Wimsatt and Beardsley (1943) and Wimsatt (1954) have noted how twentieth-century criticism has sought to dissociate the
interpretation of the text from the author's intention. The author, it is true, may state his intention, or there may be biographical or historical evidence that would indicate his intention. Yet the question still remains, Did the author succeed in carrying out his intention in the text? The author may test his creation in the light of his intention, but all that the reader has to fall back on is the text. Any intention of the author's which is not capable of being
called forth from the text, or justified by the text, is a matter of the author's biography. Knowledge of the author's intention
drawn from other sources may aid in the reading of the text, but only by alerting the reader to verbal cues that he might otherwise
overlook. The interpretation, however, cannot validly be "of"
anything other than the text itself. The effort to avoid "the
intentional fallacy" did not, however, lead to a systematic
understanding of the reader's contribution.