fallacy

In literary criticism, either of two approaches held to be errors by certain critics. The New Criticism movement in the USA held that a literary text could be criticized legitimately only in terms of its internal structures. Two followers of this tradition, W K Wimsatt and Monroe C Beardsley, argued 1954 that it was mistaken to interpret literature in terms of its emotional effects (affective fallacy) or in terms of the intentions of the author (intentional fallacy).