This book examines the conduct of the anti-intentionalist argument by exponents of Anglo-American new criticism, European structuralism, and various kinds of post-modernist theory, and finds it wanting.

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.