Reconsidering Authorial Intention- Perspectives From Continental And Analytic Tradition
Reconsidering Authorial Intention- Perspectives From Continental And Analytic Tradition

Summary/Abstract: Paul Ricoeur’s narrative and critical hermeneutics provides the conceptual resources to accommodate Barthes’ and similar critiques of subjectivity while positing a revised form of authorial intention similar to the “postulated author” of Alexander Nehamas and the “creative process” of Richard Wollheim. Though influenced by Barthian critiques, all three thinkers retain a notion of authorial intent*one distinct from the intentions of the historical author*necessary for the understanding of meaning in the philosophy of literature. Yet, the implications of this allow us to reverse the Ricoeurian insight of understanding human action as a text, and show how human action provides clarification on authorial intention. Using Ricoeur and Nehamas, I would like to revisit the issue of authorial intention in order to show the insights this offers for hermeneutics and philosophy of literature. If authorial intention is properly reestablished as distinct from the intentions of the historical writer, we can turn to a minimalistic version of the analytic philosophy of action based on Ricoeur and Carlos Moya to provide a useful heuristic conceptual framework to look at both authorial and ‘readerly’ intention.

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