Even More Research...

The affective fallacy "is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does). It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem and ends in impressionism and relativism.""The outcome of either fallacy . . . is that the poem itself, as an object of specifically critical judgement, tends to disappear."
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Wimsatt and Beardsley charge criticism which takes account of authorial intention in a work with commiting a fallacy--the intentional fallacy. The intentional fallacy "is a confusion between the poem and its origins . . . it begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological causes of the poem and ends in biography and relativism." While they do not deny the presence of an authorial intention, they deny the importance or usefulness of looking for such an intention as part of analyzing a work. "To insist on the designing intellect as a cause of a poem is not to grant the design or intention as a standard by which the critic is to judge the worth of the poet's performance." Wimsatt and Beardsley argue that the poem must work on its own, independent of any meeting or not meeting of an authorial intention which a reader would have no immediate way of knowing about in the first place. "Judging a poem is like judging a pudding or a machine. One demands that it work." The thoughts and feelings expressed in a poem should be imputed to "the dramatic speaker," and not to the author. Poems belong neither to the author nor the critic. In the final analysis "the poem belongs to the public. It is embodied in language, the peculiar possession of the public, and it is about the human being, an object of public knowledge." Criticism must shed its concern with the genetic cause of the poem and focus on the poem itself. "The text itself [is what] remains to be dealt with, the analyzable vehicle of a complicated metaphor." Wimsatt and Beardsley differentiate between the internal and external evidences for the meaning of a poem. The internal is what is public: "it is discovered through the semantics and syntax of a poem, through our habitual knowledge of the language, through grammars, dictionaries, and all the literature which is the source of dictionaries, in general through all that makes a language and culture." The external is "private or idiosyncratic; not part of the work as a linguistic fact: it consists of revelations . . . about how or why the poet wrote the poem." They also speak of an "intermediate kind of evidence" which focuses on "private or semiprivate meanings attached to words or topics by an author." This use of biographical evidence, according to W&B, "need not involve intentionalism, because while it may be evidence of what the author intended, it may also be evidence of the meaning of his words and the dramatic character of his utterance." Critical questions cannot be answered effectively by consulting the intentions even of still-living authors: "Critical inquiries are not settled by consulting the oracle." The affective fallacy "is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does) [W&B would probably accuse Burke's "sociological criticism' of being an example of the affective fallacy.] . . . . It begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem and ends in impressionism and relativism." "The outcome of either fallacy . . . is that the poem itself, as an object of specifically critical judgement, tends to disappear." W&B claim that such criticism often produces unhelpful oversimplifications of the poem itself, and depends too heavily on the varied and subjective reactions of various readers to be valuable as criticism.

http://www.michaelbryson.net/academic/wimsattbeardsley.html

More Research...

The intentional fallacy, in literary criticism, is the assumption that the meaning intended by the author of a literary work is of primary importance. By characterizing this assumption as a "fallacy," a critic suggests that the author's intention is not particularly important. The term is an important principle of New Criticism and was first used by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley in their essay "The Intentional Fallacy" (1946 rev. 1954): "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." The phrase "intentional fallacy" is somewhat ambiguous, but it means "a fallacy about intent" and not "a fallacy committed on purpose." Literary criticism is the study, discussion, evaluation, and interpretation of literature. ... The introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter. ... An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like. ... It has been suggested that Logical fallacy be merged into this article or section. ... New Criticism was the dominant trend in English and American literary criticism of the early twentieth century, from the 1920s to the early 1960s. ... William Kurtz Wimsatt, Jr. ... Monroe Curtis Beardsley (1915-1985) was an American philosopher of aesthetics. ... In literary theory and aesthetics, authorial intentionality is a concept referring to an utterances authors intent as it is encoded in the medium of communication (speech, writing, performance). ...


Wimsatt and Beardsley divide the evidence used in making interpretations of literary texts (although their analysis can be applied equally well to any type of art) into three categories:

(1) Internal evidence. This evidence is present as the facts of a given work. The apparent content of a work is the internal evidence, including any historical knowledge and past expertise or experience with the kind of art being interpreted: its forms and traditions. The form of epic poetry, the meter, quotations etc. are internal to the work. This information is internal to the type (or genre) of art that is being examined. Obviously, this also includes those things physically present to the work itself.

(2) External evidence. What is not actually contained in the work itself is external. Statements made privately or published in journals about the work, or in conversations, e-mail, etc. External evidence is concerned with claims about why the artist made the work: reasons external to the fact of the work in itself. Evidence of this type is directly concerned with what the artist may have intended to do even or especially when it is not apparent from the work itself.

(3) Contextual evidence. The third kind of evidence concerns any meanings derived from the specific works relationship to other art made by this particular artist—as is the way it is exhibited, where, when and by whom. It can be biographical, but does not necessarily mean it is a matter of intentional fallacy. The character of a work may be inflected based upon the particulars of who does the work without necessarily characterizing it as an intentional fallacy.

Thus, a text's internal evidence — the words themselves, and their meanings — is fair game for literary analysis. External evidence — anything not contained within the text itself, such as information about the poet's life — belongs to literary biography, not literary criticism. Preoccupation with the author "leads away from the poem." According to New Criticism, a poem does not belong to its author, but rather "it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it. The poem belongs to the public." It is the Contextual evidence that presents the greatest potential for intentional fallacies of interpretation. Analysis using this type of evidence can easily become more concerned with external evidence than the internal content of the work.

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Intentional-fallacy

Wimsat Research

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. In his lifetime, Wimsatt became known for his studies of eighteenth-century literature (Leitch et al. 1372). He wrote many works of literary theory and criticismWimsatt 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 more contemporary writers (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.

Theories

Wimsatt contributed several theories to the critical landscape, particularly through his major work, 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

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

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.

Major works

Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry

Hateful Contraries: Studies in Literature and Criticism

Literary Criticism: A Brief History


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kurtz_Wimsatt,_Jr.

Accountablity Statement

Focus: What do you want to accomplish in this class or during this year?

1. During the course of the year I would like to maintain and average of 78 or higher
2. Also I would like to make a final decision of what route I would like to take should I decide to go to University to pursue a career
3. Also I will try not to just float through the year like I normally do and instead I will try to put my school first
4. I will also try to maintain a balance between school and sports so I do not fall behind
5. I will actually finish my ISU book this year instead of reading most of it then just using spark notes

Contributions: What contributions will you make to this class or to the school this year?

1. I will try to help my classmates to the best of my ability should they need my help
2. I will try not to disturb the people in my class so that they can stay focussed on their work
3. In group projects I will do my best to make sure that I do my part to make sure we do a good job


Accountabilities: For what will you be held responsible?

1. I will be accountable for my actions in class and be respectful when people are speaking
2. I will be accountable for late work and over due assignments
3. I will be responsible for being on time for class 
4. I will be responsible for the work I hand in and how good it is
5. I will be accountable for taking part in class discussions


Supports: What help, and from whom, will you need in order to achieve your accountabilities?

1. I will need help from Mr. Murray to basically kick me in the ass if I am not pulling my weight
2. I will also need help from my friends and family to ensure that I do not fall off track or forget that my school is first
3. Also help from my peers to guide me through the things I need to improve on

Measurements: How will you know what success looks like?

1. I will know what success looks like when I graduate and get into university
2. I will know it when I achieve my goals for the year or by achieving my average
3. I will know what success is when I look back and I don’t say to my self “if only I did this…”

Consequences: How should you be rewarded if you succeed? How should you be punished?

1. My reward should I succeed will be going to the University or getting the career of my choice
2. My punishment will be wasting the four years I spent in high school and not having anything to show for it