Is the Author Really Dead?

In "The Death of the Author," Roland Barthes' theory illustrates how the literary theory of authorship had shifted from the blossomings of Romanticism to the structuralism of the 1960s.

I can see Barthes' idea of authorship as "mixing writing" as apparent in our education. Certainly what we read influences our creative writing, sometimes in the form of overt imitation. Our Introduction to Creative Writing courses demand that we write in in the style of particular established authors, and so our work does not necessarily belong to us. However, according to Barthes, our copying doesn't simply include the imitation of style: all of our literary devices and "ideas" come from others because of the extent that our writing is dependent on our reading. The remnants of Romanticism in me would like to think of the author as imaginative, though, but Barthes doesn't seem to value the creative.

From what we have read so far of post-Romanticism, I see Formalism as presenting the highest view of authorship. It doesn't seem to me that Eliot sees new works as a mere synthesis of established canonical literature. If the author serves as a catalyst, at least the resulting work has something new about it. In other words, the work does not equal the influences. But Barthes seems to disagree by arguing that our composition is never original.

As an author myself, Barthes' radical idea of mixing writings doesn't necessarily offend me however. (Perhaps I should be offended.) I feel jaded about my own work, as if what I put forth in writing merely imitates other established authors who have heard the muse more clearly. What, then, is the purpose of my own writing when I have nothing new to add?