Author's intent

Reader-response

Reader-response critics view authorial intent in various ways. In general, they have argued that the author's intent itself is immaterial and cannot be fully recovered. However, the author's intent will shape the text and limit the possible interpretations of a work. The reader's impression of the author's intent is a working force in interpretation, but the author's actual intent is not. Some critics in this school believe that reader-response is a transaction and that there is some form of negotiation going on between authorial intent and reader's response. According to Michael Smith and Peter Rabinowitz, this approach is not simply about the question “What does this mean to me?” because if that were the case, the power of the text to transform is given up.