“The Return of the Repressed”: A Critique of Wimsatt and Beardsley’s The Intentional Fallacy

Literary theory is a tool through which literature isanalysed and studied. There are pluralities of polemics of literary theory that are proposed by theorists in their attempt to analyse and study literature. However, each polemic of literary theory has left a gap to be desired for a critical study. Most theorists of literature appear to be unsuccessful in defending the ideological grid (school) of literary theory they claim to vindicate. The four major ideological gridsof literary theory are the author, reader, text and context and every theory of literature is an attempt to show the efficacy of one ideological grid over another under the interpretive analytical condition. This paper, therefore, critiques Wimsatt and Beardsley’s The Intentional Fallacyas an essay that claims to have vindicated the text over other elements, especially the author, by undermining the supremacy of the intentionality and the intentional predicates of the author in literary interpretations. The paper, however, by demonstrating the Return of the Repressed, shows how unsuccessful the task undertaken by Wimsatt and Beardsley ends up by pointing out how through the unconscious, they reveal the aporias of their ideological school. The paper therefore concludes that every ideology of literary theory is, and at equal measure, implicated in every interpretive process. The banished ideological school is not successfully banished but unconsciously stored in the psyche of the literary analyst and returned to take its position later in the study and analysis of literature.

Keywords: Ideological Grid Literary Theory Text Author Reader

Author

• Ibrahim Sanusi Chinade, PhD
  Department of English and Linguistics
  Federal University, Dutse, Jigawa State, Nigeria
  sanchinade@gmail.com
  08035925563