by Payal Mudliar

1. • “The Death of the Author" is a 1967 essay by the French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes
• Barthes's essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice.
• The essay's first English-language publication was in the American journal Aspen.
• In his essay, Barthes argues against the method of reading and criticism that relies on aspects of an
author's identity to distill meaning from the author's work.

2. • No longer the focus of creative influence, the author is merely a "scriptor“
• He introduces this notion of intention in the epigraph to the essay
• “The Death of the Author“ is a landmark for 20th century literature, literary theory, post
structuralism, and postmodernism.
• The essay opposes the established trends and abolish the classical literary criticism that analyses a
literary work within the biographical and personal context of the author of the work.

3. • The essay argues that a literary work should not be analyzed by the information about the real-life
person who created it.
• It argues against incorporating the intensions and biographical context of an author.
• It this essay, Barthes criticizes the readers tendency to to consider aspects of the authors identity-his
political views, historical context, religion, ethnicity, psychology, or other biographical or personal
attributes.
• In the critical schematic, the experiences and biases of the author serve as its definitive
“explanation”.

4. • Readers must separate a literary work from from its creator in order to liberate it from
interpretive tyranny.
• In a famous Quotation, Barthes draw an analogy between text and textiles.
• The essential meaning of a word depends on the impressions of the reader, rather than the
“passions” or “tastes” of the writer.
• The author is merely a “scriptor”.
• The “scriptor” exists to produce but not to explain the work.

5. • A post-structuralist text, “The Death of the Author" influenced French continental
philosophy, particularly those of Jacques, Derrida and Michel Foucault.
• The essay argues that a literary work should not be analyzed by the information about the
real-life person who created it.
• It rejects the idea of authorial intent, and instead develop a reader-response critical theory.
• The use of the word “quotation” expresses the idea that a text cannot really be “created” or
“original”.

6. • This essay can have several implications, both literal and metaphoric. ” of the omniscient
narrator and the author who calls
• In this literary writing, the the death of the author is the “death attention to his presence in
the text.
• “The Death of the Author“ is the inability to create, produce, or discover any text or idea.
• “The Death of the Author“ is the multiplicity of meaning-therefore the ultimate collapse of
meaning.

7. • “The Death of the Author“ by Roland Barthes is a landmark for 20th century literature,
literary theory, post-structuralism, and postmodernism.
• The essay opposes the established trends and abolish the classical literary criticism that
analyses a literary work within the biographical and personal context of the author of the
work.
• The essay argues that a literary work should not be analyzed by the information about real-
life person who created it.

8. • The essay rejects the idea of authorial intent, and instead develops a reader-response critical
theory.
• It can have several implications both literal and metaphoric.