00175--Affective Fallacy [W.K.Wimsatt/Monroe C.Beardsley]

In the article "The  Affective Fallacy" in 1946 W.K.Wimasatt and Monroe C.Beardsley defined the Affective Fallacy as the errors of evaluating a poem by its effects--especially its emotional effects--upon the reader.  As a result of this fallacy the poem as an object of critical judgement tends to disappear.

00174--Intentional Fallacy [W .K. Wimsatt/Monroe C. Beardsley]

The term was proposed by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C. Beardsley in the article “The Intentional Fallacy”.

They asserted that an author’s intended aims and meanings in writing a literary work—whether these are asserted by the author or merely inferred from our knowledge of the author’s life and opinions—are irrelevant to the literary critic, because the meaning, structure and value of a text are inherent within the finished, free standing, and public work of literature itself.

Reference to the author’s supposed proposes, to the author’s personal situation and state of mind is held to be harmful mistake, because it diverts our attention to such external matters, and thus may cause the neglecting of the internal constitution and inherent value of the literary product.