Frances Grange, Dialect and Authorship

I would like to propose, belatedly, that instead of having no "author," one does, in fact, exist. I am approaching this from a writer’s point of view. To begin with, I will start with Barthes, who proposes that the author is dead. Barthes proposes that it is “language which speaks, not the author” (Barthes, 875). However, I do not think that this is entirely correct. Language is a tool used by authors to form meaning, which is an obvious definition and also perfectly demonstrated by Campbell’s article about Sojourner Truth.

The simple fact that Frances Grange changed the language in which Sojourner was represented offers a demonstration on the tool-like nature of this aspect of language. Historically we know that Sojourner did not speak in the dialect that Grange placed upon her (Campbell, 13). However, this dialect was used and it can be presumed, since it was invented by a woman who knew Sojourner well, that this was done with some kind of purpose in mind. Otherwise Grange would have just tried to approximate the accent of Sojourner as-is, which might have even been easier.

The point, of course, is that an author must exist. If no author exists there remains only four people: the writer, the reader, the character and the narrator. The narrator and character can be seen as inventions of the writer, so they may be dismissed for the purpose of this point. What remains are the writer and the reader (or a readership). I agree with Barthes in that it lies on the reader to create an interpretation of the text (Barthes, 877). So we may see readers as something like a projector at a movie theatre. They take the film, filter it and interpret it, often sharing at least a portion of this interpretation.

This leaves the writer. What is a writer? Can we answer the question of authorship and agency if we do not know who or what the writer is? It must be assumed that the writer is the person or persons who actually write the text, who use language to craft an idea. At what point, however, does a writer become an author? Foucault points out that the “author-function is linked to the juridical and institutional system that encompasses, determines, and articulates the universe of discourses” (Foucault, 910). This seems to suggest that an author defines what discourse and what rules of the universe are acceptable for any given work. But where does that place the author? If the author is he who defines the universe of a piece, then he must be an extension of the writer in some capacity. Frances Grange most certainly didn’t speak in the same dialect she used for Sojourner (and neither did Sojourner for that matter), but that does not necessarily release Frances from authorship. It shows that Grange is able to define a set of rules for her work’s “universe.”