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- Title
WANTED: THE AUTHOR (DEAD OR ALIVE) On Putting the Death of the Author to Rest, and a Bit of a Ghost Story.
- Authors
Galetti, Dino
- Abstract
For almost a century, the theory that the intentions of the author ought to be excluded from literary criticism has excited as many theorists as it has exasperated critics and teachers. Advocates of that theory required severe constrictions to be placed upon reading of works - most famously, that the author is or ought to be treated as 'dead'. Even attempts to defend the importance of the author placed some constraint on practice. Hence, it seems to us, the discussion led to a scission between theorists and practitioners. This essay aims to rectify that division... but also to 'prove' the intentions of the author by a relatively rigorous yet novel approach. As it seeks to keep both audiences, it nevertheless proceeds accessibly (so any critics or teachers who had begun to flip the page, please read on). It thus begins from premises common to the theoretical debate, expands those in accordance with Husserl, but initiates a 'mini-Copernican' inversion: taking teaching as the arbiter of what is possible, so what theory ought to account for rather than preclude. The essay then develops those premises in a single sequence to 'prove' that an author's intention appears in the work (as a 'phantasm'), then that such intentions are incontrovertibly necessary and possible in literary criticism and teaching. That will permit critics and teachers to consider the author's intentions in accordance with theory, at last without constraint. Yet it will also allow for a revitalised theory that again supports literary critique.
- Subjects
LITERARY criticism; AUTHORS; PHANTASMAGORIA; CRITICS in literature; LITERATURE teachers
- Publication
Anglia: Journal of English Philology / Zeitschrift für Englische Philologie, 2014, Vol 132, Issue 1, p98
- ISSN
0340-5222
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1515/anglia-2014-0006