Individualization of the author

Foucault argued in his essay on the development of the “author-function” that the modern conception of authorship evolved as authors came to be figured as sacred figures, holders of legal ownership of texts and words, which in turn conveyed “privilege or sanctity” to the text itself. Jean Marsden says that “The adaptations of Shakespeare present a specific history of the period’s most revered writer and his establishment as ‘author.’ This notion was clearly absent in the late seventeenth adn early eighteenth century when the most radically revised adaptations were written. At the time, a writer did not own his works (that privilege belonged to the publisher) nor did the name of the author sanctify his written work. Altering an author’s works was not only possible but popular.” In Foucault’s terms, this process “constitutes the privileged moment of individualization in the history of ideas.”

This involved in part the development of new notions of the text: “By the end of the eighteenth century literary works had become recognizable printed texts, private property protected by their creators . . . . Only the writer himself could authorize [an apt usage -PJL] change, a sentiment reflected in the adulation which eventually surrounded Shakespeare’s name and his ‘genuine text.’”