Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.22210/ur.2020.064.3_4/01
Literary Interpretation: A Debate between Intentionalism and Anti-intentionalism
Aleksander Bjelčević
orcid.org/0000-0003-3374-4455
; Filozofski fakultet, Sveučilište u Ljubljani
Abstract
ABSTRACT
The paper presents a controversy between three Anglo-American theories about the role of the author’s intentions in literary interpretation and about the goal of literary interpretations. Moderate anti-intentionalism (Beardsley) maintains that the meaning of the text is determined by the linguistic conventions, therefore the aim of interpretation is to reveal its meaning and not the author’s intentions. Hirsch’s intentionalism claims that the meaning of the text is determined by the author’s intentions and linguistic conventions, so the aim of the interpretation is to discover the author’s meaning. Hypothetical intentionalism (Carroll, Levinson) argues that the meaning of the text is determined by the best hypotheses of ideal readers about the author’s meaning. In the fifth heading, the paper rejects two arguments of anti-intentionalism that a literary work is autonomous and that the aim of literary interpretation should be interpretation of the text. The paper rejects the aesthetic argument by stating that the sole purpose of interpretation is not to show the aesthetic qualities of the work and that there may be other legitimate aims of interpretation. It further rejects the communicative argument that literary works, because of their fictional nature, merely imitate illocutionary speech acts, by offering the opposite argument that not all literature is fiction. Finally, it is argued that the fundamental error of some theoretical discussions is generalization and that intentionalism is acceptable. In conclusion, the acceptability and unacceptability of (anti) intentionalism is decided by the age and type of the text, figures of speech and interests of certain interpretive paradigms.
Keywords
Hrčak ID:
256318
URI
Publication date:
22.4.2021.
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