ABSTRACT
In the second half of the twentieth century, two major problems with authorship studies developed. One problem was the final victory of poststructuralist thinking in which changing notions of the individual as agent cast grave doubts on self-representation or external analysis as sources of explaining intent or rationales for actions. This is the death of the author problem. A second problem was the victory of mass-mediated media in the marketplace of ideas. Mass media is a problem not only because of its multiple-authored collaborative systems of production but because it thrives on intertextuality. Genres and formulas provide the foundations for its emplotments of fictional and nonfictional representations, although intertextuality through stars, stylistic flourishes, and other textual traces also produces a lineage of voices difficult to trace.
