Constructing the Author in Medieval and Early Modern Books
Every book has an author, doesn’t it? This seems like such a simple question, but the answer is far from straight forward. While all books are created by someone, defining what counts as an author is less easy.
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![Caii Plinii Secundi Veronensis Liber Illustriu[m] Virorum.](gfx/cabinets/10-4-liber-illustrium-sm.jpg)
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In response to Roland Barthes’ proclamation of the ‘death of the author,’ Michel Foucault, the French philosopher, asked: ‘What is an author?’ Barthes and Foucault were not the first to the consider authorship as a theoretical concept, but they certainly enlivened the debate.
For Barthes, writing in 1968, ‘it is language which speaks, not the author.’ Foucault, in response, insisted ‘that all authors are writers, but not all writers are authors.’ Barthes’ robust rejection, and Foucault’s careful construction, of the author have continued to incite response and debate ever since.
The word ‘author’, related to the Latin auctoritas, meaning authority, is commonly assumed to be a single person imbued with the authority to set pen to paper. Yet is this always the case? What about the authorship of online texts that attract numerous unknown contributors over time? Questions like this are not just confined to our modern preoccupations, driven by the advent of the digital age. The reality is that authorship has always been a hotly contested concept. What counts as an author is often governed by social, political, and technological pressures, regardless of the time period.
The time period covered by Faces of Authorship is Medieval to Early Modern. Each item on display calls into question the definition of authorship and reveals that textual production in this period is a more fluid concept than one might imagine. The works certainly support the notion that authorship in all its varieties is an evolving and continually changing idea.
Faces of Authorship is mounted to coincide with the Eighth Biennial International Conference of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, 2-5 February 2011, at the University of Otago.
Thanks to: Dr Simone Celine Marshall (curator), Professor Peter Anstey, Dr Judith Collard, Dr Greg Waite, Professor David Wallace, Elliot O’Sullivan, Merrin Brewster, Tina Broderick, Teresa Smith, Peter Scott, John Hughes and the team at Reprographics, and Don Tobin and team at the University Bindery.