This accessible, personal, and provocative study returns to the major subject in literary discussion before and during the relatively recent flourishing of literary theory, that of literary intention. Does the author’s personal intention or historical site determine a correct interpretation of a literary work?

Probing the entire range of issues connected with this many-faceted and knotty concept, this book engages with interpretation on both theoretical and practical levels. It argues that the hard questions about interpretation connected to issues of intention cannot be sidestepped or ignored. It does not argue for conservative concepts of literature itself, nor against the major historical engagements of critics in our time. But in addressing those who continue to read or teach literature, it does insist on a level of sophistication in issues of literary interpretation that cannot be assured by historical research and knowledge of the social and cultural connections to literary works. The overall aim of the work is to recall readers to the great complexity, pleasure, and interest of literary interpretation.

John Maynard is professor of English. He specializes in Victorian literature and in literary theory. He took his B.A. (summa in History and Literature) and Ph.D. at Harvard University. He has taught at Harvard, the University of Venice, the University of Paris, and at NYU. His books include Browning's Youth, Charlotte Brontë and Sexuality, Victorian Discourses on Sexuality and Religion, Browning Re-viewed, and Literary Intention, Literary Interpretation and Readers. He is co-editor of the Cambridge journal Victorian Literature and Culture. He teaches courses on Victorian and Transition literature, on poetry, and on topics in reading, in sexuality and literature, and in literary theory and interpretation. He has served as chair and director of undergraduate studies of the Department of English and chair of the NYU Faculty Senators Council. He works with potential donors to the Department. Professor Maynard has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, an NEH senior grant, and the Thomas Wilson Prize of Harvard University Press. He enjoys New York, bicycling, theater, opera, and travel and teaching abroad.