Author-function :: Reading Literature Essays

Author-function In the second chapter of his book The Order of Books, Roger Chartier deconstructs the way that past and present readers think of authors of texts. He uses Foucault’s term â€Å"author-function,† which Foucault used in his famous essay â€Å"What is an Author?,† to describe this concept. â€Å"Author-function† is an elusive term. In essence, it refers to the way that a reader’s concept of the "author" functions in his reading of a text. His interpretation of a text is shaped by his understanding of its author. Without any concept of who the author of a text is, it is easy to develop many different interpretations of that text. However, in light of an author’s gender, ethnicity, time period, political leanings, or other applicable known information, the text often leans toward one plausible interpretation. For example, a reader’s interpretation of Invisible Man is greatly colored by her knowledge of its author Ralph Ellison as a black man fighting racial discrimination. Her interpretation of the same novel would be quite different if the author was really a white person with a history of racist action. Modern readers rely heavily on their knowledge of a text’s author, often without realizing it, to shape their interpretations of that text. Necessary to a more complete understanding of the concept of author-function is an understanding of the social function of authors through the ages which Chartier lays out in â€Å"Figures of the Author.† Chartier agrees with Foucault, an influential literary theorist who claims that the author-function changed in the 19th century when copyright laws were established. With these new laws, â€Å"a system of ownership came into being . . . strict rules concerning author’s rights, author-publisher relations, rights of reproduction, and related matters were enacted† (qtd. in Chartier 30). In other words, with copyright laws, the author was seen as the source of information and was given credit (and money) for that information. Chartier agrees that author-function did change with these changing ideas of information as property, but he claims that the idea of the author-function is older and broader. According to Chartier, there is evidence that the author served a functional role in the reading of texts in Medieval Europe (31, 59). Foucault acknowledges that in the Middle Ages, anonymous authorship of â€Å"literary† texts was common, while the veracity of scientific texts was judged by the authority of the text’s author (31).