studies and he sets about doing so by favouring a scientific approach to criticism—even, for example, decrying affective theory as “less a scientific view of literature than a prerogative -- that of a soul adventuring among masterpieces” (Verbal Icon 29).

Theories[edit]

Wimsatt contributed several theories to the critical landscape, particularly through his major work, The Verbal Icon (of which some of the ideas are discussed below). His ideas generally centre around the same questions tackled by many critics: what is poetry and how does one evaluate it?

Intentional fallacy[edit]

Perhaps Wimsatt’s most influential theories come from the essays “The Intentional Fallacy” and “The Affective Fallacy” (both are published in Verbal Icon) which he wrote with Monroe Beardsley. Each of these texts “codifies a crucial tenet of New Critical formalist orthodoxy,” making them both very important to twentieth-century criticism (Leitch et al. 1371).

The Intentional Fallacy, according to Wimsatt, derives from “confusion between the poem and its origins” (Verbal Icon 21) – essentially, it occurs when a critic puts too much emphasis on personal, biographical, or what he calls “external” information when analyzing a work (they note that this is essentially the same as the “Genetic fallacy” in philosophical studies; 21). Wimsatt and Beardsley consider this strategy a fallacy partly because it is impossible to determine the intention of the author — indeed, authors themselves are often unable to determine the “intention” of a poem — and partly because a poem, as an act that takes place between a poet and an audience, has an existence outside of both and thus its meaning can not be evaluated simply based on the intentions of or the effect on either the writer or the audience(see the section of this article entitled “The Affective Fallacy' for a discussion of the latter; 5). For Wimsatt and Beardsley, intentional criticism becomes subjective criticism, and so ceases to be criticism at all. For them, critical inquiries are resolved through evidence in and of the text — not “by consulting the oracle” (18).

Affective fallacy[edit]

The Affective fallacy (identified in the essay of the same name, which Wimsatt co-authored with Monroe Beardsley, as above) refers to “confusion between the poem and its results” (Verbal Icon 21; italics in original). It refers to the error of placing too much emphasis on the effect that a poem has on its audience when analyzing it.

Wimsatt and Beardsley argue that the effect of poetic language alone is an unreliable way to analyze poetry because, they contend, words have no effect in and of themselves, independent of their meaning. It is impossible, then, for a poem to be “pure emotion” (38), which means that a poem’s meaning is not “equivalent to its effects, especially its emotional impact, on the reader” (Leitch et al. 1371).

As with the Intentional fallacy, engaging in affective criticism is too subjective an exercise to really warrant the label “criticism” at all — thus, for Wimsatt and Beardsley, it is a fallacy of analysis.

Concrete Universal[edit]

In “The Concrete Universal,” Wimsatt attempts to determine how specific or general (i.e., concrete or universal) a verbal representation must be in order to achieve a particular effect. What is the difference, for example, between referring to a “purple cow” and a “tan cow with a broken horn” (Verbal Icon 74)? In addressing such questions, Wimsatt attempts to resolve what it is that makes poetry different from other forms of communication, concluding that “what distinguishes poetry from scientific or logical discourse is a degree of concreteness which does not contribute anything to the argument but is somehow enjoyable or valuable for its own sake.” For Wimsatt, poetry is “the vehicle of a metaphor which one boards heedless of where it runs, whether cross-town or downtown — just for the ride” (76).

The Domain of Criticism[edit]

In “The Domain of Criticism,” Wimsatt “[defends] the domain of poetry and poetics from the encircling (if friendly) arm of the general aesthetician' (Verbal Icon 221) – that is, he discusses the problems with discussing poetry in purely aesthetic terms. Wimsatt questions the ability of a poem to function aesthetically in the same way as a painting or sculpture. For one, visual modes such as sculpture or painting are undertaken using materials that directly correlate with the object they represent — at least in terms of their “beauty.” A beautiful painting of an apple, for example, is done with beautiful paint.

Verbal expression, however, does not function this way — as Wimsatt points out, there is no such thing as a “beautiful” or “ugly” word (or, at least, there is no general consensus as to how to apply such concepts in such a context; 228). There is no correlation between words and their subject, at least in terms of aesthetics — “the example of the dunghill (or equivalent object) beautifully described is one of the oldest in literary discussion” (228).

More importantly, language does not function merely on the level of its effects on the senses, as (for example) visual modes do. A poem does not just derive its meaning from its rhyme and meter, but these are the domains of aesthetics (231) — to analyse poetry on the basis of its aesthetics, then, is insufficient in one is to adequately explore its meaning.

Major works[edit]

The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry[edit]

Written as a series of independent essays between 1941 and 1952, The Verbal Icon was finally published as a cohesive work (after Wimsatt revised some of the original versions) in 1954. Probably his most influential work, The Verbal Icon contains two of Wimsatt's most important essays, “The Intentional Fallacy” and “The Affective Fallacy” (co-authored with Monroe Beardsley). Paul de Man offers a significant critique of Wimsatt's text, taken as an example of the understanding of the notion of 'autonomy' in New Criticism, in Blindness and Insight.

Hateful Contraries: Studies in Literature and Criticism[edit]

Apparently concerned with the (admittedly lessened) influence of what he calls “Amateur Criticism,” Wimsatt published Hateful Contraries in 1965 as a way to “distinguish what [he] consider[s] an inevitable and proper literary interest in the contraries” (Hateful Contraries xviii). Through studies of works by T. S. Eliot as well as discussions of topics such as “The Augustan Mode in English Poetry” and “The Criticism of Comedy” (xi), Wimsatt attempts to add to the efforts to justify and improve literary criticism (xix).

The Intentional Fallacy

Literary Criticism: A Short History[edit]

Written with Cleanth Brooks in 1957, Literary Criticism: A Short History is intended as “a history of ideas about verbal art and about its elucidation and criticism” (Wimsatt and Brooks ix). The authors attempt to contribute to the “intelligibility in the history of literary argument” as well as “contributes to a distinct point of view,” which, they argue, is a necessary part of any historical literary studies (vii).

References[edit]

Notes

1. ^Wimsatt, William K. and Monroe C. Beardsley. 'The Intentional Fallacy.' Sewanee Review, vol. 54 (1946): 468-488. Revised and republished in The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry, U of Kentucky P, 1954: 3-18.

Sources

• Davis, Robert Con, and Ronald Schleifer. Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies. 2nd ed. New York: Longman, 1989.
• De Man, Paul. 'Form and Intent in the American New Criticism', in Blindness and Insight. 2nd ed. London: Routledge, 1983.
• Dowling, William C. 'The Gender Fallacy', in Theory's Empire: An Anthology of Dissent. Ed. Daphne Patai and Will Corral. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.
• Leitch, Vincent B., William E. Cain, Laurie A. Finke, Barbara E. Johnson, John McGowan, and Jeffrey J. Williams. “William K. Wimsatt Jr. and Monroe C. Beardsley.” The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2001. 1371-1374.
• Wimsatt, W. K. Jr. The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry. Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1954.
• ---. Hateful Contraries: Studies in Literature and Criticism. Kentucky: University of Kentucky Press, 1965.
• Wimsatt, William K. Jr. and Cleanth Brooks. Literary Criticism: A Short History. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1957.

External links[edit]

• Works by William K. Wimsatt at Project Gutenberg