Intentional Fallacy: Revisited

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Abstract Literary Criticism, the term used for evaluating, interpreting and systematic approach of a work of art has been continuing and developing throughout the history of literature. The treatment of a literary text in different times by different critics accounts to literary criticism. A writer composes a work of art whereas a critic opens it up according to the literary theory and criticism propounded at the particular time. The following essay tries to look on the development and progress of literary criticism and theory beginning from Liberal Humanism to Deconstructuralism; from writer-oriented to reader-oriented theory. The paper will focus mainly on Wimsatt and Beardley’s essay ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ which counters the earlier ideology of intention based study of a particular text, instead propounding that intention is a fallacy and falsehood. ------------------------------------------------- Keywords: Decentralization, Decontextualize, Deconstruction, Fact and Interpretation, Formalism, Free-play, Liberal Humanism, New Criticism, Post-Structuralism, Reader-oriented, Text-oriented, The Intentional Fallacy and Writer-oriented. The study of literature throughout the history has been undergoing a continuity and development with every criticism and theory propounded by one writer and philosopher after another. ‘Criticism is as inevitable as breathing’ as stated by T.S.Eliot in his ‘Tradition and Individual Talent’ (1917). In the chart of literary criticism and theory the pioneering theory is of writer-oriented termed as Liberal Humanism which later is rebelled by New Criticism which is based on decontextualizing of text and is text-oriented theory. It is further developed as Structuralism theory which states that every text has a larger structure, and finally developed a reader-oriented theory i.e. Post-Structuralism or Deconstruction which advocates

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