Authorship

The first collection to gather together the essential material in the twentieth-century debate, this work also represents the major historical shifts in conceptions of authorship from the Classical age through to current debates concerning intention, influence, impersonality, authorial disappearance and the postmodern fragmentation of subjectivity. Connecting the conceptual and cultural, this reader foregrounds materialist, postcolonial and feminist critiques along with the issue of political accountability as it has been raised in the very different contexts of the controversies surrounding Martin Heidegger and Salman Rushdie. A comprehensive guide to the contemporary state of enquiry and a pointer to the future of authorship as a strong literary and cultural category, this collection provides invaluable reference material for scholars and teachers working in the field. Complete with a detailed general introduction and suggestive section notes, the work will also serve to orient those coming to the subject for the first time.