The Death of the Author

Amplification is a class of rhetorical figures that help expand upon, explain, or extend an idea; most involve some form of repetition. Barthes frequently uses this device, and often ironically. For example, he writes, “The Author is thought to nourish the book, which is to say that he exists before it, thinks, suffers, lives for it…” (145). Here Barthes amplifies his metaphor “nourish” with “exists,” “thinks,” “suffers,” and “lives.” The climax of “lives” in an essay about the metaphorical “death” of the author is ironic. Barthes amplifies a set of false notions that his own essay is designed to refute and cancel out.

Metaphor is the most important rhetorical trope. (A trope is a linguistic device that uses meaning in an altered, unusual, and/or nonliteral way.) Metaphor refers to the descriptive transfer of the characteristics of one thing to another to explain or depict something about it, as in “love is a rose.” Metaphors run throughout the essay, beginning with the title: “Death” of the author as Barthes understands writing is not literal, nor could it be even possible, for there never was an “author.