Character & Image
Image of the Author
The image of the author is the concentrated embodiment of a work's essence, the organizing center that unites the whole system of linguistic and compositional means into an artistic whole; the writer's 'second self,' present in the text. The concept of the image of the author was developed by the linguist Viktor Vinogradov in his works on the language of imaginative literature, emphasizing that the image of the author is not the writer as a biographical person but the bearer, created within the work, of a single creative consciousness, attitude, and evaluation. The image of the author manifests in the selection of linguistic means, in the tone of narration, in the attitude toward what is depicted, and in the composition. A kindred concept, the 'implied author,' was introduced by Wayne Booth ('The Rhetoric of Fiction') — the image of the author reconstructed by the reader from the text itself, distinct from both the real author and the narrator. Distinguishing the real author, the implied author, and the narrator is an important analytical tool.
Compare “Image of the Author” with another term
Meaning, origins and distinction — side by side.
Distinction
Both are forms of the author's consciousness in the text, but at different levels. The lyrical hero is an image WITHIN a lyric work or cycle, endowed with its own experience, character and fate, in whose name the utterance sounds. The image of the author is a broader, SUPRA-TEXTUAL organising consciousness uniting the whole system of means and manifesting in tone, selection and evaluation. The lyrical hero speaks inside the work; the image of the author structures it from without.
