9/17 Reading Response

I found "The Author Function" to be an interesting article. Interesting to think that the idea of authorship goes back as far as the Middle Ages. From what I understand, it seems that pieces of work were based more upon real things; science than fantasy that is often written about today.

"Authentication no longer required reference to the individual who had produced them; the role of the author disappeared as an index of truthfulness and, where it remained as an inventor's name, it was merely to denote a specific theorem or proposition, a strange effect, a property, a body, a group of elements, or a pathological syndrome."

- My take on this, was that this is when anonymous writings became more popular. This beginning to anonymity has led over lots of time to the state of anonymity the world lives in today. Going back to my research topic of Post Secret - this is quite interesting how much of an effect an author's name may have on the viewer.

"The Death of the Author" was also an interesting short story. I find it strange to think that the author is merely the smallest aspect of the story that readers love to read and that the author continues to diminish in the spotlight. Yet again, it follows the theme our class has been discussing of authorship and anonymity. It seems that the only time an author is actually acknowledged during a novel is if that novel is in fact about the author them-self. The short story stated, "linguistically, the author is never anything more than the man who writes, just as I is no more than the man who says I: language knows a "subject," not a "person," end this subject, void outside of the very utterance which defines it, suffices to make language "work," that is, to exhaust it."

I think this is what literature lacks today, a strong author's name like in the past. In the past author's depended upon their names to sell their books. Names such as Fitzgerald and Jane Austen, well-known names that leave people thinking about the author AND their work, not one or the other as it seems to be in this day in age.