What Is an Author? is an influential lecture given by French philosopher, sociologist and historian Michel Foucault on literary theory.[1]
The work considers the relationship between author, text, and reader; concluding that:
“The Author is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes and chooses: (…) The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning.”