De abstracte auteur als spoor: Narratologie en poststructuralisme

Classical narratology is based on a model of hierarchically ordered and strictly distinguished narrative layers. In that model, the ‘abstract author’ (or ‘implied author’) is the overarching entity, securing the overall meaning of the text. Even in its postclassical guise, narratology has never known how to cope with poststructuralism, precisely because the latter questions hierarchies and the fixation of meaning. In this paper we want to open a new perspective on the concept of the abstract author, taking into account the findings of poststructuralism. We give a short history of the concept of the abstract author, and review some persistent problems with the notion, referring to Wolf Schmid’s Narratology. As a concrete demonstration, we read Willem Elsschot’s ‘Achter de schermen’, a paratext of his novel Tsjip, showing how an abstract author willy-nilly deconstructs itself. Finally, we put forward a poststructuralist interpretation of the concept, connecting it with the notion of singularity.