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The Death of the Author |
理論家 Theorists /  Roland Barthes 羅蘭.巴特 |
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"The Death of the Author"
I. the traditional role and position
of the Author
A. "Human person"-- author
"From
the Middle Age with English empiricism, French rationalism and the
personal faith of the Reformation," the individual is always the
center as the "human person."沉n literature, the human person logically
refers to the person of the author, and is taken as the most important
role. The person of the author exists in histories of literature,
biographies of writers, interviews and magazines.
B. The connection between the author and the work
The image of literature is centered on the author's personal life
rather than the text or work itself. For instance, "Baudelair's
work is the failure of Baudelaire the
man." We always try to find out or perceive the relationship
and connection between the content of a text with the author's
personal life. This is what Barthes disagrees.
II. The awareness of writing:P>
In
France—Mallarme is the first one who foresees the necessity of language
itself.For Mallarme, it is language which speaks, not the author.Moreover,
to write is to reach the point that language "performs," not
"me."
B. Surrealism
Barthes
mentions the contribution of surrealism in the prehistory of modernity.It
questions the position of the author by giving the right to the
hand with the task of writing as quickly as possible that the head
itself is unaware of, and by "accepting the principle and the experience
of several people writing together."
C.
In the field of linguistics
In
the field of linguistics—the author is the same as the letter "I"
means a subject. The
author is nothing more than a writing sentence.
III. The exchange of positions—author and writing
A.
The relation between the Author and writing
1.
Roland Barthes indicates that the relationship between the author
and the book can be divided into a before and an after.The author
is who exists before the book, thinks, suffers, lives for it.In
other words, the author is always considered as a father to his
child.
2.
Barthes considers that now the "modern scriptor" is born with
the text at the same
time.That means: every text is "written here and
now"
rather than afterthe
author's thought.
B.
Barthes' ideas on a text and on an author
1. In the past, writing is considered as inferior to sound, because
it is too slow to catch up one's thought and passion. However,
the "modern scriptor" no longer considers that writing is inferior
to sound or voice as what his predecessors do before.For the
"modern scriptor,"on the contrary, the hand is cut off from anyvoice.
2. For Barthes, "the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the
innumerable centres of culture." No matter how comic, sublime
or ridiculous it is, that is precisely the truth of writing.
3. Furthermore, Barthes considers that writer can only imitate what
is anterior, never original.The writer's power is only to mix the
writings altogether, not an origin.
IV. The individuality of writing
A.
No author beneath the text
After
the author is removed, there is no necessity to decode a text. Barthes
thinks
that if the author is found beneath the text, the text is "explained,"
just as
the
author is considered as a critic historically.
B. Liberation
and multiplicity of writing
But now in the multiplicity of writing, everything is liberated,
nothing is decoded. Moreover, the multiplicity of writing has an
ultimate meaning.It may liberate what is called an anti-theological
activity.It is "an activity that is truly revolutionary since
to refuse to fix meaning is, in the end, to refuse God and his hypostases—reason,
science, law."
V. The death of the Author
A.
Emphasis on the listener or reader rather than the Author
1. Barthes uses the relationship between the listener or the reader
and the text as an example to emphasize the death of the
author.
2.
Barthes indicates that it is the listener or the reader who understand
each written words. These writings are drawn from different cultures
and then become relations of dialogues and parody in literature.
There
is only one place for the multiplicity of writing; that is the
reader, not the author.
B.
Emphasis on the destination, not origin—
1. Barthes emphasizes that "a text's unity lies not in its origin
but in its destination."
Therefore, it is the reader to give a future for a text, because
it is the
reader who consume the text.
2. Barthes emphasizes that the reader is without history, biography
and psychology, and the reader can overthrow the role of the author.
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