As the title implies, my focus today is upon the implications of digital media with regards to how digital authors and narratives interact with the past as well as adapt to a new medium. As a continuation of my response to the essays in Seán Burke’s Authorship, I again refer to my reading list for a complete list of the essays and introductory statements I have read thus far.
This focus moves me into stickier theoretical ground than I have yet covered in this blog. Referring specifically to Seán Burke’s section introduction, “The Twentieth Century Controversy”, T.S. Eliot’s “Tradition and the Individual Talent”, and Roland Barthes’s “The Death of the Author”, my intent is to ponder ways in which the digital medium influences our perceptions of subjectivity in writing as well as the role of the reader. Though I wrote in my previous post that I didn’t intend to handle it this way, this time I am going to examine the three essays individually, using Burke’s section introduction as a springboard.