The death of the author is Roland Barthes’s argument that a writer’s intention cannot settle the meaning of a text once and for all. Writing draws on voices and conventions that readers can bring together in different ways.
Imagine a novel in which a character describes a town as “respectable.” The word could express pride, or it could repeat a phrase the novel quietly mocks. A reader can test those possibilities against who says it, where it recurs and what the novel shows about the town. The author’s stated intention would be one piece of evidence.
For Barthes’s example from Balzac and his account of the reader, see the full summary of The Death of the Author.
Further reading · Barthes and Foucault on Authorship · Influence and Critique
