L’œuvre d’art, l’œuvre littéraire était à ses yeux une fin absolue ; elle portait en soi sa raison d’être

To learn, for example, that Pierre Dupont does not have blueeyes, does not live in Paris, and is not a doctor does not invalidatethe fact that the name, Pierre Dupont, continues to refer to thesame person; there has been no modification of the designation thatlinks the name to the person. With the name of an author, how-ever, the problems are far more complex. The disclosure thatShakespeare was not born in the house that tourists now visitwould not modify the functioning of the author's name, but if itwere proved that he had not written the sonnets that we attributeto him, this would constitute a significant change and affect themanner in which the author's name functions. Moreover, if weestablish that Shakespeare wrote Bacon's Organon and that thesame author was responsible for both the works of Shakespeareand those of Bacon, we would have introduced a third type ofalteration which completely modifies the functioning of the author'sname. Consequently, the name of an author is not precisely a propername among others