“The progress of an artist is a continual self-sacrifice, a continual extinction of
personality”(T.S. Eliot).
With reference to at least two texts studied on this module, discuss the role of
the author in the production of a text’s meaning.
The production of a text’s meaning is a convoluted and contentious process, with the
author’s role being one of the more litigious aspects of such a process. The most coherent
and rational argument focuses on the author having an inconsequential and misleading role
in the production of meaning within his art. T.S. Eliot’s essay, Tradition and the Individual
Talent, centres around the point that analysis and criticism of literature should be exactly
that. By labelling the process a “self sacrifice”(Page 39), Eliot identifies that the artist is
fully aware, if not intending, his art to be devoid of himself. He goes on to emphasise and
explore the significance and importance of the poem, rather than the poet; arguing that the
author’s role in the text’s meaning is inconsequential, leaving room for the reader to take the
position of greatest significance. Such a point is taken to a further degree by Roland Barthes
in his essay, The Death of the Author. He presents the idea that the poet or author is not only
inconsequential, but ‘dead’. Eliot’s use of “extinction of personality”(39) is interestingly not
as rhetorically severe as Barthes’ “Death of the Author”(Page 1322). Therefore Eliot is
discussing not the insignificance of authorship in its entirety, but is unequivocal on the
inconsequentiality of the author as an individual contributor. Barthes sees authorship as
merely a tool to communicate the views and influences of the culture that the writer exists
in; a machine rather than a “‘confiding’”(1322) voice, relaying the cultural thoughts of his
era, imposed by the limitations of language. The repetition of “continual”(39) is also
fascinating, so much as it highlights the artistic process as being unoriginal; no art is created
without this “self sacrifice” and “extinction”(39). Consequentially, the author’s role in a
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text’s meaning is non-existent, with attempts to create an existence limiting potential
perceptions.
As an individual, the author is unable to impact upon the meaning of a text due to the
prevention of originality of expression caused by the limiting nature of language. Barthes
believed text to be “a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them
original, blend and clash”(1322), meaning he saw the use of language to convey ideas as not
only restrictive, but in line with Eliot’s theory of “self-sacrifice”(39). Once language
becomes involved, the author’s identity and personality is lost in the multitude of voices
which contribute to language; leaving the text with not one author, but many. Furthermore,
the author is unable to impart original meaning as he is “never more than the instance
writing”(Barthes, 1323), merely relaying ideas which have been imposed on him due to
cultural surroundings. Therefore, the author is incapable of communicating his true
meaning, as language “is only a medium and not a personality, in which impressions and
experiences combine in peculiar and unexpected ways”(Eliot 41) and so not a course by
which untainted intentions can be conveyed. Terry Eagleton stating that, “I still need to use
signs when I look into my mind” and therefore can “never experience any 'full communion'
with myself”(112), summarises how language constrains and kills the author’s originality.
The author’s role is inescapably restricted by the complicated nature of language and how it
intrinsically embeds an author’s intentions with the society he operates within. It is
impossible to convey untainted thought, even to oneself, as to do so would involve the
employment of language, an employment which adulterates thought and creates a text
devoid of that which the author wanted to communicate. Language is a limitation that’s
parameters are dictated by the age the writer operates in. So while the artist may progress
with clear intentions and ideas for what should be his text’s meaning; in actual fact the
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intention is not his at all. For society has already imposed itself upon the author, making his
purposes those of society and the meanings drawn from the text a matter of cultural and
historical, rather than personal, significance. Consequentially, the author is unable to
influence a text’s meaning due to language deconstructing original intentions to the extent
that meaning becomes a reflection of age, and authorship an era-wide collaboration.
In Tradition and the Individual Talent, Eliot constructs a particularly interesting
focus on the idea of ‘tradition’. In doing so he establishes and justifies a link between the
author and his predecessors of the artistic process. It therefore becomes difficult to argue
that the author is insignificant as an individual, when the revealing of his deceased
colleagues is seemingly such a crucial part in the process of extracting meaning from text.
For Eliot, the reader’s interpretation of the author is in fact “the appreciation of his relation
to the dead poets and artists”(Eliot 37). He is therefore arguing that it is crucial to assess the
configuration of the artistic world as a consequence of new writing; that it is important how
the author’s work fits in with the dead poets. This gives a role to the poet and encourages an
almost contextual analysis. Eliot’s delving into the dead poets does exactly what he intends
criticism not to do: focus on the poet rather than the poem. Barthes’ analysis is far more
consistent, labelling text as “a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of
culture”(1324). Here, Barthes emphasises how text and meaning bears no relation to
individuals but to a mass of voices, successfully justifying a contrary viewpoint to Eliot’s
opinion that the poet maintains a significant role. Furthermore, this idea of
“culture”(Barthes, 1324) is not only relevant in terms of the era of the art’s formation, but
those which precede and even succeed it, with Barthes notably choosing to focus on the
impact of society rather than individuals. Therefore, Eliot argues the role of the author is to
place his work among his fellows, so as to allow its analysis in consideration of their work.
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While this does not contradict his “extinction of personality”(39), it does give the author a
self and the art a context; only serving to draw focus away from the text, and significance
from the reader. Such a focus is contextualising; exactly the focus on the author which leads
to “close[ing] the writing”(Barthes, 1325). Consequentially, Barthes’ assertion that “every
text is eternally written here and now” is in disagreement with Eliot’s idea of the role of
tradition, but presents a more logical argument in terms of the role of the reader and text in
producing meaning. To give the poem context and relate the poet to other authors is to give
him life and thus a role in the production of meaning, and so Eliot’s assertion that the poem
should be contextualised by a comparison “in which two things are measured by each
other”(38) is in deep contradiction to the strong, coherent argument of a ‘dead’ author being
wholly separate from his art.
The author’s role is, to use Barthesian language, a myth. To both Eliot and Barthes it
is a means of analysis made notably significant by its common use, yet inconsequential
results, owing to its focus on the writer rather than the most significant party in the
relationship that conducts the artistic process and establishment of meaning; the reader. On
him, “without history, biography, psychology”(Barthes 1325); is where the “multiplicity” of
writing is focused, while to deconstruct the significance of the writer is to limit analysis in
favour of forcing a simple explanation which does not exist. To this extent, the role of the
author can be labelled as impacting the interpretation of a text’s meaning in the sense that it
detracts from a more practical and significant mode of analysis and criticism, attracting
unsubstantiated conclusions, but having no impact on the actual production of meaning.
“The image of literature to be found in ordinary culture is tyrannically centred on the
author”(Barthes 1322); provides an insight into Barthes’ disdain for analysis centred around
the author. The use of “Tyrannically”(1322) in particular shows he picks up on how society
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has come to force the significance of authorship onto criticism, even if it is totally irrelevant
and unjustifiable in the sense that criticism is far more complicated and artistic than the
scientific authorial deconstruction Barthes is alluding to. As art is not “the voice of a single
person”(Barthes, 1322), it is not permissible to base an analysis upon an individual, instead
“honest” and “sensitive” judgements are drawn from the realm of not “the poet but...the
poetry”(Eliot 39). This furthers the idea that it is how the art is “disentangled” by the reader
which is significant and produces meaning, as “nothing [can be] deciphered”(Barthes) in the
sense that a definitive conclusion cannot be drawn. Therefore, the author’s role is consigned
to an insignificance in terms of production of meaning. Taking far greater precedence is the
reader and how he interprets and judges the “multiplicity”(Barthes, 1325) which is focused
upon him.
Both Barthes and Eliot seek to dispel the clear falsehood that writing is in some sense
a conversation between reader and author. Eliot speaks of an “extinction of personality”(39)
in order to communicate how he sees the process of writing to divorce the author’s
individuality and emotional state from his own work. As “great poetry may be made without
the direct use of any emotion whatever”(Eliot 40), the production of meaning is clearly a
task assigned to the reader, rather than a product deposited in the text by the writer, to be
uncovered upon reading. Barthes believed “to write is, through a prerequisite
impersonality”(1323), supporting the argument that upon articulating thought, the author
loses himself in the vast number of voices that make up language. Consequentially, the
process of writing is one of “the hand, [being] cut off from any voice”(Barthes, 1324) and
the author becoming a machine, relaying ideas imposed upon him, as his own ideas are not
his own but a collaboration of the many voices which make up the culture which he is
inescapably defined by. The role of the author is therefore limited to the almost mechanical
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repetition and arrangement of ideas of cultural significance chronological classification,
leaving the production of meaning in the hands of culture and the reader, as it is he who
interprets these ideas to create meaning. The author’s “only power is to mix
readings”(Barthes, 1324), to construct a text that exists in its own artistic dimension,
possessing a personality distinctly separate from that of its creator. If “writing is where all
identity is lost”(Barthes, 1322), then the writer’s is the first to go; one personality drowned
out by the magnitude of what contributes to art’s creation.
In conclusion, the role of the author is unequivocally overshadowed in the process of
the production of meaning by both the nature of the language which he writes in and the
supreme role of the reader. It is impossible for the author to contribute to the production of
meaning due to the fact that language prevents a “‘full communion’”(Eagleton, 112) with
oneself. If it is impossible for the writer to create originality of thought, it is equally
unjustifiable to suggest a reader can pick up on that abstract originality through language.
Authorship is not a process of one man “‘confiding’”(1322) in another, but rather a reader
trying to make sense of what is effectively a “multitude of writing”(Barthes, 1325) with a
variety of authors. It is this making sense of art which produces meaning; an action taken up
by the reader, a deconstruction and an exploration, rather than a methodological
categorisation based on comparison and contextualising. To write is a “a continual
extinction of personality”(Eliot, 39), a replacing of one’s own thoughts with those of
cultures, eras and generations both past and present. The meaning of a text comes from what
is written down, not from who does the writing. The search for an explanation of a
text(Barthes 1325) serves only to limit a perception and deprive an analysis which “utterly
transforms”(Barthes, 1324) upon the consideration of the author’s “self-sacrifice”(39); a
sacrifice that brings to the forefront his art at the expense of himself.
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