Though Roland Barthes has already
declared that the author is "dead" in a text, there are many theories
that believe authorship cannot be separated from any writing. Despite many
theoretical attacks on presence of the author in a literary creation in the
modern era, many other theories believe that author cannot help representing
him/herself in his/her writing; thus any writing is expression of its author
and his/her feelings, emotions, thoughts and ideas. These theories can be
collectively called "the theory of expressivity". Since these
theories originate and develop most in Romantic writings, they can also be
called "the Romantic theory of authorship" or "the Romantic-expressive
theory".
Obviously language cannot stand
independently; it operates in writing as a means to express or represent some
other ideas, thoughts or feelings. Without those hidden behind it, language
cannot be meaningful. And, those ideas and thoughts originate nowhere in the
outside world, but in human minds. One writes whatever originates in own mind.
Thus, literature is essentially an expression of its author's mind, "the
authorship". This is what the critic MH Abrams found in his observation of
the eighteenth century literature that "the work of literature is no
longer conceived as simply the representation of nature: instead what is
presented is as much the view of poet's own interior, his or her mind of
heart". Since Abrams's conception
has got intellectual support from philosopher Immanuel Kant and Romantic poets
including PB Shelley; it has remained as an influential theory for literary
criticism.
Presence of the author can be seen more
clearly in writings about confession where the author writes imagining no any
audience in front of him/her but him/herself. And this absence of audience
automatically allows and activates presence of the author. For John Stuart
Mill, a British philosopher, this is what separates 'poetry' (in larger sense,
literature) from 'eloquence': poetry doesn't suppose any audience thus is "overheard"
(not "heard" like an eloquence). Poetry is confession of self to
self, thus the self is always present.
For Romantic-expressive theory,
author is present in a text because s/he is the one to get inspired to imagine
and to compose the text. And, what inspires him/her to writing is also his/her
own interior (i.e. thoughts and feelings). There lie many contradictions in
writings of Romantic poets PB Shelley, William Wordsworth and ST Coleridge
about sources of imagination, qualities of spontaneity and immediacy and role
of author's will in imagination and composition. But they all agree that the
author has an important role in inspiration for, imagination and composition of
any literary text. Thus, the author is always actively present in his/her
literature and one cannot ignore the authorship while interpreting
literatures.
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