5/10/06 - English Literature - Death of the Author

Roland Barthes's Death of the Author significant.

Quote 6. Where does the voice come from? Barthes wants to know who is speaking? Universal wisdom? The author? Hero? Psychology? How should it be read? Writing is the destruction of every point of origin. Author cannot ultimately guarantee the meaning or truth of a literary persepective.

Assumes our notion of the author is historically determined. Oral stories are flexible, fluid and 'composite'; plural origin. Therefore texts cannot have a universal mode of meaning.

The problem of readership is that it generates a limited meaning. Readers bring gender, class, language, etc. perceptions to bear on the text.

Surrealism - psychoanalysis - a theory of the unconscious, therefore author cannot consciously know the true meaning of the text.

Readers are co-creators of textual meaning.

Problems of Barthes: evacuates historical privilege of authorship.
Doesn't historicise enough; overstates his case.

Why did he write it? Post war literature. After war, universities full with all classes because people wanted social security. Biographies emerged - the author's view of his/her literature. Regressive move, according to Barthes.

T. S. Eliot, 1917, Tradition and the Individual Talent. How does one read something? 1) When we read, we relate it to its genre. Historically categorised. After reading, the new work of art changes our perception/context of the genre. 2) New meaning conditions another new text. Does not involve authorial intention.

Barthes: text made of author's language. Context and newness.

Why is literary theory so important?