Author
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
An author is defined both as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and as "one who sets forth written statements" in the Oxford English Dictionary (1). The first entry suggests that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. The second entry goes on to clarify that, when using the term author, the "anything" which is created is most usually associated with written work.
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[edit] Author of a written work
[edit] Legal significance
In copyright law, there is necessarily little flexibility as to what constitutes authorship. The United States Copyright Office defines copyright as "a form of protection provided by the laws of the United States (title 17, U.S. Code) to authors of "original works of authorship" (2). Holding the title of "author" over any "literary, dramatic, musical, artistic, [or] certain other intellectual works" gives this person, the owner of the copyright, exclusive right to do or authorize any production or distribution of their work.
[edit] Literary significance
In literary theory, critics find complications in the term "author" beyond what constitutes authorship in a legal setting. In the wake of postmodern literature, critics such as Roland Barthes and Michel Foucault have examined the role and relevance of authorship to the meaning or interpretation of a text.
Barthes challenges the idea that a text can be attributed to any single author. He attests, in his essay "Death of the Author" (1968), that "it is language which speaks, not the author" (3). The words and language of a text itself determine and expose meaning for Barthes, and not someone possessing legal responsibility for the process of its production. Every line of written text is a mere reflection of references from any of a multitude of traditions, or, as Barthes puts it, "the text is a tissue of quotations drawn from the innumerable centres of culture"; it is never original (3). With this, the perspective of the author is removed from the text, and the limits formerly imposed by the idea of one authorial voice, one ultimate and universal meaning, are destroyed. The explanation and meaning of a work does not have to be sought in the one who produced it, "as if it were always in the end, through the more or less transparent allegory of the fiction, the voice of a single person, the author 'confiding' in us" (3). The psyche, culture, fanaticism of an author can be disregarded when interpreting a text, because the words are rich enough themselves with all of the traditions of language. To expose meanings in a written work without appealing to the celebrity of an author, their tastes, passions, vices, is, to Barthes, to allow language to speak, rather than author.
Michel Foucault argues in his famous essay "What is an author?" (1969), that all authors are writers, but not all writers are authors. He states that "a private letter may have a signer--it does not have an author" (4). For a reader to assign the title of author upon any written work is to attribute certain standards upon the text which, for Foucault, are working in conjunction with the idea of "the author function" (4). Foucault's author function is the idea that an author exists only as a function of a written work, a part of its structure, but not necessarily part of the interpretive process. The author's name "indicates the status of the discourse within a society and culture", and at one time was used as an anchor for interpreting a text, a practice which Barthes would argue is not a particularly relevant or valid endeavor (4).
Expanding upon Foucault's position, Alexander Nahamas writes that Foucault suggests "an author [...] is whoever can be understood to have produced a particular text as we interpret it", not necessarily who penned the text (5). It is this distinction between producing a written work and producing the interpretation or meaning in a written work that both Barthes and Foucault are interested in. Foucault warns of the risks of keeping the author's name in mind during interpretation, because it could affect the value and meaning with which one handles an interpretation.
Literary critics Barthes and Foucault suggest that readers should not rely on or look for the notion of one overarching voice when interpreting a written work, because of the complications inherent with a writer's title of "author." They warn of the dangers interpretations could suffer from when associating the subject of inherently meaningful words and language with the personality of one authorial voice. Instead, readers should allow a text to be interpreted in terms of the language as "author."
[edit] Relationship between author and publisher
A percentage calculated on a wholesale or a retail price and or a fixed amount on each book sold. Publishers, at times, reduced the risk of this type of arrangement, by agreeing only to pay this after a certain amount of copies had sold. In Canada this practice occurred during the 1890s, but was not commonplace until the 1920s.
- Commissioned: Publishers made publication arrangements, and authors covered all expenses (today the practice of authors paying for their publications is often called vanity publishing, and is looked down upon by many publishers, even though it may have been a common and accepted practice in the past). Publishers would receive a percentage on the sale of every copy of a book, and the author would receive the rest of the money made.
[edit] See also
- Novelist
- Writer
- Lists of authors
- Lists of poets
- List of novelists
- Professional writing
- Academic authorship
[edit] References
(1) "Author." The Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd ed. 1989.
(2) "Copyright Office Basics." U.S. Copyright Office. July 2006. http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ1.html.
(3) Roland Barthes, "The Death of the Author", from Image, Music, Text (1977)
(4) Michel Foucault, "What is an Author?", in Josui. V. Harari, Textual Strategies (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell, 1979)
(5) Hix, H. L. Morte d'Author: An Autopsy. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1990.
(6) Alexander Nehamas, "What An Author Is", The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 83, No. 11, Eighty-Third Annual Meeting American Philosophical Association, Eastern Division. (Nov., 1986), pp. 685-691
[edit] External links
