What if the author didn't 'mean' all the things we're analysing?

Although authorial intention can illuminate a reading of a certain text, it is in many ways irrelevant. The author will have been impacted by things in his/her lifetime that they may not have been aware of , and they may even be part of a broader movement that is yet to be established. As such, there are myriad ways to read any text.In his famous essay, 'The Death of the Author', Roland Barthes argues that as language is only given reading by the reader. In essence, he believes that a word alone is meaningless unless there is a reader there to process the letters and attach a meaning to it. If this is true, then 'meaning' in a text comes from a reader, not an author. By using Barthes' argument, we can certainly make a case that every possible reading we can conceive when reading a text has a certain level of validity.