Intention

The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Intention

Intention: (1) A term used by literary scholars and critics to refer to an author’s stated or unstated purpose in writing a work. (2) A term given particular meaning by the German philosopher Edmund Husserl and hermeneutical theorists of interpretation such as the American critic E. D. Hirsch.

Husserl used intention in connection with phenomenology, a philosophical school of thought and method of analysis that holds that objects attain meaning only as they are perceived in someone’s consciousness. In works such as Logical Investigations (1900—01) and Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy (1913), Husserl argued that consciousness is intentional, that is, directed toward an object; as long as we are conscious, we are perceiving something. Husserl’s use of intentional does not accord with the traditional dictionary definition, “deliberate.” Rather, intentionality in phenomenology refers to awareness of an object that brings us into a reciprocal relationship with it.

Hirsch used intention differently in his books Validity in Interpretation (1967) and The Aims of Interpretation (1976). He related what he called the author’s “verbal intention” to the interpretation of a work, building his argument that “a text means what its author meant” on the nineteenth-century German philosopher Wilhelm Dilthey’s assertion that readers can in fact arrive at objective and valid interpretations of expressed authorial meaning. Hirsch did not equate intention with the author’s mental state while writing but rather with the fundamental goal of creating something out of words that will mean a certain thing or things to readers familiar with the extant rules, conventions, and norms of reading and interpretation. In determining an author’s verbal intentions, readers must gather evidence from a variety of sources: biographical, historical, and cultural contexts; the author’s other works; and the conventions governing the genre in which the work is written. Without reference to intentions and conventions, Hirsch argued, meanings remain elusive or even indeterminate, because no justifiable grounds exist for choosing one meaning over another.