Talk:The Death of the Author

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This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 4 January 2021 and 26 March 2021. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Saxophonic and Smooth. Peer reviewers: EmRoseSouth.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 11:01, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

Is the date and source of this essay correct?
I see the link below explaining this now. Thanks. --Girl2k (talk) 05:25, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

The edition cited here -- Image, Music, Text -- notes that this essay was first published in 1968 not 1967, and not in Aspen but in something called Manteia V. Could whoever provided the date of 1967 and the source as Aspen please provide documentation to prove that? Image, Music, Text is the definitive English edition, and I would expect it to be correct as to the original source and date of the article.--Girl2k 04:26, 18 October 2007 (UTC)

comment
This article would benefit from some description of whatever criticism of this work exists. Turly-burly 05:09, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

Having read in Molly Nesbit's "Who Was the Author?" that Barthes' essay was first published in a BOX, not a conventional journal, I did some googling and found a wonderful documentation of that journal on UBU web, which is a research-based site and trustworthy and thorough. Based on this, I added a bit at the beginning about this, added a link to the documentation at UBUweb and change the year of publication to 1967. I'm amazed that this is so little known, I never heard about it in years of studying literary theory. Lijil 14:20, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * So was this essay first published in English, or was it published before 1967 in French? --Jahsonic 21:09, 26 September 2006 (UTC)
 * I haven't figured that out yet. Lijil 07:51, 27 September 2006 (UTC)

Just added the following citation, which, really is pretty much the final word on the whole topic... at least when I was in grad school. Move it around or whatever. Or better yet, read it ... this guy is smart. * Hix, H. L. Morte d'Author: An Autopsy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.154.212.192 (talk) 00:35, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

To complicate matters, there appear to be two different translations by Richard Howard - one which appeared in Aspen, and one which I've found here:. Very confused, because the Aspen translation seems to me to be the best out of the three translation's I've found; the other Howard translation is very similar to the Heath translation, and seems a bit clunky. I'd like to cite the aspen translation in a paper but I'm not sure it really exists. I will cite UBU web, I guess. Anyway, if somebody can clear up the mystery of the two Howard translations I would be much obliged. -Samizdat —Preceding unsigned comment added by 134.10.127.142 (talk) 03:35, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Barthes and Foucault
I would say that the idea that Barthes' article is based on Derrida and Foucault is pretty far off the mark. Derrida had hardly published any of his work at Barthes' time of writing, and Foucault's comment ('What is an Author') do certainly not support Barthes' views. Instead Foucault characterizes Barthes views as old-fashioned. And Foucault certainly don't claim that literature is not a product of individual authors. In fact, that's the outdated idea he accuses Barthes of advocating. Foucault's 'discourses' is not the idea of fixed and non-personal 'structures' that generates something out of nothing; they're an attempt of explaining the dynamics of collective understandings and the way such understanding influence the individual.

I'm painfully aware of my fellow literary critics' lack of understanding of Foucault; still I'm as shocked as ever every time I see this particular essay read 'up-side down'...

-- T.B.Hansen, Oslo, Norway —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 83.227.109.104 (talk) 19:09, 7 January 2007 (UTC).

Foucault
I would agree with Hansen (above), Foucault is not so much disputing the idea of the death of an author but rather explaining that in the current context the author function still plays a role as a regulator of the text. This role is not played by the author however but by how critics, academics, readers etc create institutions on how a text 'aught' to be read and which texts constitute an author's work. Foucault ends his piece with a critique of the questions that focus on the author and hopes that these will one day be replaced with questions that focus on how the text has been used (in other words on how the reader has interpreted the text). This to me would seem to show that Foucault has developed Barthes' notion rather than disputed it. Furthermore, Foucault seems to have shown that there is a study to be made on how the author has been constructed and that this in itself makes the author of some importance. Once the author is no longer constructed then this importance will cease to be.

-- Appleby —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.39.49.44 (talk) 01:14, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Death of the Author and royalties?
Has anybody ever established who was payed royalties for The Death of the Author? Presumably if Barthes claimed any money from its publication, he negated his own argument. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 86.149.167.161 (talk) 21:21, 8 April 2007 (UTC).

Man, I bet you thought you were so clever when you thought of that in your u-grad lit crit course! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.171.29.71 (talk) 10:27, 13 November 2008 (UTC)


 * Why? If we look at his work not as text, but as property, then he IS to be payed royalties. Exizt 23:02, 29 April 2007 (UTC)
 * Both of these points are moot: the essay is written regarding the reader's perspective, not the author's.

This exact point (that he claimed copyright over the text) is made within an essay cited within this very article, "Roland Barthes' Resurrection of the Author and Redemption of Biography." So presumably academic literary theorists thought the point was worth something. There's no need to be so condescending. Although there's certainly room for debate on this idea, that doesn't mean it's a worthless idea. 2607:FEA8:87E0:A60A:219D:5AC7:B061:3C8F (talk) 16:25, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Reads like an essay
This posts reads like an essay written for somebody's liberal arts class -- an essay that would receive a failing grade for not providing in-text citations commensurate with what is standard for an article of this nature. This is therefore not up to Wiki standards. It is advisable that someone fix this article or it be propsed for deletion, remaining without an entry until someone is willing to provide a properly formatted article.
 * I second that. The article is written very uncritically. NZUlysses (talk) 20:31, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I think it should still be kept, the information is valuable, and the topic is certainly notable. We could just put one of the "this article reads like a personal essay" tags at the top of the page until it is improved.--Ducio1234 (talk) 23:21, 6 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreed, this is notable but needs sources/verifiability/avoid original content... take your pick No_original_research, Verifiability, Source_needed. KevinCarmody (talk) 20:51, 14 December 2008 (UTC)

Why "unfortunately"?
The article reads:


 * "Death of the Author" (1967) is an essay by the French literary critic Roland Barthes that was first published in English in the American journal Aspen, no. 5-6. Unfortunately, this essay is usually said to be published in French and in 1968, in the french magazine Manteia, n. 5.

Why is it "unfortunate"? As phrased it could mean that it's unfortunate the original is in French, or that the original is mistakenly held to have been published in 1968, or that the original was published in 1968, or that the original publishing date is in question, or that the wiki editor doesn't know which is the correct date.

This should be clarified, and I'm not sure "unfortunately" is the correct word here. --Jonathan Drain (talk) 08:16, 11 May 2009 (UTC)


 * As a member of the Guild of Copy Editors (who read this essay years ago in grad school), I am going to remove the copyedit and importance flags. The "Further reading" section seems adequate to me, and the writing is at least average -- certainly much better than the other articles in our backlog. But I'll leave the expert flag. It could be improved by attention from an expert, no argument there. -- Margin1522 (talk) 23:05, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

Derrida and the Death of the Author
This rather opinionated and unsubstantiated article makes some odd claims. How was Derrida influenced by the death of the author? Indeed, in his response to Foucault (Cogito et Histoire de la folie), one finds a defense of an author's intention.

Just one example of many moments in this article in need of correction/reflection/editing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.206.27.69 (talk) 01:58, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Pedagogy and Barthes
This addition to the wikipedia page accounts for the recent scholarship on Barthes's "Death of the Author" essay. I've specifically focused on pedagogical research and have attempted to explain what important features of Barthes's essay this research extends for curriculum, composition studies, and other domains within pedagogy. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Saxophonic and Smooth (talk • contribs) 00:44, 11 March 2021 (UTC)

Percy Lubbock argued Death of the Author in 1921...
"The reader of a novel—by which I mean the critical reader—is himself a novelist; he is the maker of a book which may or may not please his taste when it is finished, but of a book for which he must take his own share of the responsibility. The author does his part, but he cannot transfer his book like a bubble into the brain of the critic; he cannot make sure that the critic will possess his work. The reader must therefore become, for his part, a novelist, never permitting himself to suppose that the creation of the book is solely the affair of the author."

I'm asking should 100% of the credit go to Barthes? Or should we critically analyze if the concept came from earlier time period. Craft of Fiction (1921) was wildly popular and perhaps the erasure of the author for being gay might be playing a hand in giving wrong credit. --KimYunmi (talk) 19:17, 12 April 2022 (UTC)


 * perhaps Lubbock is worthy of credit for the concept (I would not be surprised if one could go much further back still), however this article is explicitly about Barthes' essay, not the concept itself. perhaps a separate article for each of these would be worth writing? One for 'The Death of the Author (essay)' and one for 'Death of the Author' generally. ADM.Tetanus (talk) 03:28, 27 June 2022 (UTC)


 * I still think there is a way to do it so that it still centers on the topic (Essay) and gives Lubbock original credit. Barthes makes references later to also trying to separate the Modernists from the "Structuralists" (In 1975) whom he talks about 3/5 Act people (But then also goes against them, while trying to find other ways to describe story "An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative"). And the source of that info, if he did do studying is Lubbock. I mean Gutenberg's article credits Chinese and Koreans for their invention, while talking about his own invention: (The adjustable type mould) influences isn't unheard of in Wikipedia. BTW, I'm fairly sure that Death of the Author, as a concept, can be traced to Lubbock specifically. I've been filling in Literature history, so I read (much to my regret) a lot of the Literature History from Aristotle to Shakespeare forwards (Reading all of Freytag was a chore because he's so hateful and inaccurate) and the major thinkers. Individualism is a 20th century notion. Virginia Woolf was against Lubbock and previous writers thought it was a more balanced game, but after Lubbock, a lot more writers alluded to the idea that it was in the domain of the reader. (Something that comes with the rise of film, itself, I think). So before Lubbock, one had seminal authors like Selden Whitcomb, but Selden Whitcomb straight out argued that the author and reader were in a partnership. Woolf liked that idea too, but Lubbock went against the Modernists, and that's where the deviation happened between the "structuralists" and "Modernists" as was noted in Lubbock's article, he struggled with being a "Modernist" while disliking a lot of what they stood for. I can't find any other thinkers before him that had that split. Lubbock, then, clearly influenced other "Structuralists" who allude to his way of thinking. (That side is terrible at citations, I have to admit, but some of the words are almost verbatim while stealing). You need a fair amount of individualism for "Death of the Author" thinking to occur, which is only possible after industrialization. --KimYunmi (talk) 02:51, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

criticism
I know the ideological perspective of Wikipedia believes in the "death of the author" idea, but shouldn't critiques of the idea be included also? The way this reads, one would think it was non-controversial when the claim here is probably the single most controversial thing in literature, dwarfing all other controversies in the field. --2601:300:4080:6230:497A:F2ED:E261:74A8 (talk) 17:38, 25 October 2022 (UTC)