The secret life of words: the literary theory of Roland Barthes

In 1968 a significant essay by Roland Barthes called "The Death of the Author" was published. It was a kind of manifesto of a new type of literature. This small text reflected a turning point in Western culture, when the very historical situation required the development of new values; it has not lost its relevance today, half a century later. The traditional role of the author as the legislator of the meaning of a work was called into question in Barthes' revolutionary project. However, this did not imply, as it might seem, the end of fiction. On the contrary, the idea of the author's death entails, as a necessary consequence, the statement of the immortality of literature. There is an attempt in this paper to reconstruct the main intentions that motivated Barthes to create his theory of literature, which he understood as the embodiment of the dynamic life of the language. Another task is to reconstruct his theory in the form of a holistic system of views on the contemporary literary process. The art of the modern era -compared with the classical one - underwent fundamental changes. Not the author, but the language is the main actor, which directs and determines any narrative. In such a linguocentric model, language from the medium of the transmission of ideological content turns into the space of the emergence of thought. First of all, it asserts the plurality of equal readings, challenging the habitual position of literary criticism, according to which the author's interpretation is the only true one. Such a polyphony of interpretations presupposes an increase in the role of the reader, who - as a co-creator of meaning - is now endowed with the same rights as the writer. Desacralisation of the author changes the status of literature itself: being deprived of the functions of "teaching and witnessing", which, according to Barthes, make it an instrument of ideology, literature acquires the necessary freedom to capture the spirit of the time, which, in addition to the will of the author, is preserved in the very fabric of the language.

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