Literature and the Question of Philosophy

I read this book for a graduate seminar on the philosophy of art. Dutton, in his article "Why Intentionalism Won't Go Away" in "Literature and the Question Of Philosophy," by Anthony J. Cascardi explores certain neo-Romantic notions and realizes that there needs to be some revisions made between the Romantic, intentionalist, and intentional fallacy arguments, which would understand that the artist enjoys a privilege of access to the meaning of her work. Thus, Dutton finds authorial intentionalism's survival due to his finding an intermediate position between Wimsatt and Beardsley's intentional fallacy argument, which rejects the application of authorial intent as pertinent to interpretation of a text, and Hirsch's assertion that authorial intentions are the fundamental criterion for interpretive validity of a text. Dutton argues, "For once a categorical framework for understanding has been established (using intentionalist criteria), it might be argued that only then can criticism be undertaken (using non-intentionalist criteria)." For example, this intermediate idea which draws on the notion of "categorical frameworks," must go further, Dutton argues, than just understanding where an artist's work fits within an artistic category, convention, or a particular artistic genre; such as, the genre of Gothic novels. However, once the categorical framework for understanding the text has been properly ascertained, which essentially is a recognition of authorial intention, can interpretation using non-intentionalist criteria be undertaken. "In literature, this is not just a question of voice, of persona, of fictional narrator or implied author: it may also require a determination of what an actual historical author meant to do in creating a text. For conventions, are after all, used by authors and artists." Dutton believes his idea of intentionalism in this new context, provides a clarification of some of the obstacles faced by hermeneutic theories of meaning. Dutton argues that the very idea of intention is essential in interpretation of literature; specifically, because of the circularity of the hermeneutic circle. Dutton argues, "Accounts of the hermeneutic circle usually have it that one comes to understand a text by an increasing grasp of the reciprocal relationship between parts and whole. One develops... a conception of the whole meaning and then proceeds to interpret individual elements of it in line with this hypothesis..." However, Dutton observes that the danger is in the fact that there is no assurance that by evaluating individual elements of a text one will not avoid falsely interpreting the whole meaning of the text. An example is interpretation that misunderstands the "conventional" use of irony used by authors in literary works from different historical eras. Thus, the lesson for the intentional fallacy theory to be cognizant of is that once a misinterpretation, such as a missed or mistaken anachronism takes place, there