The Varieties of Authorial Intention: Literary Theory Beyond the Intentional Fallacy

About the Author

John Farrell is Professor of Literature at Claremont McKenna College, USA. He is also the author of Paranoia and Modernity and Freud’s Paranoid Quest.

Product Description

This book explores the logic and historical origins of a strange taboo that has haunted literary critics since the 1940s, keeping them from referring to the intentions of authors without apology. The taboo was enforced by a seminal article, “The Intentional Fallacy,” and it deepened during the era of poststructuralist theory. Even now, when the vocabulary of “critique” that has dominated the literary field is under sweeping revision, the matter of authorial intention has yet to be reconsidered. This work explains how “The Intentional Fallacy” confused different kinds of authorial intentions and how literary critics can benefit from a more up-to-date understanding of intentionality in language. The result is a challenging inventory of the resources of literary theory, including implied readers, poetic speakers, omniscient narrators, interpretive communities, linguistic indeterminacy, unconscious meaning, literary value, and the nature of literature itself.

Review

“The Varieties of Authorial Intention is a book that literary scholars of every specialization would benefit from reading. It is one of the most down-to-earth and sensible books ever written about the study of literature. By exposing the contradictions and incoherence created by proponents of the textual fallacy, Farrell clears the way for a major improvement in the quality of thought in English departments.” (Leonard Neidorf, Studia Neophilologica, December, 2017)

Review

“For a long time, going back to Condillac (elaborating Bacon), western theory has valued structure over actors: language speaks us, not we it. John Farrell’s brilliant book returns literary authority to human actors. This is not a call for a “conservative” return to autonomous romantic authorship, but an acknowledgment that all the artifacts of cultural production originate in the complex, constrained, agonistic networks of human intentions and actions.” (Anthony Kemp, Associate Professor of English, University of Southern California, USA)
“Commonsensical yet brilliant, learned, and profoundly humanistic, The Varieties of Authorial Intention is potentially the most important statement of literary theory to have emerged in this century. Farrell has done his work masterfully; now the question is whether his colleagues in the academy will prove capable of heeding his counsel.” (Frederick Crews, author of“Follies of the Wise: Dissenting Essays”)

From the Back Cover

This book explores the logic and historical origins of a strange taboo that has haunted literary critics since the 1940s, keeping them from referring to the intentions of authors without apology. The taboo was enforced by a seminal article, “The Intentional Fallacy,” and it deepened during the era of poststructuralist theory. Even now, when the vocabulary of “critique” that has dominated the literary field is under sweeping revision, the matter of authorial intention has yet to be reconsidered. This work explains how “The Intentional Fallacy” confused different kinds of authorial intentions and how literary critics can benefit from a more up-to-date understanding of intentionality in language. The result is a challenging inventory of the resources of literary theory, including implied readers, poetic speakers, omniscient narrators, interpretive communities, linguistic indeterminacy, unconscious meaning, literary value, and the nature of literature itself.