Upon reading Andrew Wilson’s biography of Sylvia Plath Mad Girl’s Love Song I saw the importance of distancing a writers works from their supposed life. A biography is a tricky thing especially one written so far after the death of the subject. This biography is entertaining as reading extracts of letters associated with someone’s life does satisfy the voyeur in me. However from what I have learnt from Roland Barthes Death of The Author I know that it is all too easy to focus upon the life of the author too much when trying to interpret texts. Therefore when studying literature it can negatively effect your ability to analyse texts if you read up on the authors life too much, as you can end up making irrelevant connections.
