someone might say, “John 3:16 tells us ...”), but such language involves
metonymy, substituting reference to a text for the meaning intended by
the author who wrote it.
So, if meaning proceeds from consciousness, and if a text has no con-
sciousness, then meaning cannot be located there but must rather be
located either in the consciousness of the author 1 or in the consciousness
of the reader. These are the only conscious minds relevant to the matter at
hand. 2 While Hirsch opts to locate “meaning” in the consciousness of the
author, 3 he is not dismissive of the reader’s consciousness, as will become
apparent later in this chapter.
H IRSCH: PUBLIC AND PRIVATE ACTS
Surprisingly, one of the two men to whom Hirsch dedicated his book
Validity in Interpretation was his colleague W.K. Wimsatt, Jr., a lead-
ing proponent of the “New Criticism.” Throughout his career, Wimsatt
argued strongly for locating meaning in the autonomous words of the text
without regard for the author’s intentions.
Wimsatt is best known for two essays he authored jointly with Monroe
Beardsley. The fi rst, called the “The Intentional Fallacy,” was initially pub-
lished in 1946. A revised version appeared in 1954 along with the initial
publication of the other seminal essay, “The Affective Fallacy,” in the book
The Verbal Icon: Studies in the Meaning of Poetry.
In “The Intentional Fallacy,” Wimsatt and Bearsley argued that because
no one knows what goes on in the mind of an author, the intentions
of that author remain inaccessible. Sometimes authors write with pure
motives, sometimes not. Basing a text’s interpretation on the intention of
the author implies an interpreter’s ability to “mindread.” Since the notion
that any reader could read the author’s private thoughts is preposterous,
identifying meaning with authorial intent is therefore impossible.
Hirsch was not cowed by this argument, judging it to be based on a
misunderstanding of what authorial intent implied. Both speaking and
writing are public acts. In contrast, thinking is a private act. The equation
of discerning authorial intent with mindreading is misguided because the
author’s intent is not ascertained from the private thoughts of the author
but rather from her public acts. 4
No doubt an author’s public acts can be inconsistent with her private
thoughts, as when the author intends to deceive her readers. It might also
be the case when the author is driven by subconscious motives of which
84 G.W. MENZIES