Reading the Contemporary Author

Narrative, Authority, Fictionality

Alison Gibbons, Elizabeth King

• Publisher: University of Nebraska Press
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN:
  9781496234612
• eBook ISBN:
  9781496238146
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Readers, literary critics, and theorists alike have long demonstrated an abiding fascination with the author, both as a real person—an artist and creator—and as a theoretical concept that shapes the way we read literary works. Whether anonymous, pseudonymous, or trending on social media, authors continue to be an object of critical and readerly interest. Yet theories surrounding authorship have yet to be satisfactorily updated to register the changes wrought on the literary sphere by the advent of the digital age, the recent turn to autofiction, and the current literary climate more generally. In Reading the Contemporary Author the contributors look back on the long history of theorizing the author and offer innovative new approaches for understanding this elusive figure.

Mapping the contours of the vast territory that is contemporary authorship, this collection investigates authorship in the context of narrative genres ranging from memoir and autobiographically informed texts to biofiction and novels featuring novelist narrators and characters. Bringing together the perspectives of leading scholars in narratology, cultural theory, literary criticism, stylistics, comparative literature, and autobiography studies, Reading the Contemporary Author demonstrates that a variety of interdisciplinary viewpoints and critical stances are necessary to capture the multifaceted nature of contemporary authorship.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Authorship in Literary Criticism and Narrative Theory
• Part 1. The Author on the World Stage: Social and Cultural Contexts
• Part 2. The Author in the Mirror: Auto-Authorship, Memoir, and the Narrating “I”
• Part 3. The Author on the Page: Representations of Authorship in Fiction
• Coda
• List of Contributors
• Index
• About the Author