Intention and interpretation : a short history Verlagsinfo: Intention plays a complex role in human utterances. The interpretation of literary texts is a strong case in point: for about two hundred years there have been conflicting views about whether and how much authorial intention should matter when professional readers interpret literature. These debates grew increasingly fierce during the post World War II period the landmarks of which were the notions of intentional fallacy and the death of the author. Seventy odd years later there is still no consensus in sight. What has always been neglected in the debates around authorial intention however is a reflection on the historical dimension of the debate and how historically bound each of the theoretical positions in the debate were. This book focusses precisely on the historical dimension of authorial intention providing a systematic historical reconstruction of the importance ascribed to it in literary texts from Classical Greece to the present day and including a chapter on authorial intention in jurisdiction and legal interpretation from a historical perspective. The book reconstructs a typology of the most important concepts of intention in interpretation for diachronic and synchronic use. At the same time it offers insights from a field theoretical perspective into how literary studies as a discipline works over time and how notions of intention and interpretation help create forms of literary knowledge Inhaltsverzeichnis: Frontmatter Contents Introduction Intention and interpretation from a historical perspective Chapter One The shaping of authorial intention in Classical antiquity Chapter Two The standard model of authorial intention in the Middle Ages Chapter Three Sharpening the edges of the standard model of authorial intention in the Renaissance Chapter Four To understand the author better than he understands himself. From the hermeneutics of the Enlightenment to Russian Formalism Chapter Five Intentional fallacy and its slipstream on New Critics intentionalists and poststructuralists Chapter Six Authorial intention in jurisprudence and legal theory Conclusion and outlook Index.