Changes

In a contemporary [[essay]] entitled "The Death of the Author",<ref>Roland Barthes, ''The Death of the Author'', (Aspen 1968)</ref> [[France|French]] literary critic Roland Barthes argued in favor of deconstruction when he stated that the origin of a text is unimportant, and that only the interpretation of the [[reader]] matters. He declared that this personal interpretation frees the text from the [[tyranny]] of the intended meaning given it by the [[author]]. No matter what a writer writes, or what they mean to say through their writing, their words will never have a universal meaning, and will be understood in a thousand different ways by the readers.  This was a landmark shift in thought, as previously many literary critics sought the "true" meaning of a text by attempting to analyze according to what the original author had thought.  This shift has led to a modern dichotomy of thought in literary criticism, with new criticism, deconstruction, and other post-structuralist approaches contrasting with more traditional methods.

In a contemporary [[essay]] entitled "The Death of the Author",<ref>Roland Barthes, ''The Death of the Author'', (Aspen 1968)</ref> [[France|French]] literary critic Roland Barthes argued in favor of deconstruction when he stated that the origin of a text is unimportant, and that only the interpretation of the [[reader]] matters. He declared that this personal interpretation frees the text from the [[tyranny]] of the intended meaning given it by the [[author]]. No matter what a writer writes, or what they mean to say through their writing, their words will never have a universal meaning, and will be understood in a thousand different ways by the readers.  This was a landmark shift in thought, as previously many literary critics sought the "true" meaning of a text by attempting to analyze according to what the original author had thought.  This shift has led to a modern dichotomy of thought in literary criticism, with new criticism, deconstruction, and other post-structuralist approaches contrasting with more traditional methods.

==Privileged Binaries and Différance==

== Privileged Binaries and "Différance" ==

Jacques Derrida wrote that history and language have always been traditionally full of privileged dualities of terms, such as order/chaos, high/low, and even good/bad.  Among these has been the pairing of speaking/writing, which emphasized a historically logocentric (or speech-focused) approach to literature.  In support of this, he indicates the vocal patterning which evidences itself amongst the written word, found within such literary devices as dialogue, which functions as an awkward attempt to mimic vocal exchanges via the written word, and accordingly is intrinsically less natural.

Jacques Derrida wrote that history and language have always been traditionally full of privileged dualities of terms, such as order/chaos, high/low, and even good/bad.  Among these has been the pairing of speaking/writing, which emphasized a historically logocentric (or speech-focused) approach to literature.  In support of this, he indicates the vocal patterning which evidences itself amongst the written word, found within such literary devices as dialogue, which functions as an awkward attempt to mimic vocal exchanges via the written word, and accordingly is intrinsically less natural.