- Implied author
The implied author is a concept of
literary criticism developed in the twentieth century. It is distinct from theauthor and thenarrator .The distinction from the author lies in that the implied author consists "solely" of what can be deduced from the work. The implications of the work may paint a rather different picture of the author than might be deduced from their real life. (Author
Saul Bellow once observed that it was not surprising, with all the revision that goes into a work, that an author might appear better on the page than in real life.)The distinction from the narrator is most clear in ironic works such as "
A Modest Proposal ", where the narrator cheerfully offers his proposal, but the implied author is as aware asJonathan Swift or the reader of the horror of what is proposed.It is important in a wide variety of literary criticism, including
structuralism ,deconstruction ism, andrhetoric -based criticism such as that ofWayne C. Booth .External links
*http://web.uvic.ca/wguide/Pages/LTNarrator.html
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