Authorial intentionality

Sponsorship the way you would do it

We can see two poles: on the one hand, a given author "intends" to write what he writes. On the other hand, a given author may write something which he did not "intend" to write (on some level), or produce an effect on a reader which he did not intend. One can, therefore argue for several kinds of intention -- be it several levels. A simple example: an author writes a manuscript, an activity done by hand, in this case, with an ink pen and no previous draft.

He misspells a letter: an error in intention, it is usually assumed. Editorial procedures for works available in no 'authorized editions' (and even those are not always exempt) often specify correcting errors -- correcting the moment of intention of a particular author. He misformats his text: he leaves a sentence in run-on form, regrets not beginning a new paragraph, etc: but he does not see these changes needed until afterwards, until rereading. The author does not shit the text whole, as one philosopher once put it. He describes something incorrectly: he rereads it later and disagrees with his previous formulation of words. It does not "resemble" his memory of X event or thing. He expresses himself incorrectly: He does not agree or not like the way a concept is elucidated. He dislikes the use of a clichÃÂÃÂ©, a scrambled metaphor, an inappropriate preposition. He even leaves something out. He is confused about his own work: this must be mentioned with a caveat, because your average deconstructionist would say he cannot but be confused, to greater or lesser degrees of awareness. But let us, for the present, say that he disavows an intention himself, has no agenda (as it were), wanted only to "meditate" (as it is popular to say) on some subject matter, wanted to prove no thesis. What then?

[Please note that I have made several unfortunate moves in my own writing of this bit of work. For instance, I unintentionally mixed the metaphor of poles and one hand/other hand above, and was in the process of correcting it when I decided it would be best to leave it as it was, in order to be able to write the present point. Conversely, the sentence above "He even leaves something out" was itself left out, and only put in when I realized I had left something out. Other errors were left, others corrected. My memory is fast fading as to which were which.]