Szu-Yen Lin

Soochow University (Taiwan)
  •  401
    Beardsley on literature, fiction, and nonfiction
    Journal of Aesthetics and Culture 8 (1). 2016.
    This paper attempts to revive interest in the speech act theory of literature by looking into Monroe C. Beardsley's account in particular. Beardsley's view in this respect has received, surprisingly, less attention than deserved. I first offer a reconstruction of Beardsley's account and then use it to correct some notable misconceptions. Next, I show that the reformulation reveals a hitherto unnoticed discrepancy in Beardsley's position and that this can be explained away by a weak version of in…Read more
  •  49
    A Dilemma for Modest Actual Intentionalism
    British Journal of Aesthetics 60 (2): 165-181. 2020.
    Modest actual intentionalism is a major position on interpretation in contemporary analytic aesthetics. The position consists of a disjunctive formulation according to which work-meaning is determined by the author’s intention when such intention succeeds or by non-intentionalistic factors when it fails. I challenge the disjunctive view by presenting a constructive dilemma, the conclusion being that modest actual intentionalism ends up either making non-intentionalistic factors idle or making au…Read more
  •  33
    Interpretation and the Implied Author: A Descriptive Project
    Southern Journal of Philosophy 56 (1): 83-100. 2018.
    The utterance model is a popular basis for theories of interpretation in the contemporary analytic philosophy of literature. This model suggests that interpretation should be constrained by a work's identity‐relevant factors in its context of production because a work, like an utterance, acquires its identity and content in part from its relations with that context. From a descriptive point of view, I argue that the implied author account of interpretation best describes critical practice follow…Read more
  •  25
    Defending the Hypothetical Author
    British Journal of Aesthetics 63 (4): 579-599. 2023.
    In contemporary analytic philosophy of art, the intentionalist debate is about whether the author’s intention is relevant to the interpretation of her work. Various positions have been proposed, and in this paper I defend what I call hypothetical author-hypothetical intentionalism, the position that interpretation is based on the intention attributed to the author constructed from the work. There are three aims to achieve: (1) to give a general account of hypothetical author-hypothetical intenti…Read more
  •  23
    The Unavailability of Authorial Intent
    Theoria 86 (5): 565-582. 2020.
    Monroe C. Beardsley's unavailability argument is one of the most underrated anti‐intentionalist arguments in the philosophy of interpretation. The main idea of this argument is that, since independent evidence of authorial intent is normally unavailable, the literary interpreter should focus on what a text means rather than on what the author intends it to mean. In this article I propose a revised version of the argument to show that the unavailability of authorial intent suffices to make actual…Read more
  •  23
    Interpreting Art (review)
    British Journal of Aesthetics. forthcoming.
    Sam Rose’s Interpreting Art is a short monograph about how people make sense of artworks. The book is mainly about the visual arts, although literary works are
  •  19
    Beardsley's Contextualism: Philosophical and Educational Significance
    Journal of Aesthetic Education 53 (1): 43-60. 2019.
    Monroe C. Beardsley has been interpreted by many theorists as advocating antiexternalism with respect to an artwork's aesthetically relevant properties, typically its meaning. According to this orthodox interpretation, the meaning of a work is not established by external or contextual factors but by what is internally present in the work. This acontextual account of meaning is challenged by contextualism, which claims that a work's identity and meaning are in part determined by contextual factor…Read more
  •  12
    Beardsley and the Implied Author
    Journal of Literary Theory 12 (1). 2018.
    Some theorists on literary interpretation have suggested a connection between Monroe C. Beardsley’s anti-intentionalism and hypothetical intentionalism based on an implied author. However, a full exploration has never been attempted. I undertake this task in this paper. A close reading of Beardsley reveals that he assumes something very similar to the implied author in interpretation. I distinguish five types of fictional works in terms of their narrative mode and show that my claim stands in at…Read more
  •  4
    Li Shang-yin’s ‘The Ornamented Zither’ as a Test Case for Analytic Theories of Interpretation
    Estetika: The European Journal of Aesthetics 61 (1): 20-37. forthcoming.
    In this paper I test major analytic theories of interpretation, including anti-intentionalism, the value-maximizing theory, actual intentionalism, and hypothetical intentionalism, against Li Shang-yin’s poem ‘The Ornamented Zither’. I argue that, based on the results of the test, all of these theories face grave difficulties. If their supporters want their accounts to be sustained in the debate over interpretation, they need to address the worries I raise.
  •  4
    Art and Interpretation
    The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2018.
    Interpretation in art refers to the attribution of meaning to a work. A point on which people often disagree is whether the artist’s or author’s intention is relevant to the interpretation of the work. In the Anglo-American analytic philosophy of art, views about interpretation branch into two major camps: intentionalism and anti-intentionalism, with an initial focus on one art, namely literature. This article elaborates on variations on these theories of interpretation and considers their notab…Read more