Week 1: Aristotle and Barthes go to Dinner.

     Upon tackling the trace of Aristotle and Quintilian along the scope of ethos I began to wonder how Roland Barthes' argument about the death of the author would interact with the weight that Aristotle places on the ethos of the Rhetor. In class we touched on this conversation when we assessed our Aristotelian questions against Barthes' argument. Which of the questions we are left with after a close, critical reading of Aristotle on ethos are actually dethroned when Barthes enters the scene? The role of the Rhetor for Aristotle is a high moral calling, is the role of the Author such a high assignment for Barthes? Does the character of the Author matter for Barthes in the way it is so critical for Aristotle?
   
With these questions I began a thought about how these two men would converse across a casual dinner conversation about the role of the Rhetor and his individual ethos. As we (Jenn, Ashley and I) discussed in our exploratory group, the role of the Rhetor is more than just a skilled speaker, there is a responsibility of the Rhetor to be a man of good moral character.“Persuasion is achieved by the speaker’s personal character when speech is so spoke as to make us think him credible.  We believe good men more fully and more readily than others" (182) Aristotle would say to Barthes across a summer salad bowl. Yet reaching for the bread stick Barthes would reply, "Though the sway of the author remains powerful, it goes without saying that certain writers have long since attempted to loosen it"(143). An interesting point indeed Barthes, however, the Rhetor's "character may almost be called the most effective means of persuasion he possesses," (182) so why would the Author's character not be a relevant element in the production of his literary work?
At this point, dinner has arrived so the men must pause to enjoy their food. It just so happens that Quintilian overheard this debate, as he was a mere one table over. "Since an Orator is a good man, and good men cannot be conceived to exist without virtuous inclinations and virtue...the orator must above all things study morality...without which no one can neither be a good man nor a good speaker" (418). "The Author...is always conceived as the past of his own book" (145) and to apply this concept to oratory, the Orator is the past of his own words and once his words are spoken they exist in time and space as their own life to be heard and understood by the audience as they see fit, and therefore, the ethos of the orator matters not!
The check comes, Aristotle pays, clearly as the good and moral Rhetor, and the men must part ways in a state of tension. Can Barthe's separation of Author and book exist alongside the marriage of Rhetor and spoken word? Perhaps