This document provides information about a poststructuralist criticism assignment submitted by Rohit Vyas. It includes biographical information about the student and defines some key aspects of poststructuralist criticism, noting that it displaced structuralism in prominence in the 1970s. It lists some important poststructuralist critics like Barthes, Lyotard, Baudrillard, and Foucault. It then summarizes Barthes' concept of "The Death of the Author", which argues that a text's meaning is not defined by the author's intentions and that the reader gives a text meaning.

1. Poststructuralist Criticism
•Name: Rohit Vyas
•Course: M.A. English, Semester 2, at S. B. Gardi Dept.
of English MK Bhavnagar University
•PG Year: 2019-2021
•PG Enrolment Number: 2069108420200041
•Roll No. 21
•Email: rohitvyas277@gmail.com
•Paper: 07 Literary Theory and Criticism-2 (Unit 3)
•Submitted to : Smt. S. B. Gardi Department of
English, M.K. Bhavnagar University

2. What is it ?
• It designates a broad variety of critical
perspectives and procedures that in the
1970s displaced structuralism from its
prominence as the radically innovative way
of dealing with language and other
signifying systems.
- Glossary of Literary Terms, pp. 308
• It began with the essay by Jacques Derrida,
“Structure Sign and Play”

3. Some Poststructuralist Critics
Roland
Barthes
Jean-
Francois
Lyotard
Jean
Baudrillard
Michel
Foucault
Jacques
Derrida

4. Death of the Author – Roland Barthes (1967)
• What is the connection between work and
it’s creator ?
• How to decide which work is whom ?
• As the text is created by the author at the
very moment it loses the connection with
it’s author. That’s why it is said death of the
author.
• The text acquires it’s own independence.
• Just at the birth of a baby, placenta is cut.

5. Cont…
 As the text is now independent from the
author, it contains multiple meanings
apart from the intentions of author.
 “…death of the author is the birth of the
reader”.
- Beginning Theory by Peter Barry pp. 66

6.  Barhtes takes this story as an example for
poststructuralist criticism.
 Zambinella is a castrato who is dresses as woman
for the theatre performance. Sarrasine a passionate
artist, falls in love with her during her performance.
 Zambinella reveals the truth and inside the studio
he is killed.

7. From the Essay
 In his story Sarrasine, Balzac, speaking of a castrato
disguised as a woman, writes this sentence: “It was
Woman, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims,
her instinctive fears, her unprovoked bravado, her
daring and her delicious delicacy of feeling”.
 By stating this, Barthes asks several questions and he
himself breaks all the question stating that it will
impossible to know, because all the writing is itself a
voice. The disjuncture occurs, voice loses its origin,
author enters his own death and writing begins.

8. The Mona Lisa by…

9. Abrams, M. H., and Geoffrey Galt Harpham. A Glossary of
Literary Terms. Cengage Learning, 2015.
Barry, Peter. Beginning Theory: an Introduction to Literary
and Cultural Theory. 4th ed., Viva Books, 2018.
Barthes, Roland. Death of the Author. Tr. Richard Howard.
Ubu Web Papers. PDF.
http://www.tbook.constantvzw.org/wp-
content/death_authorbarthes.pdf
Belsey, Catherine. Post-Structuralism: a Very Short
Introduction. Oxford University Press, 2006.