Cronaca di una scomparsa annunciata. L'autore e la sua morte: prima e dopo Roland Barthes

The study has the aim to carry out a general overview about “the death of the author”, one of the most important objects of interest of twentieth-century literary criticism; in particular the study tries to outline the main protagonists and key points of the long debate, that involved not only philosophers and literary critics, but also avant-garde writers. Specifically the study focuses on the short Roland Barthes’ pamphlet La mort de l’auteur, because it was a real turning-point between the structuralist and post-structuralist criticism. The aim of the essay is not only to understand how much the question represented a tendence during the second half of the last century, but also if – today – this idea is still current or if it has been just a myth.