Wimsatt and Beardsley On Affective Fallacy
"The Affective Fallacy is a confusion between the poem and its results (what it is and what it does), a special case of epistemological skepticism begins by trying to derive the standard of criticism from the psychological effects of the poem and ends in impressionism and relativism the poem itself, as an object of specifically critical judgment, tends to disappear."
"The report of some readers . . . that a poem or story induces in them vivid images, intense feelings, or heightened consciousness, is neither anything which can be refuted nor anything which it is possible for the objective critic to take into account."
Wimsatt and Beardsley on an ideal, objective criticism: "It will not talk of tears, prickles or other physiological symptoms, of feeling angry, joyful, hot, cold, or intense, or of vaguer states of emotional disturbance, but of shades of distinction and relation between objects of emotion."
"The critic is not a contributor to statistical countable reports about the poem, but a teacher or explicator of meanings. His readers, if they are alert, will not be content to take what he says as testimony, but will scrutinize it as teaching."
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