Anticipating Barthes

I've not read more than "Death of the Author" and a few online secondary sources, but it seems to me that a deeper study of Barthes would be most productive. For folks like Mayers (and Dawson, too, I think) who feel that Theory is essentially theory of interpretation, Barthes presents a compelling alternative. Not that he didn't have a bit to say about interpretation, but he did write quite a bit about writing. And it seems he may provide a way into a more fully developed CWT.

The responses I've seen to Barthes "Death" from CW scholars (Wandor and others) seem to take his title more seriously than the rest of the essay. Yes, he declares the author dead, but what he means by "Author" is something most actual authors don't relate to anyway. His idea of the "scriptor" is something that we should be taking seriously, considering its implications for the writing process and CW pedagogy.

There's a very nice wiki on Roland Barthes, which includes a discussion of some of his key terms, like readerly/writerly texts and author/scriptor. And an excellent bit on "neutral and novelistic writing" that gives some nice leads into his work as it bears on questions relevant to creative writers.

A solid essay on Barthes at third factory gives a great overview of the work, with notes on its relevance to poetry in general and American poetry specifically. Good leads from this one.

From what I glean, if I want to go big on Barthes this semester, I should pick up The Rustle of Language, Writing Degree Zero, and The Pleasures of the Text at minimum. S/Z might need a skim as well.

His distinction between doxa and para-doxa, a distinction I'm not quite clear on yet, promises to be rather useful in discussing the social/political aspects of CW. The doxa is language limited by social pop-culture norms??? And para-doxa is use of language that somehow escapes those limitations. Something like that. Seems like this discussion would be useful for helping writers think about how to write given the social and political aspects of all writing.

Anyway, this could be a good direction to go. Maybe Barthes and Fish this semester. With a quick look at New Criticism? ...still sorting it out.