The role of Barthes and Foucault in either New Criticism, Russian Formalism or Structuralism

Résumé du document

Structuralism defends the irreducibility of literary texts, which cannot be criticized through biographical or sociological context. In his essay, "The Death of the Author", Roland Barthes argues against incorporating the intentions and biographical context of an author in the interpretation of texts. He criticizes the tendency to consider aspects of the author's identity - his political views, historical context, religion, ethnicity, psychology, or other biographical or personal characteristics - to distill meaning from his work. To give a text to an author and assign a single interpretation to it, is to impose a limit on that text. The author's intentions are irrelevant and the reader doesn't need to know what the author meant to do, and if he is finally successful.

Extraits

[...] A relation of projection: the author appears like the projection of the text's qualities. He embodies/incarnates/personifies the characteristics necessary to the good functioning of the text: because one needs, to interpret a text, to believe in its unity, in its coherence and singularity, the author will be the guarantor of a constant value level, of a linguistic unity, of a date, etc. The “author-function” is not formed spontaneously through the simple attribution of a discourse to an individual. At last, Foucault describes a relation of distance: the author is neither the real writer above/before/prior to the text, nor a fictive speaker within the work, but he is the one who authorizes such a division. [...]

[...] Foucault does not explicitly mention Barthes in his essay but its analysis can appear as a challenge to Barthes' depiction of the reader's liberation from the author. The author notion and the myth which accompanies it/goes with it seemed suspect to Foucault. He preferred the anonymous writing and asserted that his works' essence lied in an anonymous voice the historical period, the society more than in the thought of a singular and eminent person. In the first pages of “What is an author?”, Foucault explains that although we regard the concept of authorship as "solid and fundamental"[14], that concept hasn't always existed. [...]

[...] The role of Barthes and Foucault in either New Criticism, Russian Formalism or Structuralism Structuralism defends the irreducibility of literary texts, which cannot be criticized through biographical or sociological context. In his essay, "The Death of the Author"[1], Roland Barthes argues against incorporating the intentions and biographical context of an author in the interpretation of texts. He criticizes the tendency to consider aspects of the author's identity - his political views, historical context, religion, ethnicity, psychology, or other biographical or personal characteristics - to distill meaning from his work. [...]

[...] Roland Barthes, death of the Author”, P.53. Michel Foucault, “What is an author in Language, Counter-Memory, Practice (translation by Donald F. Bouchard and Sherry Simon, Oxford, Cornell University Press, 1977), P.128. Roland Barthes, death of the Author”, P.49. Roland Barthes, death of the Author”, P.53. Michel Foucault, “What is an author?”, P.118. Roland Barthes, death of the Author”, P.52. Roland Barthes, death of the Author”, P.53. Roland Barthes, death of the Author”, P.54. [...]

[...] To say that there is no author who would hold the meaning of the text, is to free/liberate its many interpretations. Barthes denounces the critics who aim at stopping (or exhausting) the meaning of a text, by presenting its origin as the truth. Barthes compares such a process with a theology of the meaning, and he accuses the old critics' conception of literature: to them, the literary text is just an allegoric veil that we have to go/pass through to reach/to get at a truth which would be beyond the text space of writing is to be traversed, not pierced”[5]). [...]