Review essay
نویسندگان
چکیده
Worries about authors, their identity and authority, are as old as worries about Homer’s link to the Odyssey, Plato’s link to Socratic dialogues, or an unknowable poet’s link to the biblical Book of Job. Thankfully, such worries do not haunt us always. The inescapable impact of the old nurse who recognizes the scar, or the incautious request Socrates makes for free meals, or the Whirlwind evocation of vultures feasting on human blood, will, for the moment, banish, our more extended philosophical doubts, wonders, disappointments, perplexities or reveries – banish, that is, worries about a general theory of authorship. Yet the exile of such questions is never permanent, it seems. We seem to have a need for authors and origins, perhaps like a Kantian need of reason, or a need for a first cause, or a need to know who our fathers were. We crave captivating and truthful stories and also creative and steady authors. We posit them, like transcendental egos, even when we know absolutely nothing, biographically speaking, about who they might be. We want the Odyssey, but also want Homer, and want him to be more than a convenient filing device for libraries and bookstores. And we would like to have him be a single author, not just a convenient banner to announce the arrival of a traveling storytelling troupe that creates poems by committee. Is Kierkegaard the name of a storytelling troupe? Our biographical instinct will say No, and point to Copenhagen street addresses, copious journal records dated and on file, letters to contemporaries, descriptions of the author by neighbors and the irrefutable evidence of a weathered
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ورودعنوان ژورنال:
- Computers and the Humanities
دوره 18 شماره
صفحات -
تاریخ انتشار 1984