Abstract
This introductory chapter returns to Roland Barthes’s famous text ‘The Death of the Author’ as a point of departure to propose the main arguments of the book—(1) the author as construct that possesses a certain theatricality, (2) the author as a performative figure and (3) the rational for her/his resurrection. The chapter contextualizes the notion of the author across disciplines of theatre, performance, literature, and film. Drawing from variety of sources—from Barthes, French Structuralism and Paul de Mann to Nancy Miller’s feminist critique of authorial death and the work of Svetlana Boym; from Shakespeare and Pirandello to Tim Crouch; and from Borges to French author Laurent Binet—this chapter asserts intertextual, existential and ethical dimensions of authorial presence and absences.
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Jestrovic, S. (2020). The Paradox of the Author’s Death: An Introduction. In: Performances of Authorial Presence and Absence . Adaptation in Theatre and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43290-4_1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43290-4_1
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