Anatomy of Criticism
Northrop Frye
The Anatomy of Criticism is a canonical statement on the principles and foundations of literary
criticism. It is widely noted for its scope and ambition, synthesizing theory from Aristotle to the
present, critiquing the state of the profession of criticism in the twentieth century, and providing a
toolkit for reading almost the entirety of Western literature. The vastly influential book has been
called, understatedly, “monumental” (Lentricchia 3).
Published in 1957, the book came in the heyday of what has come to be called the “New Criticism.”
This school of literary theory held that works of literature should be studied in isolation, in order to
see how they develop their own meaning through language alone. That…
[9:41 AM, 4/5/2022] Kcp Vidya Patil Mam: The Death of the Author" (French: La mort de l'auteur) is
a 1967 essay by the French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980). Barthes's essay
argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of incorporating the intentions and biographical
context of an author in an interpretation of a text, and instead argues that writing and creator are
unrelated. The essay's first English-language publication was in the American journal Aspen, no. 5–6
in 1967; the French debut was in the magazine Manteia, no. 5 (1968). The essay later appeared in an
anthology of Barthes's essays, Image-Music-Text (1977), a book that also included his "From Work
To Text".
Barthes's essay argues against traditional literary criticism's practice of incorporating the intentions
and biographical context of an author in an interpretation of a text, and instead argues that writing
and creator are unrelated. The essay's first English-language publication was in the American journal
Aspen, no.
An author is the creator or originator of any written work such as a book or play, and is also
considered a writer. More broadly defined, an author is "the person who originated or gave
existence to anything" and whose authorship determines responsibility for what was created.
The death of the Author is the inability to create, produce, or discover any text or idea. The author is
a “scriptor” who simply collects preexisting quotations. He is not able to create or decide the
meaning of his work. The task of meaning falls “in the destination”—the reader.
The death of the author" notion means that meaning is not something retrieved or discovered,
having been there all the while, but rather something spontaneously generated in the process of
reading a text, which is an active rather than passive action.
Roland Barthes's famous essay "The Death of the Author" (1967) is a meditation on the rules of
author and reader as mediated by the text. Barthes's essential argument is that the author has no
sovereignty over his own words (or images, sounds, etc.) that belong to the reader who interprets
them. When we encounter a literary text, says Barthes, we need not ask ourselves what the author
intended in his words but what the words themselves actually say. Text employ symbols which are
deciphered by readers, and since function of the text is to be read, the author and process of writing
is irrelevant.
"The death of the author" notion means that meaning is not something retrieved or discovered,
having been there all the while, but rather something spontaneously generated in the process of
reading a text, which is an active rather than passive action. Barthes does not intend to suggest that
the death of the author lets any reader read any text any way he or she like (though others aside
from Barthes perused this line of thought). What Barthes is suggesting is that reading always
involves at least a little bit of writing or rewriting of the text's meaning.
Barthes's "The Death of the Author" is an attack on traditional literary criticism that focused too
much on trying to retrace the author's intentions and original meaning in mind. Instead Barthes asks
us to adopt a more text oriented approach that focuses on the interaction of the reader, not the
writer, with it. This means that the text is much more open to interpretation, much more fluid in its
meaning than previously thought.
All authors write for a reason. The reason an author writes something is called the author's purpose.
When you figure out why a reading passage was written, you are identifying the author's purpose.
Author's write for one of four reasons – to describe, to entertain, to explain or inform, and to
persuade.
