Publication Details

Abstract

Barthes’s death-of-the-author metaphor strongly influenced the following period’s reflections on the poetics of a literary work. Revisiting the metaphor should show its problematic argumentation core. Some of the main grounds of long surviving of this metaphor are explored, namely its style and foggy argumentation. Consequently, the death of the author is conceived as a conceptual metaphor instead of conceiving it as an emphatic gesture of the essayists. Further, we explore the absence of the authorial subjectivity in the writings of two distinctive Czech writers (Milan Kundera and Bohumil Hrabal) in the context of one-way pattern of communication, and in conclusion with regard to the pragmatics of Barthes’s essay writing.