I wrote an article for The Artifice recently, about meaning-making in art (you can read it here). In the comments section, several readers have been discussing entry points into literary theory.
Barthes’ Death of the Author often comes up in conversations like this, and several of my readers have recommended it to other readers. I recommend it too, though not uncritically.
My general impression of Barthes’ argument is that the author’s intended meaning should not be taken as the thing that the text is about, by definition. My main beef with this idea (if taken too far) is that the author is clearly part of the story (it wouldn’t make sense to take this literally, of course).
I do agree with the idea that text can’t really have an objective meaning—clearly it always operates as an intermediary between some artefact of the world and some form of an interpretant (often a human, but perhaps also a computer).
The point is that the physical boundaries of a story (or song, painting, etc.) are not the same as its semiotic boundaries. What a work means is clearly not confined to that paper and ink it is made from.
Phenomena such as cancel culture show us, though, that the identity of an author clearly remains relevant to the meaning of a work.
On the theme of this post, check out this well-known (and, well written) piece by Nick Cave.