Practice question · True or false
Barthes's "death of the author" means that a work can be made to mean anything a reader chooses.
Hints
- Ask what Eco added to the argument twenty-three years later.
- Removing one authority is not the same as removing all constraint.
Show the answer
False
Why
False. Removing the author's authority does not remove the object's. Eco's point in 1990 is that a work can rule readings out even when it cannot fix a single one, so the field of legitimate readings is bounded, wide, and bounded. Barthes was displacing an authority, not abolishing constraint.
Practise Meanings, and Who Decides Them
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