The Unified Structure of Theory and Literature In his famous essay, “The Death of the Author,” Roland Barthes examines the relationship between an author and their work. His central idea maintains that the reader is the determiner of meaning in a text through the reading of it as an active process, rather than the reader finding a hidden meaning that the author placed in the text to be deciphered. Barthes describes the writer as a "scriptor" or someone who writes simply to engage in the act of writing, but not in the creation of meaning (52). For Barthes, the reader determines the meaning of the text, and the author or writer is simply a vessel who writes the words in the text. The language in the text is “performative;” it performs for the reader who creates meaning out of it that is …show more content…
For example, a student may read Melville’s Benito Cereno (1855) without any knowledge of Colonialism and Nativism in American history and may interpret the text as an endorsement of slavery and racism. Conversely, the professor may take the aforementioned historical context of American Culture and apply those ideas to their interpretation (a consensus among Melville Scholars) that Melville was using the ambiguous nature of the story to show that racism and slavery are problems inherent in the American experience that must be acknowledged. With Barthes ideas applied here, the student is no less valid in interpreting Melville than the Professor, but the Professor would still find the student guilty of misinterpreting Benito Cereno due to the lack of historical context in their argument which is not within the academic consensus. That is not to say that Barthes meant that anyone's interpretation is valid merely because they read a text and created meaning from it, but he failed to account for the problems that arise in a classroom setting when a work is free of the Author's
The article ‘What Writing Is,’ narrated by Stephen King, endorses his personal perspective on writing and the vast passion it holds in his heart and mind. By comparing writing to telepathy, King emphasizes that writing is the epitome of a euphoric sense in terms of freedom and jubilance. Throughout this excerpt, King implies how writing is a part of life that should be centralized and embraced. Writing about telepathy, King proposes that we (the readers) are “downstream on the time-line.” We are in this present moment and as he composes from a juncture in the past, he projects images into our minds through the words he records. The fact that he brings telepathy in as an analogy to the significance of writing conveys his message that we may be reading anywhere or anytime; however, we can connect to each other’s minds despite the far distance.
Authors use various styles of writing to appeal to different types of audiences. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair and “The Most Dangerous Job” by Eric Schlosser both utilize ethos, pathos, and logos writing styles to convince the audience of their ideals. An author uses ethos in writing to show his/her credentials and explain why he/she is credible. Pathos appeals to an audience’s emotions and makes the audience feel sympathy or pity. The author draws feelings out of the audience and compels the audience to feel what the author wishes them to feel. Logos uses facts, statistics, historical and literal analogies, and quotes from authorities on a subject to convince the audience with logic or reason. Upton Sinclair and Eric Schlosser have the goal of exposing the corruption in the meatpacking industry, but the authors develop their arguments through similar and contrasting approaches.
Writing is a powerful tool for communication and connection. As an extension and expression of the mind, writing is as much about the mental processes of the author as it is about the final marks laid to paper. As we write, we hold in mind our own thoughts on the work, anticipate the reader’s thoughts, and think both in concrete and abstract ways in order to accomplish the task at hand. Whether an academic research paper, a novel, or text message to friends, writing seeks to engage, persuade, or impress concepts upon an audience. Like language and other art forms in general, the practice of writing is ever-evolving and is subject to cultural and contextual influence, expectations, and conventions. Each writer holds a theory
To create a piece of fabric, small textile fibers are crisscrossed, stitched, and sewn together. If unraveled, the individual fibers remain, but as a whole, they function collectively to make a larger and more significant piece. This is known as weaving, and it is argued by some literary researchers that this process of weaving can be figuratively applied to procedures of writing by way of intertextuality―the composition theory that claims all texts refer to other texts. From this assertion, James E. Porter’s “Intertextuality and the Discourse Community,” argues originality is nearly impossible to achieve, as no thought originates without influence from other sources; however, after examining the essays “All Writing is Autobiography” by Donald
Mike Bunn in “How to Read Like a Writer” begins with a revelation: that writing is a process in which individual words are specifically chosen and strung together in a way that impacts the reader. With this in mind, Bunn encourages his students to read like a writer. Reading like a writer is different from just appreciating the message. Bunn compares reading like a writer to an architect studying a constructed building. The goal of reading, then, is for students to examine how a piece was constructed with the purpose of recreating a similar effect in their own writing. Bunn establishes the fact that students are made to read so they can learn to write before showing students how to go about this. Before reading, the context should be evaluated, he
"Reading a text as pure description of an object, and undertaken to mechanically memorize the discrimination, it is neither real reading nor does it result in the knowledge of the object to which the text refers" (Freire 284). When a teacher gives a reading assignment, the students that read to memorize the text likely do not gain the significance of what that literary work contextually attempted to deliver, nor is it necessarily understood by the reader. If a student was really taught the significance and meaning of the text instead of mechanically memorizing it, the student should have better outcomes both with gaining the insight of the assignment and the memorization of key points. Mechanistically
Each Author is unique they write about many different pieces, but they all have this set of principles they go by. Every author thinks about these four main concepts when they write and they are audience, genre, context, purpose. They first think about who will want to read their work so try to establish an audience. The Author next has to determine what their writing will be. They have to decide whether it's science fiction or any other, but they understand it important tell the genre of the work. Authors cannot be all over the place they are focused on one specific tone. Next authors contemplate why to write at all there must be a reason that is true, they all written for a purpose each author has one. Authors often write in troubling times for them like
Orhan Pamuk once said, “The writer's secret is not inspiration - for it is never clear where it comes from - it is his stubbornness, his patience.” The writer’s general purpose is to determine the expertise that he wants to apply in his writing. The writer’s purpose and organization of writing is to persuade, entertain, inform, and draws the reader’s attention to the information. In the same way, the readers’ goals are reading the content, of seeking information, and increasing knowledge through reading. In these three articles, the authors have specific purpose and discipline the specific futures, and the reader's goal is to collect the noteworthy information. The first article, “The Nature of
In the process of writing, regardless of the form it takes, thesis or narrative for example, the purpose of the piece has several lenses that shape how the reader perceives the material. Of the less important lenses that shape the piece, mood, word choice, and rhetoric are only a few. These elements of the work, while minimal in a relative sense, accomplish the same as other, more important components, they influence how the reader perceives the material, how it is understood. If one is to effectively convey the message of the piece, one must first look at how the any reader perceives any text. This idea of how the reader perceives is a culmination of all the devices employed by the author. The idea is for the author to craft an aggregate
The desire to attain a pensive repercussion to readers through the work of literature is limned in Richard Wilbur's, The Writer. The poem follows the progression and contemplation of a father’s daughter who is aimed to write a story in the peace and serenity of her home. As he observes her, he finds that she types at unequal rates, breaking at certain intervals sometimes puzzled to regain her thoughts. “Young as she is, the stuff / Of her life is a great cargo, and some of it heavy: / I wish her a lucky passage.” The father believes that her message is to be of significance and that she should not fret when stuck in a state of absence. He only desires the best for his daughter and acknowledges that despite the length of time needed, one should
In this article, Bartholomae talks about writers and how they need “invent the university” by imitating the particular language their readers use. He makes strong points on how and why writers need to do this. You must do it by connecting your own point of few to the view of your audience, who is reading your work.
When writing any document, the author must understand their audience before writing anything (Vandermey, 2012). Making sure my content has the attention of the reader is essential for any writer and understanding the process to write interesting material is the author’s goal (Emery, 2014). While all authors have fear and apprehensions about writing, their passion usually comes out on top when authoring a document or paper. My writing style creates fears, however, my passion to communicate properly with my audience drives my overall writing style.
In the fourth section in the essay Richard is speaking of Rene Descartes’s “Meditations on the first philosophy.” Rene starts with another bleak outlook on writing. He asks the question “why bother reading and writing when the world is so obviously going to
In order to achieve a deeper understanding of what this quote really means, an analysis of the context of the quote must be established. This quote coincides with Barthes’ philosophy during his transition from structuralism to post-structuralism. In 1968, Barthes wrote an impactful essay, Death of the Author. In this essay, he explored a radically different viewpoint of authorship than what was popular at the time. According to his viewpoint, a work of literature was not finished when published by its’ author, he wouldn’t even consider it a complete work. According to him, “to give a text an author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing” (Barthes 5). Barthes did
According to Iser, any literary text which is a product of the Writer’s intentional acts part-ly controls the response of a reader; however, this includes an abundance of gaps. In order to comprehend more clearly, the reader must take action in active participation in attempting to cre-atively fill these gaps with the given information of the test put before him; Thereby allowing the Reader and the text to undergo a transactional process.