Implicit author

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The implied author (English: implied author ) is a term from literary studies that was introduced by Wayne C. Booth . According to Booth, the term describes the picture that the reader can get of the author by reading this text. He thus represents a mediating authority between the actual author and the narrator .

According to Booth, the term implicit author encompasses both the structure and meaning of a literary text and its system of values ​​and norms ( "the core of norms and choices" , p. 74) and functions as a heuristic concept for the interpretation of narrative texts in particular .

The implicit author describes the size that can be derived from the text itself, but also from its references to other texts or from its context, and is understood by the reader as the organizing authority of the literary events of meaning.

According to Booth's conception of a “ normative rhetoric of storytelling”, literary works are “intentionally structured normative worlds”; Accordingly, this is also influential as controversial term "integral part of an ethically oriented rhetorical analysis" ( ethical criticism ), which in the Rhetorik of storytelling a key to understanding the text intention ( text intent will) and provide the value system of the author.

The introduction of this term makes it possible for the literary studies approaches, which are primarily intrinsic to the work , following the new criticism , to at least "implicitly" include the author and his intentions in the work analysis, without exposing themselves to the objection of a biography .

However, Booth leaves some questions unanswered in his definition, since he does not uniformly determine the implicit author. On the one hand, he speaks of the implicit author being a self-portrait designed by the real author while writing , on the other hand, the reader-generated image of the author is also included for him.

Proponents of the concept, despite the indeterminacy points in Booth's concept, emphasize its interpretative usefulness, for example for analyzing narrative unreliability , and use the notion of an implicit author for terms used synonymously such as "subject of the work whole" or "abstract author".

In the communication model of literary texts, these terms all designate a “voiceless” broadcasting instance , which is located between the communication levels of the real historical author and those of the fictional narrator or the fictional characters and does not express itself explicitly, but must be opened up by the reader.

The counterpart to the implicit author on the part of the reader is the implicit reader .

Conceptually , as mentioned above , the implicit author is by no means undisputed in modern literary studies and literary theory . So is z. B. Gérard Genette believes that the implicit author really means either the real empirical author or the overall meaning of the work. In both cases it is unnecessary to introduce an additional authority such as the implicit author.

In the critical examination of the construct of the implicit author, in addition to its conceptual vagueness, the indefinite status in the communication model of the literary texts is criticized. The implicit author and his abstract correlate on the receiving end, the implicit reader, are not about personalisable and pragmatically or deictically comprehensible speaker instances, but about semantic categories in the overall meaning or the system of values ​​and norms of the literary text.

Going beyond the contradictions in literary theory in the concept, critics such as Mieke Bal and Genette also criticize the “theoretically and methodologically uncritical” use of this term and advocate using a narrative theory based on the description of text features on such an “ anthropomorphized ” [cf. ] “Concept to forego.

In the course of the return of the author , which was proclaimed in recent literary studies and literary theoretical discussions at the end of the 20th century, Booth's concept of the implicit author experienced a renaissance and gained new meaning in the practice of literary interpretation, regardless of the development of alternative concepts.

See also:

literature

  • Booth, Wayne C .: The Rhetoric of Fiction . University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 1991 [1961] (Ger. The rhetoric of storytelling . Source and Meyer , Heidelberg 1974, UTB , ISBN 3-494-02040-X ).
  • Kindt, Tom, Müller, Hans-Harald: The Implied Author. Concept and Controversy (Narratologia / Contributions To Narrative Theory) . De Gruyter 2006. ISBN 3-11-018948-8 .
  • Kindt, Tom, Müller, Hans-Harald: The implicit author: For the explication and use of a controversial term . In: Fotis Jannidis et al. (Ed.): Return of the author. To renew a controversial term . Niemeyer Verlag , Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-484-35071-7 , pp. 273-288.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Booth, Wayne C .: The Rhetoric of Fiction . University of Chicago Press, Chicago / London 1991 [1961] (Ger. Die Rhetorik der Erzählkunst . Quelle and Meyer, Heidelberg 1974, UTB , ISBN 3-494-02040-X ), p. 74.
  2. ^ Ansgar Nünning: author, implicit . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory. Metzler Verlag , Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 8f.
  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. 35-39, here p. 38.
  4. ↑ See Ansgar Nünning: Author, implicit . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory. Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 8f. See also Tom Kindt, Hans-Harald Müller: The implicit author: For the explication and use of a controversial term . In: Fotis Jannidis et al. (Ed.): Return of the author. To renew a controversial term . Niemeyer Verlag , Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-484-35071-7 , pp. 273-288, here v. a. P. 279f.
  5. ↑ See Ansgar Nünning: Author, implicit . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory. Metzler Verlag, Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 8f.
  6. ^ Ansgar Nünning: author, implicit . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory. Metzler Verlag , Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 8f. See also e.g. B. Manfred Pfister: The drama. Theory and analysis . Fink Verlag, (8th edition, Munich 2000 [1988], ISBN 3-8252-0580-0 ( UTB ), p. 21).
  7. ^ Fotis Jannidis, Gerhard Lauer, Matias Martinez, Simone Winko (eds.): Texts on the theory of authorship. Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 978-3-15-018058-7 . P. 20
  8. ↑ See Ansgar Nünning: Author, implicit . In: Ansgar Nünning (ed.): Basic concepts of literary theory. Metzler Verlag , Stuttgart and Weimar 2004, ISBN 3-476-10347-1 , p. 9. See also Tom Kindt, Hans-Harald Müller: The implicit author: For the explication and use of a controversial term . In: Fotis Jannidis et al. (Ed.): Return of the author. To renew a controversial term . Niemeyer Verlag , Tübingen 1999, ISBN 3-484-35071-7 , p. 286.
  9. ↑ See 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. 35-39, here p. 38.