Intention
Intention
- Mark VareschiMark VareschiDepartment of English, University of Wisconsin–Madison
Summary
Literary criticism has long wavered in its attitude toward intention, sometimes considering it inaccessible and undesirable, and at other times, the source and arbiter of meaning. Much of this debate hinges on whether intention is understood as a mental event in the mind of a human or not. While some influential scholars of literature have tended to approach intention with the view that intention is a mental state, philosophers of action have long held that intention is a description of action that occurs in the world. This latter view promises to reinvigorate intention as a useful concept in literary study as scholars continue to expand the notion of text, beyond its purely verbal component, to text understood as the literary artifact comprising, and shaped by, human and nonhuman agency alike.
Keywords
Subjects
- Literary Theory
