‘The Intentional Fallacy’, written by Wimsatt and Beardsley, suggests that a critic commits the aforementioned fallacy when they concern themselves with the authorial intention of a poet in writing a piece of work. The intentional fallacy, they say, is: A confusion between the poem and its origins . . . it begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological causes of the poem and ends in biography and relativism. and whilst not denying the …showed first 75 words of 522 total…

…showed last 75 words of 522 total…on his toe in the middle of 1940 and neglected it completely until he required hospitalisation’. However critics seen acknowledging this fact would be accused of committing the Intentional Fallacy by some, as poetic analysts such as Wimsatt and Beardsley would classify the public as the supreme authority and final word on the merits of the poem. To them the poem is supreme, not merely an expression of an authors state of mind or personal feelings.