The Metaphysical Problem of the Concept of Intentionality

This book addresses the question of intentionality through the intellectual context of English literary theory in the twentieth century. The epistemological methodology, which is presented in the second chapter, is mainly developed from the works of Martin Heidegger, Ferdinand de Saussure and Jacques Derrida on language. The third chapter initially analyses the concept of intentionality in New Criticism clearing clear that New Criticism was epistemologically founded on metaphysical assumptions.Here the ontological discussions of intentionality by Paul de Man, E. D. Hirsch, and Steven Knapp and Walter Benn Michaels are further analysed. The fourth chapter explains the status of the concept of intentionality in theoretical writings of textual criticism and offers an ontological discussion of the concept of 'textual intentionality'. Finally the fifth chapter examines the concept of intentionality mainly at a functional level of language, in the context of Julia Kristeva's account of intertextuality and Harold Bloom's notion of 'the anxiety of influence.The originality of this work lies in its attempt to analyse the concept of intentionality ontologically and epistemologically.