Vitrine 2: Theories of Authorship

Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault were not the first to the consider authorship as a theoretical concept, but they certainly enlivened the debate. For Barthes, writing in 1968, ‘it is language which speaks, not the author.’ It is a dramatic move in which he calls for the preferencing of the text, understandable in this age of the cult of the author. Foucault, responding to Barthes in 1969, conceded ‘that all authors are writers, but not all writers are authors.’ Foucault’s analysis opened up the definition of authorship, to acknowledge the plethora of texts created today that we would not regard as authored. Barthes’ robust rejection, and Foucault’s careful construction of the author have continued to incite response and debate ever since.

Roland Barthes, Image, Music, Text, translated by Stephen Heath (London: Fontana Press, 1987) Central PN37.B878
Michel Foucault, ‘What is an author?,’ in Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-structuralist Criticism, edited by Josue V. Harari (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1979) Central PN94.TB19
Alexander Nehamas, ‘What An Author Is,’ The Journal of Philosophy 83.11(1986), 685–691, Central B1.J68
What is an Author?, edited by Maurice Biriotti and Nicola Miller (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993) Central PN145.WJ24
Theories of Authorship, edited by John Caughie (London: Routledge, 1981) Central PN1995.9.P7 TC74
Roger Chartier, The Order of Books (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994) Central Z1003.5.E9 CF86
Authorship: From Plato to the Postmodern, edited by Sean Burke (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1995) Central PN151.BY47
Andrew Bennett, The Author (Milton Park: Routledge, 2005)
The Construction of Authorship, edited by Martha Woodmansee and Peter Jaszi (Durham: Duke University Press, 2006) Central KN112.CR39
Susan Sniader Lanser, Fictions of Authority: Women Writers and Narrative Voice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992) Central PR830.W6 L924
Jack Stillinger, Multiple Authorship and the Myth of Solitary Genius (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991) Central PR21.SU82
Kenneth Dauber, The Idea of Authorship in America (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1990) Central PS201.D683