Literary Interpretation: How Actual Intentions Matter

I shall present and defend in this paper a new version of actual intentionalism, i.e., Fundamental Actual Intentionalism. According to it, all legitimate interpretations of literary works irreducibly depend, at least in part, on the actual intentions of their actual authors. In Section 1 I shall provide a brief introduction to philosophical theories of literary interpretation. Moreover, I shall also clarify the notions of grounding/dependence to be invoked in the rest of the paper. In Section 2 I shall present Fundamental Actual Intentionalism, whereas in Sections 3 and 4 I shall provide a defence of it by comparing it with other philosophical theories of literary interpretation. In a nutshell, I shall argue that these other theories still turn out to imply irreducible dependencies of legitimate interpretations upon the actual intentions of actual authors. Finally, in Section 5, I shall anticipate some objections and provide some replies.