Funeral of the Author

What would happen if all author names were removed from all book covers? To what level is it right to extend the readers horizons? Some people pick out to live highly sheltered, only reading certain stuffs or watching specific TV shows. Anything that doesn’t fall under their accepted types is to be entirely unnoticed. Not knowing the author means not knowing if there may be any concealed surprises in the book. Would it be beneficial for readers to understand their text better? That depends on the text but most of the time removing the author figure in order to understand the text fully is necessary. When a text goes public, it loses bounds between it and author. A text is set free as soon as the authors stop writing it. “Birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author” says Roland Barthes in his essay "The Death of the Author". A couple of reasons which will explain why it is necessary will be mentioned in the further parts of this essay.

First of all, with the author in the picture reader`s understanding will be limited. That means, author limits the text. With author, text only has one meaning, and that would be the author`s. Other ideas would be hard to obtain so the reader would have a hard time about it. The death of the author creates an open space for the reader to comment on the text. With the text saying that “This is the meaning of this text” only that one can be understood by the reader. The reader can recreate the text through connecting to its meanings as they can be encountered in different contexts. There are complexities of different connotations when it comes from the author but as it comes to the reader, the information becomes inaccessible. That is to say, as long as the author exists in the...

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...iked the first one. Due to this, the reader holds more responsibility than the author.

In conclusion, it can be agreed that there are times when the reader need to get rid of the author figure so as to apprehend the text entirely. Otherwise, concentration would be on the authors own thinking more than their own since the author`s boundaries restrict the text. Or "To give a text an Author" and assign a single, corresponding interpretation to it "is to impose a limit on that text." As Roland Bathes says. But even though there is a limit in the text, there can be numerous meanings within the text since it is the reader who decides what to understand conclusively. So, it can be said that, from time to time readers should consider reading a text without the author`s influence on it. In other words, the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the author