The Death of the Author is a great piece of literary criticism

it has always seemed obvious to us that an author is a person who is responsible for a particular piece of work a writer, for example, would probably claim that he or she who the book, and therefore they were the author barth theorises that the whole notion of authorship needs to be rethought he argues that when a text is created, it is a multi-faceted manifestation of different cultures, ideas, languages, beliefs, theologies, philosophies etc so when a writer puts their pen to paper they believe that the ideas are their own, and when the book is finalised they claim to be the author of their creation the problem is that the self-proclaimed author has borrowed everything from previously existing texts that he or she has become aware of an example is, every word a writer has used is already in existence; these words on their own already have meaning derived from the earlier cultures and human expression so when we evaluate texts we tend to focus on the author, their ideas, methods, beliefs and ideologies however, Barthes explains none of the author's ideas are their own and probably belonged to no one in particular that being said, if it is not the author we should be looking towards to understand our art, then where should we turn? if the author is irrelevant, what gives such power to the text, what allows it to have such incredible purpose when we read or gaze upon it? Barthes believes we should look inside ourselves for the ultimate author we author the world; art, film, photography etc through our own interpretations and belief systems we ourselves ultimately decide what a text means, therefore creating new ideas and meanings in our mind the meaning of a text can only exist when interpreted, and anything can be interpreted in an infinite amount of ways