SOURCE: "Dennis Potter and the Question of the Television Author," in Critical Quarterly, Vol. 29, No. 4, Winter, 1987, pp. 79-87.

In the following essay, Coward uses Potter's The Singing Detective to consider the role of the author in the medium of television and as a case study in recent theories of meaning and authorship in a text.

The question of the author poses particularly difficult problems for any attempt to understand the mass media by reference to critical models drawn from literary studies. While 'authorship' may not be the only or indeed the most crucial factor in the academic study of literature, it would be hard to deny its significance as a way of organising the disparate elements that constitute the study of literature. As Stephen Heath said in the Nouveau Roman: 'the institutionalisation of "literary criticism" (in faculties, journals, newspaper reviews, etc.) … depends on and sustains the author (enshrined...