Literary Intention, Literary Interpretations, and Readers
Literary Intention, Literary Interpretations, and Readers

Author: John Maynard

Publisher: Broadview Press

Published: 2009-04-17

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 1770480463

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This accessible, personal, and provocative study returns to the major subject in literary discussion before and during the relatively recent flourishing of literary theory, that of literary intention. Does the author’s personal intention or historical site determine a correct interpretation of a literary work? Probing the entire range of issues connected with this many-faceted and knotty concept, this book engages with interpretation on both theoretical and practical levels. It argues that the hard questions about interpretation connected to issues of intention cannot be sidestepped or ignored. It does not argue for conservative concepts of literature itself, nor against the major historical engagements of critics in our time. But in addressing those who continue to read or teach literature, it does insist on a level of sophistication in issues of literary interpretation that cannot be assured by historical research and knowledge of the social and cultural connections to literary works. The overall aim of the work is to recall readers to the great complexity, pleasure, and interest of literary interpretation.

Literary Intention, Literary Interpretations, and Readers
Literary Intention, Literary Interpretations, and Readers

Author: John Maynard

Publisher: Broadview Press

Published: 2009-04-17

Total Pages: 460

ISBN-13: 1551118971

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

This accessible, personal, and provocative study returns to the major subject in literary discussion before and during the relatively recent flourishing of literary theory, that of literary intention. Does the author’s personal intention or historical site determine a correct interpretation of a literary work? Probing the entire range of issues connected with this many-faceted and knotty concept, this book engages with interpretation on both theoretical and practical levels. It argues that the hard questions about interpretation connected to issues of intention cannot be sidestepped or ignored. It does not argue for conservative concepts of literature itself, nor against the major historical engagements of critics in our time. But in addressing those who continue to read or teach literature, it does insist on a level of sophistication in issues of literary interpretation that cannot be assured by historical research and knowledge of the social and cultural connections to literary works. The overall aim of the work is to recall readers to the great complexity, pleasure, and interest of literary interpretation.

Intention and Interpretation: A Short History
Intention and Interpretation: A Short History

Author: Ralf Grüttemeier

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2022-02-07

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 3110767856

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Intention plays a complex role in human utterances. The interpretation of literary texts is a strong case in point: for about two hundred years there have been conflicting views about whether, and how much, authorial intention should matter when professional readers interpret literature. These debates grew increasingly fierce during the post-World War II period, the landmarks of which were the notions of intentional fallacy and the death of the author. Seventy-odd years later, there is still no consensus in sight. What has always been neglected in the debates around authorial intention, however, is a reflection on the historical dimension of the debate and how historically bound each of the theoretical positions in the debate were. This book focusses precisely on the historical dimension of authorial intention, providing a systematic historical reconstruction of the importance ascribed to it in literary texts from Classical Greece to the present day, and including a chapter on authorial intention in jurisdiction and legal interpretation from a historical perspective. The book reconstructs a typology of the most important concepts of intention in interpretation for diachronic and synchronic use. At the same time it offers insights from a field-theoretical perspective into how literary studies as a discipline works over time and how notions of intention and interpretation help create forms of literary knowledge.

Intention Interpretation
Intention Interpretation

Author: Gary Iseminger

Publisher: Temple University Press

Published: 2010-08-12

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 1439905940

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

"...an excellent and comprehensive discussion of a debate that was initiated in this century in William Wimsatt's and Monroe C. Beardsley's influential article 'The Intentional Fallacy.'...this is a splendidly conceived and very useful collection of essays. Readers will want to take issue with the arguments of individual authors, but this is to be expected in a volume at the cutting edge of a fertile philosophical controversy." --David Novitz, The Philosophical Quarterly "What is the connection, if any, between the author's intentions in (while) writing a work of literature and the truth (acceptability, validity) of interpretive statements about it?" With this question, Gary Isminger introduces a literary debate that has been waged for the past four decades and is addressed by philosophers and literary theorists in Intention and Interpretation. Thirteen essays discuss the role of appeals to the author's intention in interpreting works of literature. A well-known argument by E.D. Hirsch serves as the basic text, in which he defends the appeal to the author's intention against Wimsatt and Beardsley's claim that such an appeal involved "the intentional fallacy." The essays, mostly commissioned by the editor, explore the presuppositions and consequences of arguing for the importance of the author's intentions in the way Hirsch does. Connections emerge between this issue and many fundamental issues in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind as well as in aesthetics. The (old) "New Criticism" and current Post-Structuralism tend to agree in disenfranchising the author, and many people now are disinclined even to consider the alternative. Hirsch demurs, and arguments like his deserve the careful attention, both from critics and sympathizers, that they receive here. Literary scholars and philosophers who are sympathetic to Continental as well as to Anglo-American styles of philosophy are among the contributors. "This is a timely book appearing as it does when postmodernist views of the death of the author are disappearing quickly from the scene. As a collection it exemplifies the best work that is being done on this problem at the moment, and it will no doubt inspire further debate." --The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism "[T]his volume contains important articles illuminating the central debate over the role and relevance of authorial intentions in literary interoperation." --British Journal of Aesthetics

The Varieties of Authorial Intention
The Varieties of Authorial Intention

Author: John Farrell

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2017-03-17

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 3319489771

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

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.

This Side of Home
This Side of Home

Author: Renée Watson

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA

Published: 2015-02-03

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1599906686

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A captivating and poignant coming-of-age urban YA debut about sisters, friends, and what it means to embrace change.

Reading for the Plot
Reading for the Plot

Author: Peter Brooks

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2012-08-29

Total Pages: 453

ISBN-13: 0307962822

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

A book which should appeal to both literary theorists and to readers of the novel, this study invites the reader to consider how the plot reflects the patterns of human destiny and seeks to impose a new meaning on life.

Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction
Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction

Author: Anne H. Stevens

Publisher: Broadview Press

Published: 2015-06-18

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1554812372

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Literary Theory and Criticism: An Introduction provides an accessible overview of major figures and movements in literary theory and criticism from antiquity to the twenty-first century. It is designed for students at the undergraduate level or for others needing a broad synthesis of the long history of literary theory. An introductory chapter provides an overview of some of the major issues within literary theory and criticism; further chapters survey theory and criticism in antiquity, the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and the nineteenth century. For twentieth- and twenty-first-century theory, the discussion is subdivided into separate chapters on formalist, historicist, political, and psychoanalytic approaches. The final chapter applies a variety of theoretical concepts and approaches to two famous works of literature: William Shakespeare’s Hamlet and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.

Only Imagine
Only Imagine

Author: Kathleen Stock

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0198798342

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Only Imagine offers a theory of fictional content or, as it is sometimes known, 'fictional truth'. The theory of fictional content Kathleen Stock argues for is known as 'extreme intentionalism'; the idea that the fictional content of a particular work is equivalent to exactly what the author of the work intended the reader to imagine. Historically, this sort of view has been highly unpopular. Literary theorists and philosophers alike have poured scorn upon it. The first half of this book attempts to argue that it should in fact be taken very seriously as an adequate account of fictional truth: better, in fact, than many of its more popular rivals. The second half explores various explanatory benefits of extreme intentionalism for other issues in the philosophy of fiction and imagination. Namely, can fiction give us reliable knowledge? Why do we 'resist' imagining certain fictions? What, in fact, is a fiction? And, how should the imagination be characterised?

Theory After Theory
Theory After Theory

Author: Nicholas Birns

Publisher: Broadview Press

Published: 2010-06-14

Total Pages: 346

ISBN-13: 1770482539

DOWNLOAD EBOOK

Theory After Theory provides an overview of developments in literary theory after 1950. It is intended both as a handbook for readers to learn about theory and an intellectual history of the recent past in literary criticism for those interested in seeing how it fits in with the larger culture. Accessible but rigorous, this book provides a wealth of historical and intellectual context that allows the reader to make sense of the movements in recent literary theory.