The Death of the Agenda: Satire Turns to Awe

Roland Barthes' iconic essay "The Death of the Author" is a work read and known by all literature scholars. Though not in direct relation to awe or wonder, his ideas on language and authorship do influence the writing and studying of awe.

Barthes' stance on authorship and readership largely defines a huge portion of literary scholarship. Other theories like New Criticism as well as education-based reader-response theories are closely tied to many of Barthes' ideas. The premise of his essay is that authorship, a Western idea, is essentially nonexistent, and those who focus on authorship naturally limit a text and close its meaning.

He says, "Writing is the destruction of every voice, of every point of origin . . . . the voice loses its origin, the author enters into his own death." He refers to the shamans of older societies and their art of performance as an ancient and pure way of sharing writing, especially when compared to modernity's sole focus on the author. Barthes, however, goes beyond writing in his theory. In reference to language specifically, Barthes says:

"It is language which speaks, not the author; to write is . . . to reach that point where only language acts, ‘performs’, and not ‘me’."

and:


"Linguistically, the author is never more than the instance writing, just as I is nothing other than the instance saying I: language knows a ‘subject’, not a ‘person’, and this subject, empty outside of the very enunciation which defines it, suffices to make language ‘hold together’, suffices, that is to say, to exhaust it."

Essentially, language conquers writing because it outlives the writing; it outlasts anything (or anyone) involved in its creation. This gives an extraordinary amount of power to language, or perhaps just shows the power language has always had. In connection to awe, I see Barthes' ideas both supporting and contradicting what we have as a class discussed. The power he gives language supports the existence of wonder in words. The words themselves and the way they are spoken or performed is what inspires awe. Louise Rosenblatt, a pioneer of reader-response theory, engages with this idea of language as a base for her own argument. She writes about the life of language after writing, about what she considers the most important step of the process: reading. She says, "A novel or a poem or a play remains merely inkspots on paper until a reader transforms them into a set of meaningful symbols" (24). She furthers her argument by discussing how each word has a different meaning for each reader because of their history and experiences. And more than this, she writes of the subjective and personal experiences with literature that come from a reader-response approach. Essentially, our subjective experience with awe in language is because of the way we read, not the way an author writes.

However, I also see a disconnect when considering a "formulaic" language of awe or sublimity. Does a purpose (an author) behind language have to exist for a "language of awe" to actually exist? Using a language of awe is essentially acting upon an agenda. Agendas come from authors, not language. This is where I see a connection to my own research topic. I want to argue that Austen satirically uses the language of the sublime and wonder in her novels. (Gothic Awe and Austen Essence Post) However, satire's very nature is dependent on authorship and agenda. So when read through Barthes' eyes, Austen's moments of wonder and sublimity are either lost or seen as genuine.

Portrait of Jane Austen, drawn by her sister Cassandra. Courtesy of Wikipedia

I think that popular culture's reading of Austen reworks her language of awe. Her "spectacle" events and behaviors become all we see and know of Austen; the spectacle becomes the merit and her agenda is lost. With the passing of time, the language of Austen has outlived the writing of Austen. In effect, a false sense of awe is attributed to the works of Austen by many of her fans (most of which are spectacles, albeit awe-inspiring ones, themselves), because they see the use of awe-language and read it genuinely.  Is it possible this originally false awe leads to genuine experiences with awe, or is "The Death of the Author" only letting us fool ourselves?

I think Juliet could also use some of Barthes' ideas about language and storytelling. Juliet's Pecha Kucha

Works Cited:

Barthes, Roland. "The Death of the Author." Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. 

Rosenblatt, Louise M. "The Literary Experience." Literature as Exploration. New York: Modern Language Association of America, 1995. 24-52.