Authorial intent

<p>In <a href="/facts/Literary_theory/CK3TAHoN">literary theory</a> and <a href="/facts/Aesthetics/FSD8f7oF">aesthetics</a>, authorial intent refers to an <a href="/facts/Author/9pcsEamu">author</a>'s <a href="/facts/Intention/ahzUpq2G">intent</a> as it is encoded in their <a href="/facts/Work_of_art/Kr7f0ugA">work</a>. Authorial intentionalism is the <a href="/facts/Hermeneutics/96YNfBpK">hermeneutical</a> view that an author's intentions should constrain the ways in which a text is properly interpreted. Opponents, who dispute its hermeneutical importance, have labelled this position the intentional fallacy and count it among the <a href="/facts/Informal_fallacies/IRVuLSef">informal fallacies</a>.
</p><p>There are in fact two types of Intentionalism: Actual Intentionalism and Hypothetical Intentionalism. Actual Intentionalism is the standard intentionalist view that the meaning of a work is dependent on authorial intent. Hypothetical Intentionalism is a more recent view; it views the meaning of a work as being what an ideal reader would hypothesize the writer's intent to have been — for hypothetical intentionalism, it is ultimately the hypothesis of the reader, not the truth, that matters.
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Authorial intent open-in-new

Authorial intent