Hello everyone. I'm Jen, and I make useful English Lit study videos on Shakespeare, poetry, fiction, literary ideas, and more to help you become a literary expert. He's of letters stuck in my teeth. So if this sounds like what you need, then make sure you hit the Subscribe button below so you never miss out on my future weekly videos. Following my previous video on TS Eliot's essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, in this video today, we are looking at Roland Barthes' essay The Death of the Author, published in 1967, which is probably one of the most iconic works of 20th-century literary theory. Perhaps you have heard of the phrase intentional fallacy, which is the idea that the author's supposed intentions are irrelevant to our understanding of their writing, and it's not as if we'll ever truly know what they had intended anyway. Now, despite Eliot and Barthes coming from very separate literary movements, Eliot being an early 20th-century transatlantic classically trained modernist, and Barthes being a mid-

20th-century French structuralist. It's interesting to compare the essays because while both critics argue that there is a need to consider factors beyond the authors themselves when reading a text for meaning, Eliot sees the main locus of meaning-making to be the grand forces of history, literature, and cultural heritage, i.e., the centuries of canonical works by an author's literary forebears, whereas Roland Barthes locates it in what he calls the author's future, i.e., the many readers who have yet to encounter the author's text, but once they do, will bring their own unique consciousness to the interpretative process. So, at this point in time today, which is about, I guess, like 60-plus years after the publication of this death essay, Barthes' argument isn't actually groundbreaking stuff at all. If it's not altogether become quite clichéd and overhashed in literary discussions because the essence of this message is simply that the meaning of the text should be largely determined by the reader, not the author, and that once the

author has released their writing into the world by setting down their ideas on the page. Their personhood should be untethered from and irrelevant to the reader's interaction with the text. So, the way B sees it is that the text becomes a separate entity, and the power to decide what the text means should rest entirely with the reader, not the author. Now, if you watched my video on the three key approaches to literary criticism, you know that B's stance is quite similar to the nature of something like close reading. And since close reading has by now become and continues to be one of the most widely adopted ways of reading literature, anyone reading Bart's essay for the first time today is probably not going to find his message to be hugely innovative. However, that doesn't mean that there isn't any value in us revisiting this essay. And in fact, what I want us to do today is to look at it from a slightly different angle. Instead of summarizing what Bart is saying, we're going to consider the significance and

relevance of Bart's essay today right, including the way he wrote this essay. What is it that continues to make his essay so influential and valuable despite the rather pedestrian and cliché nature of his message? And is there something we can actually learn from the way B.S. communicates and writes a sessi? Is it helpful or even possible for a reader not to consider or at least acknowledge the identity and intentions behind the text? So anyway, with all of those questions, we're going to dive straight into our reading of this essay. Sit tight; these letters still stuck in my teeth. Damn. Now the first thing to clarify about B's essay is that he makes two arguments. There's obviously the most famous one that everyone remembers, which is the removal or what he calls death of the author as a fact of consideration when reading a text. But there's also the other important claim when B asserts that a text is not a line of words releasing a single theological meaning, the message of the author, God, but a multi-dimensional space in which a

variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash. The text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centers of cultures. Now, this second claim is reminiscent of Elliott's insistence on tradition as a major source of literary inspiration. But rather than focusing on past history, B's emphasis is more on intersecting cultures through time. This also points to the idea of intertextuality, which is the idea that one single text is actually also a tapestry of many other texts and written materials, whether explicitly incorporated as quotations or implicitly alluded to as references. But here's the irony: if we were to just oppose B's two claims, perhaps we'll notice a contradiction at the heart of his author is dead argument. Because the author themselves is inevitably part of those innumerable centers of culture, as someone whose own mind would have been formed from consistent daily interaction with their immediate cultural surroundings and vice versa. Because these authors also, through their sheer act of writing materials, concurrently adding to the fabric of that very same

cultural tissue that they are immersed in. By the way, guys, if you find this video helpful so far, I'd massively appreciate it if you could hit the Thumbs Up Button below and subscribe to my channel so that you don't miss out on any of my top-grade lit study content going forward. I'd also encourage you to check out my membership program by clicking the join button below if you want exclusive access to members-only study content and make special video requests. I'll see you there. So what this means is that the author, by nature of being a product of their broader culture, they can never really be completely absent from the interpretative orbit of the text, nor should they be, right? If B's claim is that every text is simply a compendium of broader cultural influences, so instead of killing off the author's traces altogether from our reading of a text, perhaps it's more about meeting in the middle ground where we're not turning a literary text into some scavenger hunt for the motivations

behind the act of authorship because that, of course, then also narrows down the range of possible interpretations of a text. As B points out in somewhat absolutist terms, to give a text an author is to impose a limit on the text and to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing. But instead, perhaps what's more rewarding for the reader is to consider how the author's own life experiences might have informed the way they wanted to reshape and reenact or communicate the cultural internalization through creative expression. To boil it all down then, Bart's point is that any text, despite being written by an individual, the author shouldn't be regarded as a mirror of that individual's life or a vessel for that individual's egoistic projections, which isn't to say that the author's biography shouldn't matter at all to our understanding of their writing. It does, but just that it should never be the primary source of focus for the interpretative process. Now, while this is a fair claim, I think maybe it doesn't

take into consideration certain genres like confessional poetry or semi-autobiographical fiction, right, such as the Poetry of people like Sylvia Plath and the writings of Maya Angelou. It would be hard to imagine, for example, reading a poem like Daddy, which I have a video on that you could watch here, or the book I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Angelou in a rewarding way without at least considering the impact of both authors' childhood experiences, family dynamics, personal traumas, etc. So, even if BS does have a point, we'd be doing ourselves a massive disservice and missing out on the possible depths of interpretation if we were to apply this idea of intentional fallacy to every single genre under the sun. But putting Bart's argument aside, let's change TCT and take a look at his style. Why does he adopt such an extreme trench and tone in his essay, almost a bit combative, right, especially since the issue seems a bit disproportionate to the emotional language that he uses? His argument is very much black or white.

either or you versus me. There's either the author or there ISM. The birth of the reader can only happen with the death of the author, etc. And more importantly, what does B's polarizing register and the longevity of his essay in literary circles suggest about the broader impact of language and tone on the general public readership? Now, if you recall, we've established that Bart's argument actually isn't all that original and that he was largely making this author is dead claim at a time when literary criticism throughout early to mid-20th century had been pretty much dominated by biographers, more so in French circles with people like Charles August St. B and Hipoly T, and then you have English moralists like F. Lis and to some extent as well psychoanalysts like F. and Yung, all of whom championed approaches to reading that centered heavily on the author's own life experiences, values, psyche, whatever. But it's also worth considering that B's essay was actually

published during the 60s counterculture movement, which obviously contained rebellious energies that permeated all modes of thought, so that matches with the anti-establishment sentiment in this track-like piece of writing. In a way, there's actually something similar about the context of the reactionary spirit in both Elliott and B's essays. Elliot was reacting against romanticist egoism, whereas B was against what he saw as the authoritarian, likewise egoistic shadow of the author God, which brings to mind those World War II totalitarian dictators whose crew ego Mania baths had witnessed orbe from a distance as his tuberculosis had preempted him from World War I conscription. Perhaps this is why B's power back to the reader or the people message resonates as deeply with his own contemporary readership and the politicization of the issue perhaps in part contributed to the success in canonical status of this essay in the literary field thereafter. Apart from hitting the timing jackpot, though, there's perhaps something about the way BS frames this issue in this polarizing

combative manner that also tells us something universal about the reader or the audience's psyche. And that is this: a message doesn't always have to be too insightful, deep, or original in order for it to win over the heart or convince the mind, but it does have to be passionately, assertively, and sometimes even forcefully communicated, even if it comes across a bit hyperbolic or histrionic, and even if the issue is being politicized in a way that's arguably out of context and beyond proportion. So, immediately, populist politicians today like Donald Trump, Jair Bolsonaro, and Bernie Sanders might come to mind, who all to some extent embody this Barian spirit with the often controversial, loud, but not always reasonable claims about various cultural and socioeconomic issues that most people wouldn't pay attention to had it not been for the use of politicized rhetoric around them. Say something like fracking, Roe versus Wade, or incarceration rates, right? So, in a similar vein, the topic of what sources of influence to consider when understanding a text is really quite dry.

but by politicizing it into some imaginary power struggle between the author and the reader, or metaphorizing the relationship between the author and the reader with some quasi-existentialist imagery like birth versus death, BS succeeds in securing the attention that he had needed to make his agenda heard, both in his own time and far beyond into today. And there you go, everyone. I hope you found my views on this death of the author essay insightful, and that it has inspired you to consider and challenge the implications and significance of writing in literary theory. Always remember that it is more than okay to push the envelope and be a little bit more daring with the way you think about literary theory. The point is never to blindly agree with whatever a literary figure says, no matter how prominent they may be. The most important thing is to always exercise your own critical thinking about whether or not you think what someone says makes sense, or if what they say is even relevant to all situations and for all times, as well as what you personally think about the topic, which

is always the most important. So, for your next video, I recommend that you watch my analysis of T.S. Eliot's essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, which is a super interesting and rewarding text for you to compare your reading of B's essay with. You can check that out right here. Hit that thumbs-up button below if you found this video helpful so that YouTube will know to spread it to more passionate lit learners like yourself, and that you can encourage me to keep making these useful lit videos for you in the future. Please do subscribe and click on that bell notification icon so you don't miss out on any of my future weekly videos. You can also consider joining my membership program for exclusive video requests and essay review perks. Check that out by clicking the join button. And as always, always, I will see you in the next one. Bye.

What is Roland Barthes' 'The Death of the Author' really about?

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