Intentional fallacy

The critical principle that an author’s intended meaning does not by itself determine a literary work’s meaning. It distinguishes evidence in the work from claims about the author’s private intentions.

W. K. Wimsatt: An American literary critic associated with New Criticism and the essay “The Intentional Fallacy.” He co-authored the essay that gave the principle its name.
Close reading: A method of literary analysis that examines a text’s wording, form, and structure in detail. It treats features present in the work as primary evidence for interpretation.
Intentionalism: The view that an author’s intentions help determine or constrain a work’s meaning. It directly contests the fallacy’s rejection of intention as a decisive standard.
Death of the Author: Roland Barthes’s argument that authorial authority should not govern a text’s interpretation. It radicalizes the displacement of the author as the final source of meaning.
Monroe Beardsley: An American philosopher and literary critic who developed influential theories of aesthetics and interpretation. He co-authored the foundational argument against treating authorial intention as decisive.
Authorial intention: The purposes or meanings an author aims to communicate through a work. The fallacy challenges intention’s authority when it is used to settle meaning by itself.
Anti-intentionalism: The view that an author’s intentions are not necessary for determining a work’s meaning. It names the broader interpretive position most closely aligned with the principle.
Reader-response criticism: A family of critical approaches that examines how readers participate in producing literary meaning. It shifts interpretive emphasis from authorial intention toward readers and acts of reading.
New Criticism: A twentieth-century approach to literary study that emphasizes close analysis of a work’s language and structure. Its focus on the text supplied the critical setting for the fallacy.
Textualism: An interpretive approach that gives priority to a text’s publicly available wording and structure. It exemplifies the principle’s preference for evidence available in the work.

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