Word.ws English Dictionary

death of the author

death of the author noun: a technique of literary analysis that disregards authorial intent, focusing only on the text.

Noun

death of the author (uncountable)

  1. A technique of literary analysis that disregards authorial intent, focusing only on the text.

Origin of death of the author

Calque of French la mort de l'auteur, the title of a 1967 essay by the French literary critic and theorist Roland Barthes (1915–1980).

Questions about death of the author

What does death of the author mean?
Death of the author means a technique of literary analysis that disregards authorial intent, focusing only on the text.
What part of speech is death of the author?
Death of the author is a noun.

Words near death of the author in the dictionary

  1. death note
  2. death notes
  3. death notification
  4. death notifications
  5. death of despair
  6. death of the author
  7. death on
  8. death panel
  9. death panels
  10. death penalties
  11. death penalty

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: death of the author (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “death of the author.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/death_of_the_author. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.