Author

For other uses, see Author (disambiguation).

An author is the person who creates a written work, such as a book, story, article or the like. This can be short or long, fiction or nonfiction, poetry or prose, technical or literature. Since capitalism, the author also needs to do it for payment (as a service).

Role in critical theory

One key issue in literary theory is the relationship between the meaning of a literary text and its author's conscious intent.

• The phrase "Death of the Author" was popularized by Roland Barthes in his 1968 essay with the same name. It is used to convey the idea that texts have meaning and an independent existence outside that intended by the author, depending on the context and reader.

• The death of the author is in self-conscious opposition to the New Criticism, a literary critical movement popular in England and America in the first half of the 20th century. According to this movement, the author's intent is assumed to be quite clear to the author and it becomes the critic's task to understand this intent.

See also

• novelist
• writer
• Lists of authors
• Lists of poets
• List of novelists