E. D. Hirsch

E. D. Hirsch was an American literary critic and educational theorist who taught at the University of Virginia. In Validity in Interpretation he defended authorial intention against both New Critical and Gadamerian views: the meaning of a text is what its author meant, and that meaning is determinate and recoverable. He distinguished a text's fixed meaning from its changing significance for readers, and later became known for his writing on cultural literacy in education.

Key ideas

• A text's meaning is the meaning its author intended.
• Meaning is fixed; significance, the text's relation to readers and contexts, varies.
• Interpretations can be judged more or less probable on the evidence, so validity in interpretation is possible.
• Shared background knowledge is a precondition of reading comprehension.

Major works

• Validity in Interpretation (1967)
• The Aims of Interpretation (1976)
• Cultural Literacy (1987)

In the conversation

• Reading group Reading group: Wimsatt and Beardsley, then Barthes, then Hirsch on who owns a text’s meaning Keisha Monroe · 6 replies
• Question My lecturer says the poet’s own explanation doesn’t count. Where does that idea come from? Kavya Menon · 4 replies