You've heard it - the author is 'dead', the reader is 'born', intentional fallacy is real etc etc. For most seasoned lit students, the idea that one would assume what an author had 'meant' in their writing almost amounts to literary felony. But that's honestly a bit of an outdated belief, and even as we appreciate the clear benefits of close reading, most of us would see the value of understanding an author's biography or even assuming certain 'intentions' as part of our interpretative process of a literary text. Barthes doesn't agree with me, as you'll see in his 'The Death of an Author' essay, but even as his intentional fallacy argument has become pretty cliched today, there continues to be lessons and value from this essay - 60 and more years since it was first published. And in this video, I share my thoughts on why that might be the case...
TIMESTAMPS:
03:21 - Key idea 1: How much should the author matter to our interpretation of the text?
07:33 - Key idea 2: What does Barthes' style suggest about the power of rhetoric vs logic
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