The Intentional Fallacy

Because of the way poetry (and literature in general) is taught, I have trouble completely accepting Wimsatt and Beardsley's criticism in "The Intentional Fallacy." Ever since I can remember, my middle school, high school and even (gasp!) college teachers/professors have given us background information on the authors of the works we are reading. We learn about the time period they wrote in, their world views, their personal lives, their influences.

Wimsatt and Beardsley would probably (for I don't like to speak in absolutes) not like this method of teaching literature. They would probably flop my lit crit book down in front of me, flip to page 1376 and jab their fingers down on the line that reads: "The poem is not...the author's (it is detached from the author at birth and goes about the world beyond his power to intend about it or control it)," reminding me that searching for the author's biographical information to help me determine one of the meanings of the poem is to commit the intentional fallacy.

But this is where I have my hang up. W and B also say: "One must ask how a critic expects to get an answer to the question about intention. How is he to find out what the poet tried to do? If the poet succeeded in doing it, then the poem itself shows what he was trying to do." Alright, maybe that is true. But I still think that meaning cannot simply be gleaned from reading the words in a vacuum. If poet X wrote poem Y in reaction to the horrors of World War Z, then the people in poet X's own time, the time s/he published, then they would not even have to ask who poet X was or what they thought. The people of poet X's time would know that this bizarrely constructed and very abstract poem Y is not abstract just for the heck of it, that is reflects the effect of World War Z. Are the people of poet X's time period still committing the intentional fallacy? They've understood the author's intention from the poem, and they've arrived (let's assume) at the same meaning that poet X had in mind when s/he wrote the poem.

But what about the people who came after? Let's say poet X wrote a century before you or I were even born. If we read poem Y, having no knowledge that it was written after World War Z, we may look at it and say: "wow, that is a weird and abstract poem" and then proceed to interpret the symbols used according to our own situatedness (hurrah for postmodernism). But in doing so, we do not arrive at the poem's meaning. (Okay, and we also run the risk of the affective fallacy, but let's say--for this argument--that we avoided that risk.) Would W and B still say that it's the author's own fault that their intention was not made clear in the poem? Would W and B fault us for looking at poet X's time period for a better understanding of poem Y? If we didn't know a little about the poem's relation to World War Z then, in my opinion, it would be like we were reading two completely different poems.

Meaning doesn't come in a vacuum, and while it's nice to be able to interpret a poem without asking the author's permission, to be able to interpret it in light of our own knowledge, I can't help but feel like we're cheapening the poem. If the author did have something important to say, that would have been clear in his/her own time but less clear as time went by--then what is wrong with knowing that?

Perhaps I am being juvenile, or unsophisticated in my way of thinking. Perhaps I am just clinging to a security blanket of authorial intent. But as an amateur writer, one who merely writes every now and then for the fun of it, I can't imagine how it must feel for someone who pours their all into a work, only to be told that their intention is unimportant.