Roland Barthes

Roland Barthes (1915 - 1980) was a french literary theorist, critic, semiotician and philosopher. His theories covered a vast range of fields, his writings influenced the development of fields such as: post structuralism, structuralism and semiotics.
One of Barthes essays 'The Death of The Author' argues against the tradtional literally practice, he argues that the author and the writing are unrelated. He writes about how the readers political views, cultural background and education affect how the reader interprets the writing and that after taking this into consideration what role does the author play? How can he claim authorship when these factors also came into play when he wrote the piece.