韦姆萨特《意图谬误》英文版The Intentional Fallacy.docVIP

PAGE PAGE 27 W.K.韦姆萨特和门罗·比尔兹利:意图谬误 The Intentional Fallacy 1 W . K . Wimsatt , Jr . Monroe Beardsley I 　　The claim of the authors intention upon the critics judgment has been challenged in a number of recent discussions, notably in the debate entitled The Personal Heresy [1939], between Professor Lewis and Tillyard. But it seems doubtful if this claim and most of its romantic corollaries are as yet subject to any widespread questioning. The present writers, in a short article entitled Intention for a Dictionary2 of literary criticism, raised the issue but were unable to pursue its implications at any length. We argued that 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, and it seems to us that this is a principle which goes deep into some differences in the history of critical attitudes. It is a principle which accepted or rejected points to the polar opposites of classical imitation and romantic expression. It entails many specific truths about inspiration, authenticity, biography, literary history and scholarship, and about some trends of contemporary poetry, especially its allusiveness. There is hardly a problem of literary criticism in which the critics approach will not be qualified by his view of intention. 　　Intention, as we shall use the term, corresponds to what he intended in a formula which more or less explicitly has had wide acceptance. In order to judge the poets performance, we must know what he intended. Intention is design or plan in the authors mind. Intention has obvious affinities for the authors attitude towards his work, the way he felt, what made him write. 　　We begin our discussion with a series of propositions summarized and abstracted to a degree where they seem to us axiomatic. 　　1. A poem does not come into existence by accident. The words of a poem, as Professor Stoll has remarked, come out of a head, not out of a hat. Yet to insist on the desig