Subject
Re: Query re Barthes & Look at the Harlequins! (fwd)
Date
Body
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: MEDELSTEIN@scuacc.scu.edu
I don't know if Roland Barthes' (and note that it's not "Barthe") "Death
of the Author" has been discussed in the LATH criticism or scholarship,
but it seems clear to me (and I've read "DOA" many, many times, since
I teach it) that if VN knew about this essay and about the burgeoning
work in deconstruction in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he might
have "intended" to mock it and almost certainly would have rejected
Barthes' arguments. For instance, Barthes argues that "it is language
which speaks, not us" and did argue that authors were "dead"--a
more radical argument than the anti-intentionalist one expressed
by American New Critics (esp. Wimsatt and Beardsley); that lit.
was a field of intertextuality not an expression of authorial
genius. As an advocate of the notion of authorial genius, and
someone with not only "strong opinions" but "strong intentions,"
VN would have probably been horrified by Barthes' claims if he know of
them (even though there's plenty of intertextuality in VN's work).
VN seemed to have more of an Enlightenment view of the "self" or subject
than a postmodern/poststructuralist/deconstructive one, and certainly
didn't see authors as mere enunciative subjects. In his practice and
lit. crit., VN had a view of author as god, not of the author as
dead. Marilyn Edelstein, Associate Professor of English, Santa Clara
University, Santa Clara CA 95053
medelstein@scuacc.scu.edu
From: MEDELSTEIN@scuacc.scu.edu
I don't know if Roland Barthes' (and note that it's not "Barthe") "Death
of the Author" has been discussed in the LATH criticism or scholarship,
but it seems clear to me (and I've read "DOA" many, many times, since
I teach it) that if VN knew about this essay and about the burgeoning
work in deconstruction in the late 1960s and early 1970s, he might
have "intended" to mock it and almost certainly would have rejected
Barthes' arguments. For instance, Barthes argues that "it is language
which speaks, not us" and did argue that authors were "dead"--a
more radical argument than the anti-intentionalist one expressed
by American New Critics (esp. Wimsatt and Beardsley); that lit.
was a field of intertextuality not an expression of authorial
genius. As an advocate of the notion of authorial genius, and
someone with not only "strong opinions" but "strong intentions,"
VN would have probably been horrified by Barthes' claims if he know of
them (even though there's plenty of intertextuality in VN's work).
VN seemed to have more of an Enlightenment view of the "self" or subject
than a postmodern/poststructuralist/deconstructive one, and certainly
didn't see authors as mere enunciative subjects. In his practice and
lit. crit., VN had a view of author as god, not of the author as
dead. Marilyn Edelstein, Associate Professor of English, Santa Clara
University, Santa Clara CA 95053
medelstein@scuacc.scu.edu