An author is ...

"What's Is an Author?"
Michel Foucault first develops the definition that an author is the individualism within the field of literature and history. This however does not consider or rather dismisses the idea of looking at literary works at a macro/genre level. A question that struck me while reading was how does the fear of death influence the use of the author's name? Foucault mentions how writing was used as a way to ward of death and then transitions into the rise of the author's name. Did these two ideas have a relationship? I interpreted this as authors wanted to leave a legacy so that through their writing they would not "die" or at least their work wouldn't and therefore they wanted to be remember through their work instead of their work standing on its own, as if the author didn't exist. However, the author's name not only denotes authorship to a person, but also performs a role in narrative discourse and classification.