The Death of the Author

James Maye
Aug 27, 2017 · 2 min read

Barthes argues that the impact of the author on the understanding and interpretation of a piece of literature is done, and that the focus of interpretation now rests with the readers of the work, not the creator. I agree.

A piece of literature is, due to the nature of language as an imperfect method for portraying meaning, forced to be ambiguous.Legal documents attempt to be unambiguous, leading to strained and dense prose which still fails at its aim for objectivity. When interpreting this ambiguity there are two schools of thought: that there is a deeper ‘truth’ which the piece of literature attempts, but fails, to explicitly describe. This deeper truth would have to be imagined by the author, who then attempts to describe this in the piece of literature.

The alternative is that the work is all there is, the only truth being the wording of the piece — any meaning derived from these words must be a subjective interpretation, because there is no objective truth to be found. In this understanding meaning is derived by the reader using their own interpretations, creating multiple parallel interpretations of the text; the degree to which any interpretation is true can be assessed only by using evidence from the text itself. Arguing that Huckleberry Finn is a pro-slavery book will therefore prove difficult, due to the counterexamples running through the text. The author’s interpretation of the book is therefore only as valid as those of other readers. The author may have had one interpretation in mind while writing the book, but due to the distortion of these ideas during the writing process the final work will merely represent this interpretation alongside many others.

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James Maye

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Probably not a superhero.

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