Talk:The Death of the Author

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 [1] 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: [2]. 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.

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 Wikipedia:No_original_research, Wikipedia:Verifiability, Source_needed#Unsourced_material. 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)