Formalism William K. Wimsatt, Monroe Beardsley & T.S. Eliot
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William K. Wimsatt
Intentional Fallacy
William K. Wimsatt (1907-1975) was an American literary theorist and professor. Wimsatt’s The Verbal Icon, 1954, was co-written by Beardsley. In this book, Wimsatt brought out the idea of “Intentional Fallacy”.
Intentional Fallacy refers to the error of evaluating a work by the intention of an author. It is based upon a rejection of the omniscience of an author over a text. It argues that an author’s intention or design should not influence the reading of a text.
It further argues that a work of art should not be evaluated through what the author had intended for the same. The implication is the evaluation of a text is independent of the author’s intent. It also means that the act of reading is an autonomous activity which is not controlled by the author’s intent.
So the act of reading becomes an aesthetic, self-serving function which is not influenced by external factors such as author’s biography. Intentional Fallacy tells that the relationship between a text and its audience is independent of the author’s presence. It liberates the act of readership from the omniscience of the author.
Affective Fallacy
Wimsatt brought forward another theory which was called “Affective Fallacy”. Affective Fallacy refers to the error of evaluating a text through the emotional response of the reader. It means that a reader should not be driven by emotional impact to evaluate or understand a text.
The act of reading should be critically informed instead of emotionally driven. So the act of reading should not be tainted by feelings of the reader for the text. The act of reading should be pure and must maintain a certain level of clinical accuracy rather than sentimental indulgence on reader’s side.
Readership should have a level of critical distance from the emotional impact of the text. At the same time readership should be rooted in the mind rather than the heart. The act of reading is a cerebral activity instead of an emotional activity.
The Concrete Universal
Wimsatt also brought forward the idea of “The Concrete Universal”. It refers to a degree of precision that does not contribute anything to the argument but it is for its own sake. It implies that “the concrete universal” is aesthetic rather than practical in nature.
In the “Domain of Criticism”, Wimsatt argues against the idea of reducing a poem or artistic entity to a purely aesthetical mode. Here, he argued that artistic entity should not be reduced to only aesthetical effects.
Notable works of William K. Wimsatt include Hateful Contraries(1965), The Verbal Icon, (1954).
Monroe Beardsley
Monroe Beardsley (1915-1985) was an American literary critic. Beardsley was born and raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut. He was educated at Yale University (B.A. 1936, Ph.D. 1939), where he received the John Addison Porter Prize.
He taught at a number of colleges and universities including Mount Holyoke College and Yale University. His wife and occasional co-author, Elizabeth Lane Beardsley, was also a philosopher at Temple.
He is known to have written two seminal essays, “Intentional Fallacy” and “Affective Fallacy”. Intentional fallacy states that a work of art should not be evaluated from the intention of the author or what the author had intended. In other words, a work of art is independent of an author’s authority. A text should be liberated from the shackles of author-worship.
The intentional fallacy also allows more freedom to read or evaluate text as an object in itself. Thus it allows a readership that is free and uninhibited by details about the author’s life. Intentional fallacy paves the way for a readership which detached itself from external sources. It was also said external sources such as documents pertaining to the author’s biography.
Affective Fallacy states that a work of art should not be evaluated by the emotional effect that it can have on the reader. It is defined as the error of evaluating a text through the emotional response of the reader to the text.
It means that text should be liberated from the emotions of the reader. The reading of the text should not be tainted by the sentiments of the reader. It again argues that the act of reading should be pure and free from the wish of readers to impose their feelings on the meanings within a text.
It means that the act of readership should be critically informed rather than emotionally driven. Readers must not be emotionally attached to the text. Readers must have a sense of critical distance from emotions and sentiments.
The site of reading should be based upon intelligence or intellect. Both Intentional and Affective Fallacy attempt to liberate reading of a text from pre-occupied notions around the text.
According to this theory, the act of reading should be based on intelligence rather than sentiment or political issues. In a way, the theory is very different from New Historicism where a text can never be read in isolation from history. Other notable works of Monroe Beardsley include Practical Logic, 1950, Aesthetics: A Short History, 1966.
T.S. Eliot
T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) was a poet, playwright, and literary critic. He held dual citizenship of the U.K. and America. T. S. Eliot’s poetry represented a departure from romanticism. His poetry was marked by cynicism and a modernism questioning of traditional values and norms.
His poetry had modernist expressions. T. S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” (1915), delineated a sense of decay within life which was one major philosophic trait within modernism.
Prufrock symbolized physical and intellectual impotency. Prufrock was an anti-hero. He had insecurities about his physical appearance and he had spiritual pretensions. The poet has also mocked his misplaced sense of pride when Prufrock compared himself with the universe.
T. S. Eliot’s “Hollow Men” (1925), represented a hollowness of life and ignominy which cannot be brought down. The poem shows the uneventfulness of life where people don’t get any deliverance from their personal hells. The poem is also a reflection of the broken modern life where heroism is absent.
T. S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land” (1922), is modernist poetry which is divided into 5 parts. The five parts are as follows –
- The Burial of the Dead
- A Game of Chess
- The Fire Sermon
- Death by Water
- What the Thunder Said
The poem represented fragmented humanity after the world war. The poem alludes several times to classic literature and tells tales of suffering, damnation, ignominy, death, rebirth, lost ecstasy, pain, etc. The poem also brought in themes related to love, spirituality, infidelity, decay, etc. It is also a diagnosis of the predicament of civilization.
The poem also alluded to “Shanti” to convey a sense of peace. The poem concludes with the sense that destruction leads to regeneration. T.S. Eliot also wrote “Tradition and the Individual Talent“. The literary text talks about a sense of balance between tradition and individual talent. It argued that individual genius cannot be divorced from tradition.
He argued that individual acts of artistic creation cannot be created in a void. It thus means that artistic creation has to allude to the past or tradition to establish a lineage within the literature.
He also wrote “Hamlet and His Problems” where he talked about “objective correlative”, which establishes a connection between living things and objects. His other notable works include “Ash Wednesday” (1930), Four Quartets (1943), The Cocktail Party (1949), Murder in the Cathedral (1935). T. S. Eliot was awarded Nobel Prize in Literature in the year 1948.
