The Death of the Author / Mort de l'auteur

By Jill Walker Rettberg, 5 July, 2013
Publication Type
Year
Record Status
Abstract (in English)

"The Death of the Author" is a 1968 essay by the French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes. Barthes's essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of incorporating the intentions and biographical context of an author in an interpretation of a text, and instead argues that writing and creator are unrelated.

The essay's first English-language publication was in the American journal Aspen, no. 5-6 in 1967; the French debut was in the magazine Manteia, no. 5 (1968). The essay later appeared in an anthology of Barthes's essays, Image-Music-Text (1977), a book that also included his "From Work To Text".

(Source: Wikipedia entry on The Death of the Author)