In her introduction to a special issue of the South Central Review on literary biography published in 2006, Linda Leavell writes, "Many would trace the disdain for literary biography—in both senses of the word “literary”—back through Roland Barthes’s “death of the author” to the New Critics’ division of text from context all the way to T. S. Eliot’s theory of impersonality. Critical theory of the past century has generally deemed an author’s life, personality, and intentions irrelevant to the text" (1). Leavell’s explanation of how critical theory of the twentieth century came to shape the current scholarly attitude towards literary biography establishes the genre’s status in an era of literary theory that is commonly characterized by the diminishment of the author as the source of meaning in a text, an era in which we remain. This characterization, however, overlooks the different ways that the theorists of the era displaced the author as the dominant figure in literary studies. This paper demonstrates how these different ways, despite whatever damage they might have done to the status of literary biography, actually benefit the study of the genre. Additionally, this paper argues that they not only comprise one side of Vladimir Nabokov’s contradictory views on his own authorship, which makes him an ideal subject for the study of authority over biographical representation, but also gave rise to new methodologies of literary biography, which are the methodologies of Nabokov’s biographers themselves. As a result, this paper concludes, “an author’s life, personality, and intentions” in turn have assumed new relevancy in literary studies. / text

Kurt Vonnegut Jr.’s literary style transforms from his first novel, "Player’s Piano" (1952), to his final book, "Timequake" (1997). Most of his novels adhere to a similar style – the narrators face a puzzling societal fault that is exaggerated in their dystopian societies, which hides Vonnegut’s humanistic leanings. This thesis, however, focuses on Vonnegut’s authorial identity, his use of the alter ego, and eventual entrance into the novel. His authorial role challenges the literary theory expressed in “The Death of the Author”(1967) by Roland Barthes and further discussed in “What is an Author”(1969) by Michel Foucault. Barthes explains an author metaphorically dies after his book is published and Foucault questions the author’s role and importance to his novel. Vonnegut juxtaposes fictional and nonfictional material whereby his character is paramount to his work. Therefore, Vonnegut challenges Barthes and Foucault’s notion that an author restricts his work; rather, Vonnegut’s identity empowers his novels.

Archaeological communication often seeks avenues to take in order to convey information to a public. One of these is video games, yet many articles do not delve into the effect that games have on people, taking for granted that people will learn something. This text aims to understand a group’s view on the past after it has gone through a transformative state such as a video game adaptation. With the web page Twitter offering a digital place of discussion, posts and comments will be analyzed in relation to the aim. The literary theory death of the author, interpretation and authority will help understand how the important aspect of accuracy is utilized amongst Twitter users. The findings conclude that accuracy is an important aspect of recreation amongst twitter users. It is to be employed in authentic portrayal of the past, meaning that the users seek to see a true representation, in contrast to a story taking liberties. Twitter users seek a definitive past, or a correct past, that should seek to emulate archaeological information in detail.

This thesis explores how the presence of authors on social media sites influences the way that fans perceive their work. The main goal of the analytical part was to determine, whether and primarily how the presence of an author on social media sites changes the relationships of readers with a complete (and therefore no longer open) text, as put forth by Roland Barthes in his The Death of the Author essay. The theoretical part of the thesis starts out by exploring the historical evolution of what an author is, differentiating between time periods and dominant theoretical approaches, with focus on postmodern authors such as Roland Barthes or Michel Foucault. The theory then focuses on the digital revolution, technological determinism and the rise of social media influence, including its impact on literary marketing and the concept of the celebrity author. Lastly, the theory summarizes studies that analyze the relationship between fan communities and current authors, specifically when it comes to the authors and their social media presence, focusing on the Harry Potter fan community and J. K. Rowling. The analysis itself is done through looking at semi-structured interviews conducted with fans of the Harry Potter saga. The analysis begins with focusing on the early relationships of fans with the saga,...

First published in 1989 in Spanish and then in 1992 in English, Laura Esquivel's Like Water for Chocolate is one of the best known Mexican literary works in the United States. Set against the backdrop of the Mexican Revolution, Esquivel's novel has inspired great diversity of critical analysis among critics and scholars. Based on the author's comment regarding her intention to tell entertaining stories, critic Jay Corwin warns against the search for hidden layers to her work. Using as a framework Barthes's notion of the "death of the author" as well as cultural theory's argument that "discourse writes through the author", this work unfolds a diverse array of discourses, such as that of feminism, patriarchy, and parody, that liberate Like Water for Chocolate from the despotism of a single authority controlling the truth of the text and show that the readers are capable of intervening in the work's meaning.

David Foster Wallace felt that literature was at a historical crossroad, and thatpostmodernism had passed the point which it could still be considered a'revolutionary' cultural phenomenon. He felt that the capitalistic machinery of TVand advertisement had absorbed the postmodernist techniques of pastiche,deconstruction and rejection of a distinction between high and low culturalmodels, to a point where there was no longer a difference between reality and itsown representation. Something that represented a problem for both youngnovelists and readers.This thesis analyses Infinite Jest as a response to this very problem, trying tounderstand in which way Wallace wanted to get over postmodernism, establishinga new kind of literature that highlights the artificiality of reality, by using differenttools than postmodernism. Cross-referencing media and literary studies, my thesisargues that Infinite Jest is a novel that emphasizes the fact that it is a construct. Ishow how the book acknowledges, and gives value to the subjectivity of everyhuman experience, but still stressing the idea that all the data that the reader isreceiving is and will always be heavily mediated information. Therefore, I showhow Wallace uses his characters as if they were human recording devices, creatingin this way a book that is some sort of hybrid between literature and TV.Furthermore, I explain how, by means of narrative devices (such as a disruptiveand incomplete plot, hundreds of endnotes), Wallace wanted to restore thecommunicative function of a text, making himself sure that the reader is invited toactively cooperate in the formation of the novel's meaning, ultimately meeting,and engaging into a dialogue with the author's consciousness in the novel'slanguage, breaking that state of self-consciousness and isolation into which thereader has been condemned by postmodernism and capitalism. Showing that“There's more to life than sitting there simply interfacing”1 David Foster Wallace; Infinite Jest; media studies; Postmodernism; Image-fiction Television; intermediality; transmediality; narratology; heteroglossia. 1 David F. Wallce, Infinite Jest, (Back Bay Books 2016), p. 14.

The theme Point of View: David Lynch and intertextuality of this master thesis deals with the work of American film director David Lynch, which we view in terms of intertextuality. The aim is to show how David Lynch manipulates with intertextuality in his films Wild at Heart and Lost Highway and what other means he uses to achieve the specific atmosphere of his films. We say that it is impossible to unambiguously interpret Lynch's work and we will try to show that every of various points of view can be correct.

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The thesis argues that there is a pressure on the authorship concept since the emergence of collections of facts, anthologies, and adaptations of pre-existing works. These works were the reason that Judges offered various interpretations to authorship and originality, as some Judges lessened the requirement of originality to obtain copyrightability for these works and some raised it. This led to make the protection granted by copyright law to intellectual works vague and uncertain. This became apparent in conflicts in courts decisions on copyright subsistence in works. This subsequently led to confusion around the criteria of interpretation that should be adopted and the theory or justification that copyright law is founded upon. The thesis argues that this vagueness and uncertainty is related not to the authorship concept but to the failure of law to adapt to two separate natures of works, one including authorial, mental and personal contribution and the other only including manually skilful contribution. Those two kinds cannot be subject to same principles or justifications of protection. The inexistence of such differentiation in doctrine, judiciary and legislation led to the distortion of authorship and originality concepts in the attempts to reduce their interpretation to suit those works that actually miss authorial contribution. Alternatively, whole attention was paid to granting ownership to right holders of these works, which led to the prevalence of the ownership concept as being a necessity for the marketability of cultural works over the authorship concept. The thesis finds that this difference in nature can be uncovered by settling on a differentiation between two kinds of skills that are used in creating works: the mental skills, which are authorial skills, on the one side, and manual skills, which are the collecting, combining, performing or executing skills, on the other. Accordingly, this thesis proposes a categorisation of works, that of ‘high, low and non-authorship’ works, which relies on the nature of the works and elements of authorship in the work. The thesis finds that every category of works needs a separate criterion that can suit its nature and constituent authorship elements; also, the protection needs to be graded depending on the level of authorship in the work. This thesis suggests that such a legal proposition be implemented digitally in what it calls the ‘Digital Cultural National Gate’, which decides the category the work should belong to and the correspondent protection, and that through some questionnaires on the work the authorship elements can be recognised.

Mémoire numérisé par la Division de la gestion de documents et des archives de l'Université de Montréal.