This book attempts to reinstate the importance of authorial intention by
examining arguments against it from a variety of sources - American New
Criticism, European Structuralism and various kinds of postmodernist
theory. It enlists the aid of Kantian aesthetics and contemporary
philosophy of language and action, as well as studying the play on
intention in the manipulation of character and action in the work of
Shakespeare and other English writers from 1600 to the present day.