Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Introduction: Reconstructing the Author -- Part 1: The Aesthetic and Textual Debate -- Section 1: Changing Conceptions of Authorship -- 1. Plato from Ion -- 2. Plato from The Republic -- 3. 'The Significance of the Medieval Theory of Authorship -- 4. from An Apology for Poetry -- 5. 'Conjectures on Original Composition -- 6. from 'A Defence of Poetry' -- 7. from 'Crisis in Verse' -- 8. 'Creative Writers and Day-Dreaming -- Section 2: The Twentieth-century Controversy -- 9. Tradition and the Individual Talent' -- 10. 'Literature and Biography' -- 11. 'The Intentional Fallacy' -- 12. 'Criticism and the Experience of Interiority -- 13. Validity in Interpretation -- 14. The Exorbitant. Question of Method -- 15. The Death of the Author -- 16. A Meditation upon Priority, and a Synopsis -- Part 2: The Politics of Authorship -- Section 1: Feminism and the Authorial Subject -- 17. The Madwoman in the Attic -- 18. Castration or Decapitation?' -- 19. 'Feminist Tracks' -- 20. Changing the Subject: Authorship, Writing and the Reader' -- Section 2: Ideologies and Authorship -- 21. Writing For One's Age' -- 22. 'Creation and Production -- 23. What Is an Author?' -- 24. What Was an Author?' -- 25. Author' -- 26. Postcolonialism and the Author: The Case of Salman Rushdie -- 27. The Ethics of Signature' -- 28. Taking Philosophy Seriously' -- Part 3: Writing the Self -- 29. Essays -- 30. Second Meditation -- 31. Why I Am a Destiny -- 32. Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote'; 'Kafka and His Precursors'; 'Everything and Nothing'; 'Borges and I' -- Index