From "Death" To "Return":a Study Of Roland Barthes’ Theory Of The Authorial Subject

Roland Barthes is a famous French literary theorist and one of the key figures in modern literary and cultural theory.Most academic discussions on Roland Barthes’ view of authorship have focused on the scope of "the death of the author," but Barthes’ view of authorship has a richer content.This article attempts to take the subject as the starting point,to examine the concept of the "author subject" in different textual contexts through three stages of Barthes’ academic career,to study the evolution of Barthes’ view of the authorial subject,to further explain the connotation of Barthes’ view of the authorial subject,and to reflect on the theory of the authorial subject.Specifically,the text is divided into four major chapters.In the first chapter,we explore the background of the theory of the authorial subject.It compares the evolution of the subject from central to centrifugal in the modern era to the beginning of the 20 th century,and provides an overview of the evolution of the authorial subject,laying the foundation for a deeper understanding of Roland Barthes’ s connotation of the authorial subject.In the second chapter,the idea of the "death of the author" in Roland Barthes’ view of the authorial subject is elaborated.The main texts are Writing Degree Zero(1953),Mythologies(1957),An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative(1966),and The Death of the Author(1967).We analyze the idea of "death of the author" in the theory of "author subject" based on a close reading and interpretation of the text.Roland Barthes’ s discussion of the "death of the author" begins with Writing Degree Zero.Following the utopian ideal of a writing subject that is not alienated by ideology,Barthes took "zero degree" as a breakthrough and put forward the demand for the withdrawal of the author subject.Pursuing the ideal of the writing subject of "zero degrees," Barthes turned to semiotics to reveal the operation mechanism of myth,and on this basis deconstructed the myth of literature and the myth of the author.Thereafter,Barthes incorporated semiotics into the structuralist paradigm and "kills" the author as a source of meaning in his An Introduction to the Structural Analysis of Narrative.In The Death of the Author,Barthes pronounced the "death" of the authorial subject in many ways,liberating the reader and the text from an interpretive perspective.In the third chapter,the idea of "return of the author" in Roland Barthes’ s view of the authorial subject is elaborated.Sade,Fourier,Loyola(1971),The Pleasure of the Text(1973),Lovers Whispers(1975),How to Live Together(1977),La Chambre Claire(1979),The Preparation of the Novel(1978-1980)as the main texts,we examine Roland Barthes’ s idea of the authorial subject in the post-structuralist period.In the post-structuralist period,Barthes desired a lowercase,pluralistic subject.In the course of Barthes’ s exploration of the body subject,the lover subject,cohabitation subject,and the emotion subject,we can see the multiple existence patterns of the subject.In the fourth chapter,we reflect on Barthes’ s theory of "author subject" consisted in the context of the times.From the "death of the author" to the "return of the author",from the exclusion of the subject to the unity of writing and the self,this is a clear evidence of the difficulty of eliminating subjectivity,and also provides useful ideas and theoretical support for the construction of authorship theory nowadays.