A core idea of New Criticism. In a famous paper, entitled ‘The Affective Fallacy’ (1954), W. K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley, argue that the way a work affects its reader---whether it makes us laugh, cry, bored, etc.---is not a valid source of critical judgement about a text’s relative worth as literature. Rather one must concentrate on its formal properties because these and these alone are sufficient to distinguish good literature from bad. See also intentional fallacy.