The concept of authorship and the author's intentions has been a subject of intense debate among scholars in the last century. The discussion has gone through several phases, from the strict separation of private intentions and verbal meanings to the rejection of the ideal subject and ideal meanings altogether. This essay explores some of the most significant theories of authorship and the author's intentions developed during the last century.
Initially, scholars like Husserl, Croce, and the New Critics firmly separated private intentions from verbal meanings, constituting an ideal subject. According to them, the author's intentions were hidden in the text, and the reader had to uncover them by using their skills of interpretation. They believed that the author's intentions were crucial to the meaning of a text, and understanding those intentions was necessary to appreciate the text fully.
However, Derrida and Barthes suggested a radical change in perspective. They confuted the existence of an ideal conscious subject, ideal meanings, and private intentions. They believed that the author was not the origin of meaning, but meaning was the product of the reader's interpretation. They rejected the notion that the author had control over the text's meaning, and instead, they saw the reader as an active participant in the meaning-making process.
Subsequently, Booth and Foucault looked for a surrogate of the author and found it in a discursive instance showing the reader a path to the author's intentions. Booth suggested that the author's intentions could be inferred from the text's context, and Foucault proposed the idea of an author function, which was a social construct that determined the author's influence on the text's meaning.
Finally, Anscombe and Eco formulated a new concept of public and open intention, completely redefining the whole issue. According to Anscombe, the author's intentions were not private, but public, and they were communicated through the text. Eco argued that the author's intentions were not fixed but evolved as the text was read and interpreted by the readers. He believed that the author's intentions were not limited to the text but were influenced by the author's cultural and historical context.
In conclusion, the debate on authorship and the author's intentions during the last century has led to a re-evaluation of the role of the author in the meaning-making process. The rejection of the ideal subject and ideal meanings has allowed for a more complex understanding of the author's intentions and their relationship to the text. The search for a surrogate of the author has led to the development of new approaches to interpretation, such as reader-response theory. Moreover, the new concept of public and open intention has emphasized the social and cultural contexts that shape the author's intentions. Therefore, it is precisely thanks to the twentieth-century debate that the author was born.
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