Affective Fallacy W.K. Wimsatt and his friend Beardsley wrote two essays, ‘The Intentional Fallacy’ and ‘The Affective Fallacy’ which provided new meaning and interpretation to the new critics. Intentional Fallacy deals with a poet’s intention while the ‘Affective Fallacy deals with the effect the poem creates on the reader. ‘The Affective Fallacy’ was published in 1949 advocates to focus on work itself, the confusion between the poem and its result is tried to be clarified in this essay. This was against I. A. Richards emotive and referential use of language, the writers of this essay object that Richards have used the term ‘meaning’ loosely, because traditionally ‘meaning is cogrative or descriptive which is expressed through language. Beardsley and Wimsatt trace the origin of the concept from Plato, Aristotle and Longinus through the modern critics. It believes that effect and affect of the emotions, feelings and impulses are on both levels, t he physiological level and the psychological level. The concern is mainly with the meaning of the poem. Poetry relates more to knowledge than to emotions. The relationship between ‘reason’ and ‘emotion’ is the intention of the affective criticism. This criticism supplies a kind of information which enables the readers to respond to the poem in a better way. Here the critic performs the role of a teacher or an explicator. To conclude, Affective Fallacy is an attack on the attempt to judge a poem by the effect it has on the reader, for the later critics the meaning of the poem became theoretical explication or cognitive structure. The intention was a better understanding of the poem on its own not by any other support.