PETER AYOLOV

## **Introduction: When Nobody Reads and Everybody Writes** In 1967 Roland Barthes announced one of the most influential ideas in twentieth-century literary theory: **the death of the author**. The traditional Author—with a capital A—whose biography, intentions and personal genius supposedly determined the meaning of every text, had reached the end of his historical role. According to Barthes, a text no longer belonged to its creator but to language itself and to its readers. Every work became a fabric woven from innumerable cultural quotations rather than the expression of a unique consciousness. The writer ceased to be the supreme authority behind meaning and was replaced by a far more modest figure whom Barthes deliberately named **the scriptor**—someone who writes but does not own language, does not control interpretation and does not stand above the text as its sovereign creator. Writing became an event rather than an act of individual genius, while meaning was transferred fro...