LITERARY INTERPRETATION: A DEBATE BETWEEN INTENTIONALISM AND ANTI-INTENTIONALISM The paper presents a controversy between three Anglo-American theories about the role of the author’s intentions in literary interpretation and about the goal of literary interpretations. Moderate anti-intentionalism (Beardsley) maintains that the meaning of the text is determined by the linguistic conventions, therefore the aim of interpretation is to reveal its meaning and not the author’s intentions. Hirsch’s intentionalism claims that the meaning of the text is determined by the author’s intentions and linguistic conventions, so the aim of the interpretation is to discover the author’s meaning. Hypothetical intentionalism (Carroll, Lev...