The Death and Return of the Author
Criticism and Subjectivity in Barthes, Foucault and Derrida
Sean Burke
'A magisterial study [that] demolishes the structuralist and deconstructive positions on authorship...The argument in my view is brilliantly original...a splendid book.'
Alistair Fowler, University of Virginia
'The author - killed in Paris, embalmed at Yale, mourned in Cambridge - makes a sly and spectral return in this marvellous book.'
James Wood, The Guardian
'The whole concept of the death of the author has been finally put to rest by Sean Burke.'
Brian Vickers, Appropriating Shakespeare
For the late twentieth century, the death of the author assumed a significance analogous to the death of God one hundred years previously. In this now classic study, Seán Burke both provides the first detailed explanation of anti-authorialism and shows how, even taken on its own terms, the attempt to abolish the author is philosophically untenable. Rather than developing a traditionally humanist defence, Burke effectively out-theorises theory through rigorous readings which demonstrate that the concept of the author remained profoundly active even and especially as its disappearance was being articulated. The question of the author, he argues, is not a question within theory but the question of theory.

Building on a substantially revised second edition, Burke further explores the challenges faced by an authorial theory that is 'still to come'. Prompted by the responses to the passing of Jacques Derrida in 2004, he revisits the enigmatic borderlines between life and work, life and (authorial) death.

Features of the third edition:

* A 5,000-word Preface which considers Derrida's legacy and the future of authorial theory

* Two new chapters which submit the biographical and autobiographical to independent theoretical scrutiny

* A fully updated bibliography
Seán Burke worked in the Department of English Studies at the University of Durham for thirte