The Myth of the Author: From Homer to Barthes

Troubadours by the Bonfire. AI image

Introduction

For centuries, the figure of the author has stood as a cornerstone of Western literary tradition. From antiquity to modernity, the creator has often been imagined as an isolated genius, capable of shaping entire worlds through sheer inspiration. Yet this romantic conception proves problematic when history is examined more closely. From the songs attributed to Homer to the theses of Roland Barthes and Jacques Derrida, a different picture emerges: literature as a collective network, a web of voices and memories in which the individual subject dissolves. This essay traces that trajectory, showing how the “author” is less the origin of the text than a cultural construction designed to guarantee unity where multiplicity prevails.

The Greeks and the Homeric Question

Few figures embody the paradox of authorship better than Homer. Two of the most influential epics of world literature—the Iliad and the Odyssey—are traditionally attributed to him. Yet the so-called “Homeric Question” casts doubt on whether a single poet ever existed, or whether these works are the cumulative result of a long oral tradition carried by different rhapsodes. Scholars maintain that the poems circulated for generations before being fixed in writing, accumulating additions, variants, and reinterpretations along the way.

In this light, “Homer” may be less an individual than a collective name, a label designating the crystallization of countless voices at a particular moment in Greek culture. Homeric authorship thus resembles a mask that conceals the anonymous and plural character of the epic. This situation foreshadows, in some sense, Barthes’ intuition: the “author” is not the source of meaning but rather a passage through which traditions, styles, and languages converge.

The Troubadour Tradition

If Homeric poetry reminds us of the power of collaboration, Provençal lyric reinforces even more strongly the idea of shared creation. Troubadours, active in twelfth- and thirteenth-century southern France, composed songs that circulated in public squares, courts, and festivals. Their verses were performed, memorized, modified, and transmitted without a single authoritative version. Each performance introduced new nuances, transforming the poem into a living organism that changed with every encounter.

Such dynamics call into question the notion of the work as a closed entity. In troubadour poetry, what matters is not the personal signature but the communal bond sustaining collective memory. A verse survives because it is repeated, reinvented, and appropriated by many. It is no accident that Nietzsche, centuries later, would recover this playful and vital spirit in The Gay Science, where poetic speech is associated with dance, song, and celebration. The “gay science” evokes the festive dimension of language that never wholly belongs to its speaker, for it circulates in the shared air of community.

Barthes and “The Death of the Author”

With Barthes, suspicion becomes explicit theory. In his celebrated essay The Death of the Author (1968), he declares that the writer is no longer the privileged source of meaning but merely a mediator whose voice dissolves in the act of writing. “A text,” Barthes argues, “is not a line of words releasing a single theological meaning, but a multi-dimensional space in which a variety of writings, none of them original, blend and clash.” Instead of the inspired creator, we encounter the scriptor: a figure who does not generate original meanings but rearranges and redistributes pre-existing discourses.

This conception destabilizes the romantic image of the artist as absolute origin. Homer and the troubadours can thus be reread as historical examples embodying the same logic: both point to collective traditions rather than singular individuals. Barthes’ theory does not abolish literature; it opens it to a broader horizon in which every reader actively participates in the production of meaning.

Derrida and the Myth of Origin

Derrida’s deconstruction deepens this perspective by questioning the very notion of a pure beginning. In Of Grammatology (1967), he argues that there is no absolute starting point for language; what we call “origin” is merely a retrospective fiction that imposes order upon a field already marked by deferral. Inscription, far from being a secondary copy, constitutes the very condition of possibility for meaning: every sign is inscribed within a network of differences that never refers back to a final source.

Applied to literature, this reflection dissolves the temptation to seek in Homer, a troubadour, or any other author the definitive key to the text. What we find instead is an endless play of traces, a palimpsest in which each word carries remnants of others. “Authorship” functions as a closure effect, a cultural device meant to halt this ceaseless drift.

Conclusion

The journey from antiquity to contemporary criticism shows that the author is not a stable origin but a shifting, sometimes even fictitious figure. Homer embodies the myth of a unique poet who in fact condensed an entire tradition; the troubadours confirm the power of collectivity over the individual signature; Barthes makes explicit the displacement of the creator in favor of textual multiplicity; and Derrida reveals the impossibility of an absolute origin.

Far from impoverishing literature, this decentering enriches it, allowing us to read each work as a knot in an infinite network of voices and resonances. The “myth of the author” thus appears as a useful fiction for certain epochs, but one inadequate for grasping the complexity of texts. Today, when algorithmic writing raises new questions about creativity and ownership, these reflections regain relevance: perhaps what matters is not who signs, but how words continue weaving meaning within a community that makes them its own.

References

• Barthes, R. (1977). Image, Music, Text (S. Heath, Trans.). London: Fontana.
• Barthes, R. (1989). The Rustle of Language (R. Howard, Trans.). Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Derrida, J. (1997). Of Grammatology (G. C. Spivak, Trans.). Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
• Homer. (1996). The Iliad (R. Fagles, Trans.). New York: Penguin.
• Homer. (1997). The Odyssey (R. Fagles, Trans.). New York: Penguin.
• Nietzsche, F. (1974). The Gay Science (W. Kaufmann, Trans.). New York: Vintage.
• Nietzsche, F. (1999). The Birth of Tragedy (R. Speirs, Trans.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Zumthor, P. (1984). Oral Poetry: An Introduction. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.