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After Design: Joseph Addison Discovers Beauties

This article analyzes Addison’s literary criticism in the context of early-eighteenth-century criticism, which is intentionalist. Building on scholarship that focuses on how Addison promotes the reader’s power, I examine Addison’s engagements with beauties and hints to argue that he empowers the reader while remaining desirous for authors’ intentions. Indeed, Addison’s empowerment of the reader, I contend, is fueled by his desire for authors’ intentions. Addison thus offers an unexpected prehistory of the reader’s empowerment. He also shows how intentionalist commitments and “anti-intentionalist” practices can coexist in a single critic’s work—a contrast to polarized twentieth-century discussions about authorial intention.