Affective Fallacy

Dr Shayequa Tanzeel
Assistant Professor
Department of English
DDU Gorakhpur University, Gorakhpur.
Origin of the term
• The term affective fallacy was coined by W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe C.
Beardsley as a principle of New Criticism.
• The concept was first defined in The Sewanee Review in 1946. It was
later elaborated in The Verbal Icon in 1954.

Prepared by Dr. Shayequa Tanzeel, Assistant Professor, Dept of

English, DDU Gorakhpur University
• New Criticism represents an approach to literary studies that focuses
on the literary text itself as the object of study and isolates it from
extra-textual concerns. New Criticism inspires the readers and critics
to put emphasis on the text as an isolate artistic entity detached from
its creator and his/her circumstances.
• According to Wimsatt and Beardsley, any analysis of a poem must
centre exclusively on the text itself without considering the extra-
textual factors of its creation.

Prepared by Dr. Shayequa Tanzeel, Assistant Professor, Dept of

English, DDU Gorakhpur University
Definition

• The word fallacy refers to a misleading or faulty reasoning, an error of

judgement.
• Wimsatt defined affective fallacy as the error of evaluating a poem by
its effects—especially its emotional effects—upon the reader.
• As a result of this fallacy “the poem itself, as an object of specifically
critical judgment, tends to disappear,” so that criticism “ends in
impressionism and relativism” (The Verbal Icon, 1954).

Prepared by Dr. Shayequa Tanzeel, Assistant Professor, Dept of

English, DDU Gorakhpur University
• Wimsatt used the term to refer to all forms of criticism that judged
the importance of a literary text by analysing its effects upon the
reader. They declared that subjective impressions evoked by a literary
text cannot be taken into account by an objective critic.
• Those approaches of criticism that emphasised the emotional effects
of literature are considered erroneous. Wimsatt believed that such
instances of criticism rely on subjective impressions, which are
unreliable. These approaches led to a number of potential errors
related to emotional relativism.

Prepared by Dr. Shayequa Tanzeel, Assistant Professor, Dept of

English, DDU Gorakhpur University
• Wimsatt and Beardsley later modified the term and acknowledged
that “it does not appear that critical evaluation can be done at all
except in relation to certain types of effect that aesthetic objects have
upon their perceivers.”
• As staunch formalists, they believed that instead of describing the
effects of a work, a critic must focus on the features, devices, and
form of the work by which such effects are achieved.
• The effect produced by a work of literature should never become the
focus of analysis.
Prepared by Dr. Shayequa Tanzeel, Assistant Professor, Dept of
English, DDU Gorakhpur University