Page History

...

                                                                                    On the Concept of "Implied Author"

Wiki Markup1. According to Wayne Booth, "\[the\] implied author is always distinct from the 'real man' \ -\- whatever we may take him to be \ -\- who creates a superior version of himself, a 'second self,' as he creates his work" (+The Rhetoric of Fiction+ \ [Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1961\], 151). "As he writes," Booth argues, the author "creates not simply an ideal impersonal 'man in general' but an implied version of 'himself' that is different from the implied authors we meet in other men's works II (70 f.).

Booth quotes Kathleen Tillotson, who in turn quotes Dowden's comments on George Eliot as follows: what persists in the mind after reading one of her novels is not any of the characters but "'one who, if not the real George Eliot, is that second self who writes her books, and lives and speaks through them.' The 'second self,' he goes on, is 'more substantial than any mere human personality' and has 'fewer reserves'; while 'behind it, lurks well pleased the veritable historical self secure from impertinent observation and crit.icism'" (71, n. 8). Elsewhere Booth refers to "the core of norms and choices which I am calling the implied author" (74); and he states, 'the 'implied author' chooses, consciously or unconsciously, what we read; we infer him as an ideal, literary, created version of the real man; he is the sum of his own choices" (74 f.).

...