何为“隐含作者”?

"隐含作者"是韦恩·布思在《小说修辞学》(1961)中提出来的一个重要理论概念。四十多年来,这一概念在国际叙事研究界被广为阐发应用,产生了很大影响。这一貌似简单的概念,实际上既涉及作者的编码又涉及读者的解码,涵盖了作者与读者的交流,然而西方学界却对之加以"单向"的理解,这引起了不少争论和混乱。西方学界的误解又可能在一定程度上导致了布思本人在近作中对这一概念自相矛盾的论述。本文追根溯源,阐明这一概念的实质内涵,探讨其在历史上不同走向的变义,旨在纠正误解,梳理混乱,以便更清晰地看到其历史价值和现实意义,并更准确地把握作者、文本与读者之间的关系。

What is "Implied Author"?

The concept of "implied author", which was put forward by Wayne Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction (1961), has enjoyed great influence on narrative studies. But because of the failure to see clearly its double concern with the encoding and the decoding processes, this concept has been misunderstood in different ways in the critical field. The historical "transformations" of the meaning of the concept may be partly responsible for certain new confusion in Booth's recent essay on this concept. The present study traces the history of interpretation of this concept, trying to clear up the confusion involved. Through clarifying the picture, we may get a better view of the concept's historical value and present significance, as well as of the relevant relation between the author, the text and readers.