How
does Barthes establish that “the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the
death of the author’?/ Sum up Barthes’ arguments against the sway of the author
in fixing the meaning of the text./ Comment on Barthes’ reformation of the
relation between the author and the text in ‘The Death of the Author’/ Examine
Barthes’s case for the removal of the Author.
One of the most radical influences on
the recent critical practice Ronald Barthes came to prominence in the 1960’s.
He was influenced by Jean Paul Sartre and Marcel Proust but went far beyond
them in presenting himself as a notorious iconoclast who reversed many a
traditionalist assumptions. The present essay is one such work in which he sees
totally different roles for both the author and the reader and changes the nature
of the text. Barthes is one of those significant links in the chain of post
modernist criticism that see the absurdity of seeking to discover meaning in
literary texts because such a meaning is never elusive and posit a dispassionate
and impersonal role for the writer.
Barthes starts his essay by quoting a line
from the famous French writer Honore be Balzac’s story Sarrasine in which
Castrato’s words in woman’s disguise raises so many questions. Whose voice
exactly can be heard through it is remained unanswered. In the opinion of
Barthes writing kills every voice because writing is a space where all identity
is lost.
The act of writing is a negative and
natural act which erases all identity. This is not a new thing; it has always
been there. The moment ‘a fact is
narrated’ the voice loses its origin. The beginning of writing spells the
death of the author. How does it occur? The idea of the author as an individual
is the result of the modern capitalistic society, a product of the French
rationalism and English empiricism which highlighted the prestige of individual.
In modern sense of the author, a special responsibility is delegated on the
person in whom literature and the author’s personality are bridged.
