“Há um autor neste romance?” - A voz, a ação e os apelos do autor metaficcional

Abstract

Following a general trend of the human sciences, the arrival of post-modernity in literary studies has culminated in the so-called “death of the author”. With resonances that can be noted in some theorists as Roland Barthes (2004), Michel Foucault (2006, 1996), Umberto Eco (2005, 2003, 2004, 2001, 1986), Stanley Fish (2003, 1990) and Linda Hutcheon (2000; 1991; 1984), the post-modern distrust in meaning and the conviction that what a literary work means not only does not depend on the author but also finds in him an obstacle to the reader’s creativity are widely disseminated notions that have found their place in the metafiction theory by means of Hutcheon (1991; 1984), and Patrícia Waugh (1984). However, in this thesis, based on the assumptions of the hermeneutic realism theory, an interpretive approach according to which the meaning of a text is prior to its reading and is in many respects does not dependent on it, I propose to review the role of the author in metafictional novels, searching for appropriate readings for such novels. My theory is that author and writer are separate entities and that, among the four sources of enunciation of a novel (writer, author, narrator and character), the author is the one responsible for opening the work, activating the reading and actualizing the metafictionality. By means of a dialogue with theorists from several fields of the human sciences, I seek to defend the author from his opponents and show that, in the relationships he establishes with the character in novels of protagonist writer (as in A Rainha dos cárceres da Grécia, Bufo & Spallanzani and O Chalaça), the metafictional author addresses us, making communicative calls to us, and calling our attention to the fictionality of the text. So, what I do in this thesis is to show that since the attacks to the notions of person, intention and interpretive authoritarianism may even relate to the writer , but never to the author, he cannot and should not be killed. The author, I seek to prove, is a constitutive element of fictional language and is also the other with whom we communicate in reading metafictional novels. The result is that our interaction with such aesthetic person is essential in order that, through the distinction of the voices of the writer, narrator and character, we may be able to read these novels without making problematic interpretations.