A great exaggeration
You read something, have some idea or ideas about what you’ve read, start writing, and the ideas multiply and zoom off all over the place arguing with each other. Then you realise that there’s an awful lot you don’t know, and that you misunderstood something essential in the thing you read anyway, and off you go again.
Anyway, there’s been some discussion about academic analysis in fandom and "The Death of the Author" has been mentioned. What was Barthes on about, and why did he have such a bee in his bonnet about the poor author? I thought I'd better read his article.
I guess Barthes's article was part of an ongoing discussion, so I’m missing out on that. Barthes (or his article anyway) seems pretty keen on authors really. Hmmm, it’s actually critics he’s bothered about - critics representing the literary establishment. Barthes is working himself up to sacrificing the author in order to liberate the reader from the dictatorship of the literary establishment. His article ends with “The birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the author”, and there, he's done it!
The choice of the word ‘author’ is important. (In fact it seems that it’s author with a capital A: Author.) When I first read the article 'author' just meant writer to me, but actually in the article author has been chosen precisely because it means something different from writer. Author has connotations of greatness and authority - author is more than writer, it‘s a god-like super-being. And this authority and divinity is conferred on the author by the critics, the literary establishment that Barthes wants to do away with. The author dies to make way for the reader, and in the process is transformed into a writer. This reveals that the literary work is a relationship between writer and reader: the work is created as the reader reads what the writer writes. So the death of the author is not a death at all, it’s a transformation and a liberation.
I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but, really, did Barthes have to make his article so dense and negative seeming?! How serious was he? The title in French has to be a pun: La Mort de l’Auteur. I wonder how much I’m missing by reading the article in translation? The idea of death leading to life is an ancient one. (And Arthur is the once and future king.)
Anyway, there’s been some discussion about academic analysis in fandom and "The Death of the Author" has been mentioned. What was Barthes on about, and why did he have such a bee in his bonnet about the poor author? I thought I'd better read his article.
I guess Barthes's article was part of an ongoing discussion, so I’m missing out on that. Barthes (or his article anyway) seems pretty keen on authors really. Hmmm, it’s actually critics he’s bothered about - critics representing the literary establishment. Barthes is working himself up to sacrificing the author in order to liberate the reader from the dictatorship of the literary establishment. His article ends with “The birth of the reader must be ransomed by the death of the author”, and there, he's done it!
The choice of the word ‘author’ is important. (In fact it seems that it’s author with a capital A: Author.) When I first read the article 'author' just meant writer to me, but actually in the article author has been chosen precisely because it means something different from writer. Author has connotations of greatness and authority - author is more than writer, it‘s a god-like super-being. And this authority and divinity is conferred on the author by the critics, the literary establishment that Barthes wants to do away with. The author dies to make way for the reader, and in the process is transformed into a writer. This reveals that the literary work is a relationship between writer and reader: the work is created as the reader reads what the writer writes. So the death of the author is not a death at all, it’s a transformation and a liberation.
I’m sure there’s more to it than that, but, really, did Barthes have to make his article so dense and negative seeming?! How serious was he? The title in French has to be a pun: La Mort de l’Auteur. I wonder how much I’m missing by reading the article in translation? The idea of death leading to life is an ancient one. (And Arthur is the once and future king.)