An Analysis of Roland Barthes’ Death of the Author Essay -- Death of th

An Analysis of Roland Barthes Death of the occasion The birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the reason. Roland Barthes Must the Author be dead to make way for the birth of the reader? In Roland Barthes essay The Death of the Author, Barthes asserts that the Author is dead because the latter is no longer a part of the deep structure in a particular text. To him, the Author does not create heart in the text one earth-closetnot explain a text by knowing about the person who wrote it. A text, however, cannot physically exist disconnected from the Author who writes it. Even if the role of the Author is to mix pre-existing signs, it does not follow that the Author-function is dead. Moreover, Barthes attributes authorship to the reader who forms meaning and understanding. The reader is, however, an abstraction without history, biography, psychology(Barthes 1469). These contexts history, biography, and psychology can only be set by the Author. Thus, the Author is alive and well because the text cannot exist without the Author, the mixing of signs is the Authors art, and the readers meanings forming abilities atomic number 18 nourished by the Author. According to Barthes notion of the cut-off hand, a texts origin is language itself (Barthes 1468). Moreover, linguistically, the author is never more than the instance writing, just as I is nothing other than the instance saying I language knows a subject, not a person (Barthes 1467). What about the Authors physical presence? Certainly, language itself does not know its physical creator, but it is akin to shutting ones eyes on reality to not acknowledge the Author who is out there. Because his texts were considered da... ...r-Response Criticism. October 1998. The College of New Rochelle. March 27, 2004 .OBrien, John. Milan Kundera and feminism Dangerous intersections. Minnesota University of Minnesota, 1995. throw off Gutenberg. What books will I find in Project Gutenberg? March 28, 2004 . Zilcosky, John. The Revenge of the Author Paul Austers Challenge to Theory. Studies in Contemporary Fiction 39, 3 (Spring 1998) 195-207. 1 Himself, him, his, and he are used for briefness in expressing pronouns of both the male and female genders.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------11 Himself, him, his, and he are used for brevity in expressing pronouns of both the male and female genders.