Defending the Author

Armenia, ID LLCE2016-117;            The concept of the Author has been one of the most debatable and controversial ones since the earliest days of literature. The image, the personality and character of the author proper had received a considerable attention still in the ancient times. However, the role of the author in the establishment of the meaning of the text and in its interpretation was overemphasized by the representatives of Romanticism. However, the 20^th century saw the emergence of a number of literary theories that came to question the traditional approaches held by that time. The structuralists, later followed by poststructuralists did away with the Author thereby giving birth to the Reader. Is the Author dead? This is a question still calling for an answer.

Key words: author, reader, structuralism, text interpretation, hermeneutics