Authorship
June 17th, 2009
Mirjam Horn: Authorship as a Key Issue in Contemporary Theory. Concepts and Reconceptualization
When it comes to interpreting literary materials, the person who wrote a text quickly attracts and receives the most of attention – “Who is the author?” “What does s/he want to tell us?” Yet why should meaning only be construed by this individual writer who presumably holds the only authority over interpretation?
This lecture’s goal is to provide students with essential theories and terminology concerning the notion of authorship and its “obvious” agent, the author. Starting with the basic communication model of sender/author – message/text – receiver/reader, we will investigate the concept’s role and development in literary history from the poeta vates to collaborative digital fiction. In a second step, we will have a look at key theoretical texts and according terms by Roland Barthes, Julia Kristeva et al. who, in their poststructuralist claims, dethroned the author as the single valuable source for text interpretation and took into account the message itself and, consequently, the reader.
Mirjam Horn studied English and American Literature, Intercultural German Studies, and Media Studies at the Universities of Bayreuth and Glasgow, Scotland, and is currently working on her dissertation on plagiarism in literature with the International PhD Programme (IPP) at JLU Gießen. Since October 2008, she holds a part-time post as research assistant in the English department including teaching assignments on authorship and the overall context of literary production.