Historical author

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The historical author referred to terminology in the literature and literary theory the intellectual authors of texts of any kind. As a real or empirical individual and author of a work is different, the historical author who conceptually on the extra-textual level of literary communication model text is settled, both by the fictional speakers or characters in literary texts as well as by the narrator or the lyrical self .

In this respect, the concept of the real historical author must also be distinguished from the construct of the internal implicit author .

Author terms and models of authorship are subject to historical change; Since the 1960s at the latest, the concept of the author has become one of the most controversial concepts in literary studies.

The concept of the historical author was originally not only associated with the (equally legal) concept of intellectual authorship (cf. Latin auctor in the partial meaning: “author”, “author”), but also the philological concept of the work, whose unity is in Recourse to the author can be constituted (cf. Latin auctoritas : "credibility", "role model").

Up until the modern era, this double meaning of the "creative" and the "normative" determined the use of the concept of the real historical author. The historical author functioned above all with the socio-economic development of the "free writer" and the simultaneous enforcement of the aesthetic of originality as well as the establishment of copyright law and the consequent autonomization of the literary author not only as a guarantee for the unity and individuality of the work, but also for its meaning.

In the mid-20th century certain methods werkimmantente sit in imitation of the new criticism recourse to the intentions of the historical author as methodological fallacy ( intentional fallacy ) from; To this day, such a recourse to the author's intention is considered naive in literary practice of interpretation.

At the end of the 1960s, the catchphrase “ death of the author ”, introduced by R. Barthes on the basis of completely different assumptions and widely used by post-structuralist authors such as J. Kristeva , shaped the literary and literary theoretical discussion. Following Kristeva's adoption of the author concept in favor of a general intertextuality , M. Foucault's demand for the historical relativization of the real author as a discursive function limited to modernity prevailed.

Except in the “Empirical Theory of Literature”, which examined the area of ​​literary production as a role for action, the concept of the real historical author played only a secondary or subordinate role for a long time until it was replaced by various new developments in the late 1970s how, for example, feminist literary theory, postcolonial literary theory or the discussions about the formation of canons have been revalued. At the same time, it became clear that the concept of the historical author is of central importance in various areas of literary practice.

The concept of the historical author not only refers to the empirical “legal subject” in the sense of copyright law, but also functions as an ordering principle in literary history and as a (controversial, but nevertheless relevant) category of interpretation and also fulfills a number of other important functions .

Only when the discussion about the concept of authorship was resumed in the 1990s was this discrepancy between the reductionist reflection on literary theory and actual literary practice uncovered.

In the course of this debate, in particular the historical models and theoretical concepts of authorship as well as the different author functions were historically reconstructed and systematically examined for the first time (see e.g. the contributions in Jannidis et al. 1999 and 2000)

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ansgar Nünning : author, historical . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory. Metzler Verlag , Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 7f.
  2. ↑ Andrea Polaschegg: Author . In: Gerhard Lauer, Christine Ruhrberg (Hrsg.): Lexicon literary studies · Hundred basic terms . Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag , Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-15-010810-9 , pp. 35–38, here p. 36. See also Ansgar Nünning : Author, historical . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory. Metzler Verlag , Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 7f.
  3. ↑ Andrea Polaschegg: Author . In: Gerhard Lauer, Christine Ruhrberg (Hrsg.): Lexicon literary studies · Hundred basic terms . Philipp Reclam jun. Verlag , Stuttgart 2011, ISBN 978-3-15-010810-9 , pp. 35-38, here p. 36.
  4. ↑ See Ansgar Nünning : Author, historical . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory. Metzler Verlag , Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 7f.
  5. ↑ See Ansgar Nünning : Author, historical . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory. Metzler Verlag , Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 7f.
  6. ↑ See Ansgar Nünning : Author, historical . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory. Metzler Verlag , Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 7f.
  7. ↑ See e.g. BM Coutourier: La figure de l'auteur, Paris 1993, or M. Biriotti and N. Miller: What is an Author ?, Manchester 1993. See also Ansgar Nünning : Author, historical . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory. Metzler Verlag , Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 8.
  8. ↑ See also Ansgar Nünning : Author, historical . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory. Metzler Verlag , Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 8.