I'm Donne! Donne, I tell you!

One of the things they make you read when you are an English major at a liberal arts college is Roland Barthes.  Barthes' most famous work is probably "The Death of the Author." In this essay he questions whether the reader of a text can ever ultimately know or understand the author's mind and true intention at the time of writing it, and therefore whether we need to know the author's intention in order to understand the text.  It's a little bit of a brain tickler, but basically the question is, do you think it's necessary for a reader to know who wrote a piece of writing?  Does knowing who wrote it add any extra meaning to the text? 

Maybe I'm a nerd (okay, definitely), but I've always been intrigued by this question.  Especially since nowadays we seem to be able to find out anything online and everybody has a blog (guilty).  Of course we want people to know when we write something!  We want credit and praise for it.  We want to make a point.  It seems like the only people who don't claim ownership for their work in this day and age are afraid of the repercussions from it. 

So, is it so horrible to think that Shakespeare didn't really write all those plays?  Would you feel betrayed to find out that the author of Romeo and Juliet was really some schmuck who dictated the whole thing to his assistant, who then gave it a rewrite?  Would it change the meaning or the genius of it?  I'll let you decide:


At the round earth's imagined corners, blow
Your trumpets, Angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go,
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dearth, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance, hath slain, and you whose eyes,
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space,
For, if above all these, my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of thy grace,
When we are there; here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent; for that's as good
As if thou hadst seal'd my pardon, with thy blood.

Well . . . that was John Donne.  Do you feel cheated?