Appunti su Narratologia (Autore e Narratore)

Author

The author is the historical figure, living or dead, who is responsible for the writing of a text. Although he or she is usually identified by a proper name, the latter can also be fictive (a pseudonym): e.g., George Eliot. Sometimes in Victorian times, a woman would publish under a male name to gain more respectability, especially when writing serious fiction or dealing with themes not considered “feminine”. Some authors may be anonymous, or presumed (when the attribution is uncertain).

Author and biography

When studying an author, we are usually interested in finding out as much as we can about his or her life: family origin and class, upbringing, literary career (his or her whole chronological output) - or other jobs, interests, occupations -, working methods, cultural and artistic connections and allegiances, literary influences, political and ideological views and opinions, public statements, private life, reception by contemporaries. But also his posthumous fortune, whether in terms of popular success and reprints, or in terms of critical prestige: how he or she has become canonical (or not).

Do we care about the author?

On the one hand, the “biography” of an author is an important element in studying his or her work (whether a single text, or, even more so, when studying his or her whole corpus). On the other, the author does not write in a vacuum, as a lone individual. His or her writing always necessarily refers to social, cultural, and generic codes (the conventions of a certain literary genre).

Whose is a text?

The meaning of a written text does not simply “belong” to an author but is part of a larger “intertextual” production. Think of a network of writing, where any single text comes to occupy a certain place in relations to many others, both contemporary but also belonging to the past. In short, no textual meaning belongs “just” to the author and should be seen both as individual and collective. This is especially true when a text is “published”, i.e., becomes public, handed over to its readers.

The author's absence

When writing a novel, the author writes in the absence of its readers (its audience); when reading a novel, a reader reads in the absence of the author. There is a spatial gap (reader and writer are in a different space); there is a temporal gap (the reader reads when the writing has finished). The text is the residue of a performance of writing: its “words” are linguistic signs to be interpreted. The reader is the interpreter; he or she is the only one “working”. Therefore, he or she is the only one finally responsible for the text's meaning. We can say that the reader “actualizes” the meaning.