At the risk of derailing this thread, I will briefly state that while that is part of "Death of the Author", it never was the only part of it. The original essay which named and explicated the concept argued against including the author's intentions into analysis of the work as well as his biographical details and context.

Of course, the original essay was raising a point about a kind of literary observer effect -- how do the critic's own biases affect his ability to accurately determine the author's intent from the work itself?, to briefly and somewhat imprecisely put it -- but far too many self-congratulatory hack critics have pretty much redefined it as "the foolish author has no idea what he's really doing, only we enlightened elite do".

Like I said, bleagh.

-- Bob
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My race is pacifist and does not believe in war. We kill only out of personal spite.