Literary Intention, Literary Interpretation, and Readers

This accessible, personal, and provocative study returns to the major subject in literary discussion before and during the relatively recent flourishing of literary theory, that of literary intention. Does the author’s personal intention or historical site determine a correct interpretation of a literary work?

Probing the entire range of issues connected with this many-faceted ...

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This accessible, personal, and provocative study returns to the major subject in literary discussion before and during the relatively recent flourishing of literary theory, that of literary intention. Does the author’s personal intention or historical site determine a correct interpretation of a literary work?

Probing the entire range of issues connected with this many-faceted and knotty concept, this book engages with interpretation on both theoretical and practical levels. It argues that the hard questions about interpretation connected to issues of intention cannot be sidestepped or ignored. It does not argue for conservative concepts of literature itself, nor against the major historical engagements of critics in our time. But in addressing those who continue to read or teach literature, it does insist on a level of sophistication in issues of literary interpretation that cannot be assured by historical research and knowledge of the social and cultural connections to literary works. The overall aim of the work is to recall readers to the great complexity, pleasure, and interest of literary interpretation.

John Maynard is professor of English. He specializes in Victorian literature and in literary theory. He took his B.A. (summa in History and Literature) and Ph.D. at Harvard University. He has taught at Harvard, the University of Venice, the University of Paris, and at NYU. His books include Browning's Youth, Charlotte Brontë and Sexuality, Victorian Discourses on Sexuality and ...

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John Maynard is professor of English. He specializes in Victorian literature and in literary theory. He took his B.A. (summa in History and Literature) and Ph.D. at Harvard University. He has taught at Harvard, the University of Venice, the University of Paris, and at NYU. His books include Browning's Youth, Charlotte Brontë and Sexuality, Victorian Discourses on Sexuality and Religion, Browning Re-viewed, and Literary Intention, Literary Interpretation and Readers. He is co-editor of the Cambridge journal Victorian Literature and Culture. He teaches courses on Victorian and Transition literature, on poetry, and on topics in reading, in sexuality and literature, and in literary theory and interpretation. He has served as chair and director of undergraduate studies of the Department of English and chair of the NYU Faculty Senators Council. He works with potential donors to the Department. Professor Maynard has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEH senior grant, and the Thomas Wilson Prize of Harvard University Press. He enjoys New York, bicycling, theater, opera, and travel and teaching abroad.

Acknowledgements • ix
Section One: Introduction • 1
Section Two: Literary Intention/ality • 21
I. Once More with Feeling • 21
II. Individual Psychological Uncertainties • 42
III. Ideological and Discursive Uncertainties • 53
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Acknowledgements • ix
Section One: Introduction • 1
Section Two: Literary Intention/ality • 21
I. Once More with Feeling • 21
II. Individual Psychological Uncertainties • 42
III. Ideological and Discursive Uncertainties • 53
IV. Deliberate Uncertainties • 57
V. Performative Multi-Intentions • 62
VI. Limits on the Author’s Control • 66
VII. Cultural Determinism as Disguised Intentionality • 72
VIII. Intention in the Text • 88
IX. Intended Initial Reception as a Guide to Intention • 94
X. Speech Act Thinking as a Way of Establishing Intentions • 97
XI. Words Getting in the Way • 103
XII. Syntax, Grammar, Logic Getting in the Way • 111
XIII. Tropes and Figures Getting in the Way • 118
XIV. Voice Gets in the Way Too • 123
XV. Thematic Foregrounds Abounding • 128
XVI. Foregrounding Forms Abounding: Genres and
Structures • 131
XVII. Interpretation: Some More Pragmatic Arguments • 150
XVIII. You Can’t Properly Get There from Here: Babes in the Woods
of Historicity • 153
XIX. Brief Conclusion to a Long Discourse • 168
Section Three: Rereading Reader Theories:
Interventions and Intrusions • 299
I. Introduction • 299
II. What Was to Fear in the Wolf-gang in Sheep’s Clothing • 303
III. De Man’s Narrative of Reading: No Exit—for Others • 315
IV. Reading in Textual Power Reread: The Big One that Got
Away • 329
V. Theory Postscript: Communities and Schools of Fish • 338
Section Four: Conclusion and Work in Progress: Reader
Theory Meets Real Readers • 361
Appendix 1: More on Speech Act Theory and Intention • 377
Appendix 2: Stanley Fish’s Intentions • 391
Works Cited • 395
Index • 423
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