Is “Intention” Present or Not?

Abstract

From the beginning to the end of writing a text, or more precisely, from the writer’s first thought determining it to its final completion as delivered to the public, our belief is that the thought and its expression in the text should be regarded as the intention of the author’s subjective consciousness. Since the 1940s, however, the general tendency of contemporary Western literary theory has been to deny the existence of a text’s original intention and meaning; any explanation of the text that attempts to comply with the author’s and the text’s intention is abandoned, leading to relativistic and nihilistic text interpretations. In our view, regardless of how one resolves or resists the intention, it is always in the text, and even if “the author is dead”, once delivered to the reader, the text cannot be changed. In other words, the intention – the author’s intention to be precise – is still present, determining the text’s quality and value, and affecting the other’s understanding and interpretation of the text. This influence and decision may not be perceived by the other, who can automatically resist it, but the penetration and the determining power of the intention are present throughout the whole process of understanding and explaining the text, and whether you admit it or not, accept it or not, the intention always takes effect, and cannot be escaped. It can only be a delusion to believe that one can decide the text’s meaning independently of the author’s intention. It is puzzling to see this simple truth completely disregarded. What kind of theory provides a basis for deconstructing the intention, and what is the foundation of such a theory? In the development of Western literary theory in the last hundred years, there have been many explanations given for completely denying and later deconstructing the existence of intention. However, the most fundamental and key clues are to be found in the following: the first is William K. Wimsatt’s “Intentional Fallacy,” which denies the author’s intention in interpreting the text; the second is Clive Bell’s “Significant Form” cutting the relationship of production and construction between the author and the text; the third is the structuralist semiotics approach which holds that all texts are their symbols’ own operation; the author is only a tool to operate these, and the self-organization and self-structuring of the system of symbols is the fundamental way of generating the text. This paper will discuss these one by one.