the intentional fallacy

Have you ever heard of the "intentional fallacy"? It's one of the key notions of New Criticism, a movement of literary criticism that rejects the idea that the meaning of a work of literature depends on authorial intent. In other words, it doesn't matter what the author thinks the story is about or what they intended for it to mean. A text can only be judged by a close reading.

When I first encountered New Criticism in an undergraduate literature course, I felt, as an aspiring writer, that the theorists had it all wrong. Of course the author knew what the work meant. They wrote the thing. It meant what they said it did!

But now --- after having shared my work with a number of other writers, mentors, and editors, after having heard and read the reactions of plenty of reviewers and other readers, and after stumbling through my responses to more than one question to do with "what is this story about?" --- I've completely revised my take on the New Critics. They may not have had it all right (what theoretical approach does?), but certainly a text is more (can be more, should be more, please let it be more) than whatever the writer hoped it might be.

I don't think I'm completely blundering blind through the writing, but I have a feeling that with all my focus on individual words and phrases and the rhythms of each and every sentence (although how else does a novel get written except word by word?), I tend to try and let some of the bigger things (themes, symbols) take care of themselves, sometimes without me knowing... explicitly, anyway.