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Teachers' Resource Web Study Questions on Roland Barthes Roland Barthes, "Death of the Author" and Other
Essays "The Death of the Author" (1968) 1. What is the difference between an author and a "scriptor"? Between an individual and a "subject"? Between "literature" and "text"? 2. What is the relationship between scriptor and text? 3. What is a "text" made of? How does Barthes redefine what it means to be a writer and a reader? 4. Why is the "death of the author" the "birth of the reader"? 5. Why is classical, biography-based criticism hypocritical, according to Barthes? How does it -- and even formalism -- work to enhance the power of the author? 6. In what sense do Barthes' comments about texts and how to read them move beyond structuralism? How does his model of language here run counter to the goals of structuralist analysis? *Edition: The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 1st. edition. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. New York: Norton, 2001. "From Work to Text" (1971) 1. To what extent can an ancient of pre-modern work be read as "text"? What difficulty lies in the way of achieving this kind of reading when it comes to older writings? (See 1471, 1475.) What might Walter Benjamin say about the notion that one can to some extent read an older work as text? Further, what might Benjamin say about the potential that Barthes sees in textuality as a new mode of experience? 2. Why, according to Barthes on 1471, can't the text be "held in the hand" or classified firmly as belonging to a particular genre? How does a text subvert such attempts to contain its meaning and classify its content? 3. On 1472 top, Barthes comments on two models of interpretation attached to the concept of the "work." What implications do you find in those comments for traditional models of culture-transmission and education? (Think of your own experience with education -- what does your course catalog say about the university's goals, your major's goals, etc.?) How do "texts" render such ways of educating and passing on culture untenable? 4. Throughout the essay, but especially on 1472 middle, what fundamental insight into the way language works does Barthes offer? 5. On 1473, why isn't the realm of intertextuality the same thing as the "origin" or source of the work? Also, what is the "myth of filiation"? 6. How do the metaphor of the text and the metaphor of the work differ? 7. On 1474, in what sense is reading a "text" a more democratic experience than reading a "work"? Explain Barthes' comments about the traditional relationship between reading and writing at a societal level -- which activity is more important in a modern bourgeois or market-based society, and what does the privileging of one activity over another imply about the goals of bourgeois society? 8. On 1475, what new kind of reader does a "text" call for, as opposed to the reader of a "work"? To what extent does Barthes efface the distinction between reader and writer, and why might he want to do that? *Edition: The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 1st. edition. Ed. Vincent B. Leitch et al. New York: Norton, 2001. "The World of Wrestling" from Mythologies. (1957) 1) Throughout his essay, Barthes describes how spectators interpret what they see going on in the ring. So how do they interpret what they see? To respond, choose some of the most interesting statements Barthes makes about audience expectations and responses. What picture of the audience as "readers" emerges? 2) What seems to be Barthes' attitude toward the kind of interpretation in which the audience of wrestling matches engages? That is, what are the main characteristics of the sign system that he calls the "spectacle of wrestling," and what sense do you get of Barthes' stance concerning this system? 3) What is his attitude toward the wrestlers themselves? How does he describe the wrestler's function and what does he have to say about how well this performer carries it out? Why is the wrestler's body so important to the success of the spectacle? 4) Why might it be significant that the public "condemns artifice" even as it watches a wrestling match that Barthes calls a "spectacle of excess" in which appearances (not real-life suffering) matter? *Barthes, Roland. Mythologies. Trans. Annette Lavers. New York: Hill and Wang, 1972. 15-25. (The original text was published in 1957.) Study Questions on Barthes' "The Structuralist Activity" (1964) 1) What is the goal of structuralism? What is the value in pursuing that goal, and who benefits from its pursuit? 2) How does Barthes employ the term "imitation" (mimesis, simulacrum, etc.)? What stages does this process of simulacrum-making follow? 3) In what sense is the critic or structuralist of any sort creative? How does Barthes treat the traditional distinction between critics and artists? 4) What is structuralism not? Follow out the instances in which Barthes describes the activity of structuralism by way of the negative. 5) How would you say structuralist assumptions about interpretation differ from those of New Critical formalists like Cleanth Brooks? What might Barthes say, for example, about Brooks' assumption that there is a "poetic language" (as opposed to the denotative language of science and the everyday world) or that a work of art has its own organic "being," almost like a living thing? 6) Why is it wrong, according to Barthes, to say that structuralists ignore history and concentrate too much on the synchronic? *Edition: Critical Theory Since Plato, Revised edition. Ed. Hazard Adams. New York: Harcourt, 1992. 1128-30. Study Questions on Barthes' "What is Criticism?" (1964) 1) What is "good conscience" or "bad faith"? (See pg. 282) 2) What is the critic's responsibility toward a given text or author—say, Proust? 3) In what sense is Barthes' essay a defense of criticism? What is the basis of his defense? Choose what you think are the most significant statements he makes about the role and value of criticism. *Edition: Contemporary Literary Criticism: Literary and Cultural Studies, 4th. edition. Eds. Robert Con Davis and Ronald Schleifer. New York: Longman, 1998. 280-83. Study Questions on Barthes' "The Death of the Author" (1968) 1) What is the difference between an author and a "scriptor"? Between an individual and a "subject"? Between "literature" and "text"? The shift in terms is important here. 2) What is the relation between scriptor and text? 3) What is a "text" made of? 4) Why is the "death of the author" the "birth of the reader"? Why is classical, biography-based criticism hypocritical, according to Barthes? 5) In what sense do Barthes' comments about texts and how to read them move somewhat beyond his earlier brand of structuralism, or perhaps even constitute a break with that earlier brand? *Edition: Critical Theory Since Plato, Revised edition. Ed. Hazard Adams. New York: Harcourt, 1992. 1130-33. |