What Is an Author?

"What Is an Author?" (French: Qu'est-ce qu'un auteur?) is one of the most important lectures given at the Société française de philosophie on 22 February 1969 by French philosopher, sociologist and historian Michel Foucault.^[1]

The Author is a certain functional principle by which, in our culture, one limits, excludes and chooses: ... The author is therefore the ideological figure by which one marks the manner in which we fear the proliferation of meaning.

For many^[who?], Foucault's lecture responds to Roland Barthes' essay "The Death of the Author".