Ethics and Evidence: Authorial Intention and Sedgwick's "Reading Marcher Straight"

Building on the work of Reed Way Dasenbrock, this essay sets the critical principles Henry James outlines in "The Art of Fiction" (1884) against the post-structuralist interpretive procedures Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick employs in her landmark interpretation of James's own story "The Beast in the Jungle" in order to reveal the significant ethical and evidentiary costs of a criticism that treats the demonstration of authorial intent as a luxury rather than as a standard of responsible literary interpretation.