00114--What is Barthes's opinion about the traditional practice of seeking the author's help in deciphering the text? OR How does the removal of the Author widen the scope of a work?

            Traditional criticism used to take the help of the author in deciphering the text.  Barthes questions the very concept of deciphering a text.  In his view there is nothing to decipher in a text.  The readers duty is only to disentangle the text of plural meanings.  He holds that "Once the Author is removed, the claim to decipher a text becomes quite futile.  To give a text an Author is to impose a limit on that text, to furnish it with a final signified, to close the writing".  If we question the authority of the author and remove him from the scene, it makes the work better.  Vast possibilities of meanings open up.  Hence he sees the death of the author as a semantic necessity.