Author-Creator and Author-Model: Possible (Dis)Connections between Mikhail Bakhtin and Umberto Eco

ABSTRACT

The Death of the Author was an essay published in 1967 by Roland Barthes. Two years later, Michel Foucault pronounced at a conference that the author had not died: he was only in an unceasing process of vanishing. However, for Mikhail Bakhtin and Umberto Eco, the author has always been and will always be alive in the text. On this aspect, Bakhtin and Eco had similar points of view when they sought to understand the essence of the author to whom Barthes referred. Mikhail Bakhtin had conceived of the author-creator; Umberto Eco had already elaborated the author-model. Given these possibilities, this article examines the differences and similarities between these two concepts: author-creator and author-model. When comparing them, we find that they are two active figures, who exert their creative and strategic forces in the text, and this functions as a relevant factor of approximation between these concepts.

KEYWORDS:
Author; Reader; Mikhail Bakhtin; Umberto Eco

RESUMO

A morte do autor foi um ensaio publicado em 1967 por Roland Barthes. Dois anos depois, Michel Foucault pronunciou em uma conferência que o autor não tinha morrido: estava apenas em um incessante processo de desaparecimento. Todavia, para Mikhail Bakhtin e Umberto Eco, o autor sempre esteve e estará vivo no texto. Sobre esse aspecto, o teórico russo e o escritor italiano tinham visões semelhantes quando procuravam compreender a essência do autor a que Barthes se referia. Nas suas principais características, Mikhail Bakhtin concebera o autor-criador; já Umberto Eco elaborara o autor-modelo. Frente a essas possibilidades, o objetivo deste artigo foi examinar as diferenças e as semelhanças entre esses dois conceitos: autor-criador e autor-modelo. Ao compará-los, constatamos que são duas figuras ativas, que exercem suas forças criadoras e estratégicas no texto. Este, por sua vez, funciona como relevante fator de aproximação entre o autor-modelo e o autor-criador.

PALAVRAS-CHAVE:
Autor; Leitor; Mikhail Bakhtin; Umberto Eco

Introduction

Nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will have its homecoming festival.¹

Mikhail Bakhtin

The text is there. ²

Umberto Eco

In the 1969 conference, What is an Author? delivered to the Société Française de Philosophie, Michel Foucault proclaimed, with prophetic insight, that the figure of the author was disappearing. He described it as a phenomenon that “has been a constantly recurring event, is subject to a series of transcendental barriers” (Foucault, 1998, p. 209),³ which erases the individuality of the author and gives rise to the author function, a specific manifestation of the subject function. Meanwhile, two years prior to Foucault’s address, Roland Barthes already proclaimed in his provocative essay The Death of the Author, that “the author was dead.”

Barthes considered literary criticism as the agent responsible for the “murder of the author,” indifferent to the fact that this simultaneously condemned it to destruction:

[...] it is not surprising, therefore, that historically, the reign of the Author has also been that of the Critic, nor that criticism (even the new criticism) is now shaken just as the Author (Barthes, 2004, p. 63).⁴

This means that while the author dies, contemporary criticism does not want to perish alongside; instead, to survive, it embraces the reader as its replacement. A reader whom:

Classic criticism has never concerned itself with; for it, there is no other person in literature than the one who writes. We are beginning to reduce seduction by those types of antitheses with which polite society superbly counters in support of precisely what it removes itself from, ignores, suffocates, or destroys. We know that to give writing its future, it is necessary to overthrow the myth: the birth of the reader must be at the cost of the death of the Author (Barthes 2004, p. 64). ⁵

Notice that, despite these preliminary considerations, this study will not adhere to this critical line that believes in the death of the author rather analyzing the reader in its place - its “substitute,” according to Barthes (2004). Nor will it advocate the actu continuu disappearance of the author and the emergence of the author function. The goal is to attest to the life of this elusive figure, which has provoked many heated debates and has been conceptualized, characterized, and described in various ways.

In short, this paper aims to find the similarities and differences between two author concepts: the author-creator, established by Mikhail Bakhtin, and the author-model, conceived by Umberto Eco. From the Russian theorist, we will draw upon works such as Aesthetics of Verbal Creativity (2011), Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (2016),⁶ Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity (1990),⁷ and Notes on Literature, Culture and Human Sciences (2017). From the Italian writer and philosopher, we will reference insights from works such as Six Walks in Fictional Woods (1994), The Limits of Interpretation (2015), and The Role of the Reader (2004).

This said, we will analyze specific productions of both theorists in search of the essence of the two terms, to later make the necessary approximations, aiming to highlight common points and/or possible disagreements.

1 Author-Creator: Mikhail Bakhtin and the Author as Creator

For Bakhtin, the author does not cease to exist, and its death is not proclaimed in his texts. As Paulo Bezerra explains:

[the] concepts of primary author, secondary author, and author image, inherent in the structure of the literary text, especially the novel, are Bakhtin’s responses to the so-called authorship crisis (Bezerra, 2019, p. 133).⁸

Therefore, those who wish to defend the death of the author can rely on any scholar who supports this idea, except Bakhtin. In contrast, for the Russian theorist, the author is so cherished and relevant, that he conceptualizes different terms to capture its true essence.

Although these concepts are all interconnected and correlated, to understand the author-creator, we must first delve into other Bakhtinian conceptualizations, moving beyond those mentioned by Bezerra (2019).

The first term to be examined is the author’s image. It is important to clarify that the concept originally emerged from the works of Viktor Vinogradov (apudBezerra, 2023), initially refuted by Bakhtin with the argument that “the author is the creator of all images in the work and, therefore, cannot be an image”⁹ (Bezerra, 2023, p. 299). However, he later adopted the term “as the equivalent of a secondary author”¹⁰ (Bezerra, 2023, p. 299).

After adopting this concept, the Russian theorist brings forth the image of the author in some works, such as in the rhetorical question “To what degree can one speak about the author’s image?” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 109),¹¹ posed in the chapter titled “The Problem of the Text in Linguistics, Philology, and the Human Sciences: An Experiment in Philosophical Analysis,” found in the book Speech Genres and Other Late Essays (1986). To address his very question, Bakhtin states that the author:

We find the author (perceive, comprehend, sense, and feel him) in any work of art. [...] Strictly speaking, the author’s image is contradictio in adjecto. The so-called author’s image is, to be sure, a special type of image, distinct from other images in the work, but is an image, and has its own author who created it (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 109; emphasis added by the author).¹²

Thus, the author is experienced in everything as a pure representational principle, but not as a represented (visible) image. In this way, this author - who creates the image of the author - is, in Bakhtin’s theory, the pure author (Bakhtin, 1986), the bearer of the purely representational principle, who sketches in the text the image of a being; this, in turn, will be recognized by the reader as the author. However, its image will not be fully depicted within the work by the pure author. It will only be “partially depicted [...] who enters as part of the work” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 109).¹³

Related to these two¹⁴ authorial instances, there exists yet another higher figure, which Bakhtin terms the author-man, i.e., the specific object of representation from which measurement and determination are derived:

[the] image of a narrator in a story is distinct from the I, the image of the hero of an autobiographical work (autobiography, confessions, diaries, memoirs, and so forth), the autobiographical hero, the lyrical hero, and so forth (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 109; emphasis added by the author).¹⁵

In other words, the author-man is the empirical author, the social being who underpins, structures, and solidifies the work, but who, at the same time,

[...] can never become one of the images of the work itself. The image is in the work as a whole, and to the highest degree, but this core can never become a constituent figural (objective) part of the work (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 110).¹⁶

In short, the author-man is the genuine “natura creans et non creata (nature creating and not created)” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 110);¹⁷ the primary author is the “natura naturata et creans (nature engendered and creating)” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 110);¹⁸ and finally, the author represented as an image is the “natura creata (created nature)” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 110).¹⁹

We understand, therefore, that the author-man (i.e., the real, empirical author) is the reference point, the filter through which all creation by the pure author passes. However, the pure author cannot be confused with the author-man, even though it depends on him for its existence in the entirety of the work.

Still, within this complex universe of creative strata articulated by Bakhtin, there exists the portrayed silhouette of the authorial image represented in the text. A narrator or character who lays claim to the authorship of the story. A third entity that acts as a representation of the authorial figure within the text. Therefore, it is neither the author-man nor the pure author, for these do not enter into the work.

Given this clarification and differentiation concerning the essence of the concepts of author-man, pure author, and author image, we will now explore two other definitions also developed by Bakhtin and referenced in the citation of Paulo Bezerra (2019): the concepts of primary author and secondary author.

In the book Notes on Literature, Culture and Human Sciences (2017),²⁰ particularly in the text “From Notes Made in 1970-1971,”²¹ we find a few lines which the Russian theorist dedicates to elucidating what are, for him, the figures of primary author and secondary author. The first is the uncreated author, the natura creans et non creata responsible for creating the figure of the secondary author; the latter is a natura creata. In the words of Mikhail Bakhtin:

The primary author cannot be an image. He eludes any figurative representation. When we try to imagine the primary author figuratively, we ourselves are creating his image, that is, we ourselves become the primary author of the image. The creating image (i.e., the primary author) can never enter into any image that he has created (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 148; emphasis added by the author).²²

Dostoevsky played a pivotal role in developing the figures of primary and secondary author within the novelistic genre. While writing Demons, a novel that stemmed from tragic event in the tumultuous Russian political scene of 1869 - the assassination of a Russian student by leaders of the underground group Narodnaia Rasprava (People’s Reprisal) - Dostoevsky faced a crucial challenge: to reconcile the real-life events reported in the Russian press - related to the trial and the court’s verdicts - with the literary form of depicting these events as believably as possible. The solution found by the Russian writer was to formulate an author detached from the narration and an author inherent within the textual structure.

As Paulo Bezerra (2018) argues, this creation marked a revolutionary turn in the novel genre, further complicating the debate on the death of the author:

[...] in drafting what would become Demons, he [Dostoevsky] initially experienced intense tension between the effort to render the facts with utmost concreteness and challenge of representing them in the most plausible form possible. This tension was resolved through a compositional solution that unveiled a revolutionary conception of the novelistic form and anticipates the discussion of a theme that would be widely debated in the 20th century: the problematization of the status [death] of the author. Fully aware that achieving the highest degree of plausibility would require him to distance himself from the narration, Dostoevsky adopts the role that Mikhail Bakhtin refers to as the primary author, that is, the real figure who creates the work but remains outside of it, and also crafts a secondary author, or an author image (which is, in fact, an author immanent to the structure of the work), that is, someone who is part of the work and from within it manages the construction and direction of the narrative (Bezerra, 2018, p. 692; author italics, bold added by us).²³

This highlights the similarity between the author-man and the primary author, the image of the author and the secondary author, while also reinforcing the previously noted aspect that Bakhtinian concepts are always interrelated. Among these relationships, what links the image of the author, and the secondary author is the fact that they are natura create. They are creations of the authorial figure within the text. What connects the author-man, and the primary author is their being flesh-and-blood individuals, existing in the world and authoring the text. Examples include Machado de Assis, born in Morro do Livramento on June 21, 1839, who wrote Dom Casmurro; or the Ukrainian, Chaya Pinkhasivna Lispector, who upon immigrating to Brazil adopted the name Clarice Lispector and wrote The Hour of the Star.²⁴ Paulo Bezerra (2023, p. 299) shares this understanding when he states:

based on my experience as a professor and scholar of literary theory, I regard the secondary author or author’s image as the author immanent to the work’s structure. This author remains unaffected by any upheavals in novelistic structures and conceptions, as exemplified by the late author Brás Cubas, who persists as an author over a century after the death of Machado de Assis, his creator and primary author (Bezerra, 2023, p. 299; author’s emphasis). ²⁵

Faced with these reflections, what then would be the author-creator in Bakhtinian literary studies? Would it be the author-man/primary author or the author’s image/secondary author? According to Bakhtin himself, in the essay “Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences,”²⁶ from his work Notes on Literature, Culture and Human Sciences (2017),²⁷ the “author-creator cannot be created in that sphere in which he himself appears as the creator. This is to natura naturans and not natura naturata” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 161).²⁸

In other words, the author-creator, as a natura naturans (generating nature), is an element of the work that, according to Bakhtin - in the chapter “The Problem of the Author” from the work Art and Answerability (1990)²⁹ - is situated “on the boundary of the world he is bringing into being as the active creator of this world, for his intrusion into that world destroys its aesthetic stability” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 191).³⁰ Therefore, he cannot be equated with the author-man/primary author, nor can he be compared to the author’s image/secondary author; for these exist either outside the work - as living individuals situated in the world, or within the work, as visible images to the reader.

It is therefore understood that the author-creator is a boundary figure, present in the text as a creative force (not as a visible image) necessary for the reader, “whose relationship to the author is not a relationship of him as an individual, as another human being, as a hero, as a determinate entity in being, but rather a relationship to him as a principle that needs to be followed” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 207)³¹ emphasis added by the author).

To further unravel this figure of the author-creator, we dedicate this moment to investigating what Bakhtin understands by creating. A term intertwined with the figure of the author and the genesis of the text, which therefore carries a different meaning in Bakhtinian theory compared to other scholars. For Bakhtin, to create:

[...] does not mean to invent Every creative act is bound by its own special laws, as well as by the laws of the material with which it works. Every creative act is determined by its object and by the structure of its object, and therefore permits no arbitrariness; in essence it invents nothing, but only reveals what is already present in the object itself. It is possible to arrive at a correct thought, but this thought has its own logic and therefore cannot be invented, that is, cannot be fabricated from beginning to end. Likewise an artistic image, of whatever sort, cannot be invented, since it has its own artistic logic, its own norm-generating order. Having set a specific task for himself, the creator must submit himself to this order (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 65, our emphasis).³²

Therefore, the act of creating is bound to the limits and determinations of the object used, as it is by unveiling what the object offers that the subject creates “what is already present in the object itself” (Bakhtin, 1984, p. 65).³³ Thus, it is not an act of invention that comes from or respects nothing. Rather, it possesses an internal logic, obeying both its laws of creation and the laws of the material upon which it works.

As examples of creation, Bakhtin revisits the very heroes of Dostoevsky, since, to develop his characters, the Russian writer chose a subject format and a mode of representation already present in the world. Thus, Maria Borissovna - a seamstress who committed suicide in Moscow - underlies the creation of the heroine (also a suicide) in A Gentle Creature. Similarly, S.G. Nechayev - a student and revolutionary who murdered his party colleague in Russia in 1869 - supports the character of Pyotr Stepanovitch (a character from Demons), the leader of a progressive group of five individuals, whom he controls with insight and death.

By connecting to the internal logic of the selected material, Dostoevsky does not deviate from what it offers. On the contrary, he questions and provokes it to artistically craft his works. Or, as the Russian writer declares, “this personage introduces himself and his outlook on life, and tries, as it were, to elucidate the causes that brought about, inevitably brought about, his appearance in our midst” (Dostoevsky, 1864, p. 7).³⁴

Bakhtin further expresses his understanding of creation in Art and Answerability (1990), in the chapter “The Problem of the Author’s Relationship to the Hero.”³⁵ He affirms in this book - when arguing that the author’s creative, productive, and principled character fully responds to the character and their inquiries - that “Indeed, any relationship founded on a necessary principle has a creative, productive character.” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 5),³⁶ but only within certain constraints. This implies that, ultimately, the realm of invention and non-creation relies on the fact that, by distancing:

[...] our principled relationship to things and to the world - only then are we confronted by the determinateness of an object as something foreign and independent. The object’s determinateness begins to disintegrate for us and we ourselves fall under the domination of the contingent (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 5).³⁷

From this Bakhtinian perspective, the author-creator would be the bearer of action/force, creating solely from what already exists within the object, i.e., its formative substance. The author-creator does not invent but adheres to the laws of the act of creation and of the object used to conceive the text. The role of the author-creator is to serve as:

[...] the bearer and sustainer of the intentely active unity of a consummated whole, (the whole of a hero and the whole of a work)

which is transgredient³⁸ to each and every one of its particular moments or constituent features (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 12).³⁹

In other words, the author-creator is the creative consciousness, which, at the boundary, actively conceives the text and the characters. For instance, when Dostoevsky was sitting at his desk, penning the pages of his various works, he acted as an author-creator; when he stopped writing or completed a work, he became the author-man/primary author.

An important aspect of Bakhtinian theory, for understanding the term create - also essential for comprehending the author-creator - is the “fundamental, aesthetically productive relationship” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 14)⁴⁰ of the author’s distance (extra-location).⁴¹ This relation of distance, which is challenging,⁴² ensures diverse ways of conceiving and creating characters. As Bakhtin describes:

[...] the author’s outside position in relation to the hero, the author’s loving removal of himself from the field of the hero’s life, his clearing of the whole field of life for the hero and his existence, and - the compassionate understanding and consummation of the event of the hero’s life in terms of real cognition and ethical action by a detached, unparticipating beholder (Bakhtin, 1990, pp. 14-15).⁴³

Therefore, it is through this ethical and cognitive distance that the author:

[...] experiences the hero’s life in value-categories that are completely different from those in which he experiences his own life and the life of other people living together with him (the actual participants in the unitary and open ethical event of being); he determines the sense of the hero’s life in a value-context that is completely different (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 15).⁴⁴

Based on these words from Bakhtin, we can infer that the author, or rather, the author-creator, does not disappear or die in/outside the work. Instead, he is also a consequence of the work - a creative pulse - which, though it cannot be created within the sphere where he is the creator, leaves traces within his creation, making him perceptible within it and never outside it. As stated, in Bakhtin, the author lives fully, merely assuming different conceptualizations and distances in relation to the text (the universe he has created).

2 Author-Model: Umberto Eco and the Author as Strategy and Hypothesis

In 1874, Machado de Assis published his second novel, The Hand and the Glove (1962).⁴⁵ The book tells the story of Guiomar, a strong-willed woman, and her different relationships with three men: Jorge, Estêvão, and Luís Alves.

As a teenager, Estêvão falls in love with Guiomar. However, due to his weak and vacillating character - being more inclined towards defeats than victories - he relinquishes his love. Jorge then loves her, but his love is “childish and lascivious,” as defined by Machado de Assis himself. Luís Alves, who grows to admire her through prolonged acquaintance, is a resolute and ambitious man, unlike the other two. Of the three suitors, Guiomar chooses the last, the only one who could penetrate the defenses of her strong personality and reach her heart.

As can be seen, the story’s premise is quite simple, without much complexity in the plot. However, within this romantic narrative created by Machado de Assis, there is an interesting peculiarity, a distinctive trait of the Brazilian writer: the author’s interventions. To guide the reader along the possible paths of reading, he [Machado de Assis] inserts himself into the narrative through a play of insinuations, annotations, and hints. This is quite evident in passages such as:

Guiomar said this with such grace and simplicity that her godmother could not help but laugh, and the melancholy was entirely dispelled. The lunch bell called them to other matters, and us too, dear reader. While the three have lunch, let us glance back at the past and see who this Guiomar was, so gentle, so sought-after and so unique, as Mrs. Oswald put it (Assis, 1962, p. 58; emphasis added). ⁴⁶

For some minutes now, Guiomar had not been attending to her interlocutor; she had her sharp, trained ear focused on her godmother’s group. No one was observing her, but it is the privilege of the novelist and the reader to see on the face of a character what others do not or cannot see. On Guiomar’s face, we can read not only the tedium that unanimous opinion against the baroness’ project caused her but also the expression of an imperious and willful spirit (Assis, 1962, p. 154; emphasis added). ⁴⁷

I said-took pity-and this word alone, unaccompanied by anything else, may lead the reader to believe that during those days when we lost sight of her, Guiomar had become an unhappy creature. Nothing of the sort; the situation was the same, not as before Jorge’s letter, but the same as on the night when she received it, a situation certainly quite gloomy and oppressive for a heart that fears being constrained, but not desperate or anguishing (Assis, 1962, p. 163; emphasis added).⁴⁸

If we were to follow the advice of the Japanese samurai Miyamoto Musashi - and move “from the superficial to the deep, seeking to reach the depths of things”⁴⁹ (Musashi, 2015, p. 51) - would we confirm the strategy termed by Umberto Eco as the author-model in this novel written by Assis? We believe so. The aforementioned passages are proof of this. However, this study does not pursue this intent,⁵⁰ as we turn to the example of Machado’s work to begin the discussion on the concept of the author-model established by Umberto Eco.

Like the allegorical journey to Hell (in the Divine Comedy), where the Roman poet Virgil guides Dante, reading the book Seis passeios pelos bosques da ficção [Six Walks in the Fictional Woods] (1994) led us through the thoughts of Umberto Eco, and in our investigative paths, we mapped out different reflections developed by the Italian theorist and writer. Among the subjects explored by Umberto Eco, we delved into the concept of the author-model, which the writer defines as:

[...] the voice that speaks affectionately (or imperiously, or disarmingly) to us [as readers], that wants us by its side. This voice is manifested as a narrative strategy, a set of instructions that are given to us step by step, and which we must follow when we decide to act as model readers (Eco, 1994, p. 21). ⁵¹

The author-model is a textual strategy, a “linguistic object that the Model Readers have before their eyes (which allows them to proceed regardless of the intentions of the empirical author)” (Eco, 2015, p. 95) and which guides them in their interpretive journeys. In this sense, its role is to direct the act of reading of the model reader, aiming for them to succeed in a particular narrative thread, especially since “every history has more than one thread, every thread is a story of division” (Vuong, 2019, p. 18).⁵²

Thus, we understand that Umberto Eco considers the reader to be of utmost importance, as according to the Italian writer, without the reader the “set of conditions for success, textually established, that must be met for a text to be fully actualized in its potential content”⁵³ (Eco, 2004, p. 45, author’s emphasis) is not materialized, which would result in the death of the text. The reader is, therefore, the counterpoint of the author-model, who must actualize the allowed potential(s) in reading and play the suggested textual game.

After this immersion in Umberto Eco’s thoughts, we understand that both the author and the model reader are textual strategies, which, through cooperation and constant updating, survive only in the text. Although the author-model is a mutable strategy, insinuating itself in different ways, it will always exist even “in the most trivial of pornographic novels, telling us that the descriptions presented are meant to stimulate our imagination and our physical reactions”⁵⁴ (Eco, 1994, p. 23). The role of the model reader in this scenario is to capture these changes.

To further detail and clarify this point, we return to the novel A mão e a luva (1962), by Machado de Assis. As mentioned, there is a strategy (author-model) in this novel, which “shamelessly reveals itself to readers”⁵⁵ (Eco, 1994, p. 23) to pique their curiosity and supervise their reading. This is evident, for example, in the passage:

But what was he thinking about, if it was not Estêvão, nor the legal files, nor, for now, his electoral hopes? Patience, dear reader; you shall know shortly. Make do with the news that, after twenty minutes of that abstraction, Luís Alves returned to himself (Assis, 1962, p. 145; emphasis added). ⁵⁶

However, if we take Clarice Lispector, another prominent figure in Brazilian literature, as a second parameter, we will observe in some of her texts that the strategy (the author-model) does not reveal itself so explicitly. It becomes murkier in the narrative game.

In Clarice’s short story Uma história de tanto amor [A Story of so Great Love], included in the book Felicidade clandestina [Clandestine Happiness] (1998), the trickeries designed for the readers begin in the first words, which evoke the atmosphere of fairy tales: “Once upon a time there was a little girl who watched the chickens so closely [...]”⁵⁷ (Lispector, 1998, p. 140). However, if - due to these initial words - the reader believes they are reading a fairy tale or a simple childlike narrative with a happy ending, their expectations are shattered in the same sentence with: “[...] that she knew their souls and their intimate yearnings”⁵⁸ (Lispector, 1992, p. 131). Clarice thus plays with the readers, and they “cannot help but fall [...] [for this] hugely catoptric⁵⁹ trick,”⁶⁰ (Eco, 1994, p. 26) that deceives them.

Returning to the study of the essence of the author-model concept brought by Umberto Eco, the Italian writer further argues in his writings that there is a significant element intimately linked to the narrative strategy, contributing to how the author-model manifests. According to Umberto Eco, this important element is the hypothesis. It enters the text through the cooperation established between the empirical author and the model reader, the empirical reader and the author-model. Thus, on one side we have:

[...] as the subject of the textual enunciation, the empirical author formulates a hypothesis of a Model Reader and, by translating this hypothesis into terms of his strategy, places himself as an author in the capacity of the subject of the statement, in equally ‘strategic’ terms, as a mode of textual operation. But, on the other hand, the empirical reader too, as the concrete subject of cooperative acts, must also formulate a hypothesis of the Author for themselves, deducing it precisely from the textual strategy data (Eco, 2004, p. 46). ⁶¹

Among the possible hypotheses that can be formulated, the Italian theorist believes that the one formulated by the empirical reader is the most secure and plausible, as he argues in the passage when he mentions:

[the] hypothesis formulated by the empirical reader regarding its own Model-Author seems more guaranteed than that which the empirical author formulates about the Model-Reader itself. Indeed, the latter must postulate something that does not yet actually exist and materialize it as a series of textual operations. The former, instead, deduces a type-image of something previously verified as an act of enunciation and is textually present in the statement (Eco, 2004, p. 46). ⁶²

The empirical reader, therefore, has the guarantee of the text itself, i.e., of the textual presence where the author’s strategy is woven. The empirical author, in turn, must deduce, from thin air, how their probable model-reader will be. For Gerson Tenório dos Santos:

This suggests that the empirical author, acting as the speaker within the text, conceived a certain model reader. By doing so, the empirical author shapes the text as a strategic framework wherein he asserts himself as the authorial voice. On the other hand, the empirical reader is also expected to develop their understanding of the Author through the textual strategies presented. Eco believes the crucial element lies in the interplay of textual strategies that frame the interactions between the author and model reader, and not the intentions that can be attributed to the empirical author and reader. Textual cooperation is a phenomenon that takes place between two discursive strategies and not between individual subjects (Santos, 2007, p. 101; emphasis added). ⁶³

Summarizing the words of Santos and synthesizing the essence of the concepts developed by Eco, the model-reader and model-author are textual/discursive strategies that are actualized through collaboration within the text alone, because “[between] the unreachable intention of the author and the debatable intention of the reader, there lies the transparent intention of the text which objects to an unsustainable interpretation” (Eco, 2015, p. 91). ⁶⁴ Thus, regardless of qualities and styles, the text is the potential space for these textual strategies, specifically the model-author and model-reader.

3 From Bakhtin to Eco: Exploring Similarities and Differences between the Author-Creator and Author-Model

At this stage of the analysis, we delve into comparing and contrasting the concepts of the author-creator and author-model, thereby examining the relationships and distinctions between the definitions provided by Mikhail Bakhtin and Umberto Eco, respectively.

Bakhtin initially presents the author-creator not as a mere individual but as a natura naturans (a generating nature). This concept views the author as an uncreated force that creates the entirety of the work or text, which is then explored by the reader. Bakhtin furthers this discussion in “The Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity” from Art and Answerability (2023), stating that “[the] author is authoritative and indispensable for the reader” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 207), ⁶⁵ who should see him as “not a relationship to him as an individual, as another human being, as a hero, as a determinate entity in being, but rather a relationship to him as a principle that needs to be followed” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 207).⁶⁶

In this context, the author-creator, as termed by Bakhtin, is not, therefore, distinct from the model-author of Eco, as it too can be understood as a textual strategy that is actualized through reading. Thus, for both Eco and Bakhtin, the author-creator and the model-author are entities that exist solely within the text, whether in the form of style - “Yes, indeed, ultimately the model-author can also be recognized as a style” (Eco, 1994, p. 21) ⁶⁷ - or as a principle/strategy guiding the interpretative steps of the reader.

Conversely, the reader is the figure that slightly diverges between the two theorists. While in Eco’s reflections, the reader is always valued, becoming a symmetrical counterpart⁶⁸ to the model-author, Bakhtin’s studies do not offer an equivalent designation for the model-reader. Nonetheless, even without developing a specific concept or term for the reader, the Russian theorist portrays him as an active, not passive, figure, responsible for actively following the principles set by the author-creator to uncover the meanings of the text. As Paulo Bezerra states in the postscript “Bakhtin: The Grand Finale,”⁶⁹ from the book Notes on Literature, Culture, and Human Sciences (2017):⁷⁰

In Bakhtin’s discussion of the novel, he introduces the concept of ‘extra localization’ to explain the external position of the author-creator in relation to the world of the characters. This idea establishes two entirely different realities: one where characters exist without any author or reader, and another where the author and reader exist without the characters or their defining circumstances. Bakhtin further develops this concept throughout his work and, in “Fragments From the Years of 1970-1971,” we encounter it described as ‘distance’ or ‘distancing’ when describing the position of the reader. A reader seen as extra localized and distanced in space and time in relation to old contexts that established the foundation of the literary works, meaning that, from an external position, across time, the reader interprets these works from the perspective and context of their own culture, thereby engaging in a dialogue between cultures that enhances and reviews the symbolic value they emanate (Bezerra, 2017, p. 92; emphasis added). ⁷¹

Thus, by being active in reading and interpreting - from a distant cultural, temporal, and spatial position aimed at refreshing the event of the work - the reader proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin resembles that of Umberto Eco. On the other hand, the model-reader is also an active figure, seeking “the intentions virtually contained” (Eco, 2004, p. 46) ⁷² in the text, as this is how he actively projects, hypothesizes, and updates the textual strategies in collaboration with the model-author.

Final Considerations

We conclude this study believing in the approximation between the author-creator proposed by Mikhail Bakhtin and the author-model proposed by Umberto Eco while acknowledging subtle differences between the two. It is essential to recognize that both definitions stem from distinct individual perceptions, readings, interpretations, and contexts that shape specific perspectives on the figure of the author. In fact, we understand that the convergence between these two figures is, in our understanding, fundamentally rooted in the text.

Bakhtin describes the author-creator as the natura naturans (generative nature), “the bearer and sustainer of the intently active unity of a consummated whole” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 12)⁷³ of the text, which leaves an indelible mark within his creation. Thus, the author-creator is encountered and should be sought within the text as a guiding principle that the reader is compelled to follow, given that, “For the reader, the author inside a work is the sum total of the creative principles that have to be actualized” (Bakhtin, 1990, pp. 207-208).⁷⁴ Similarly, at its core, the model-author proposed by Eco is a strategy that inherently relies on and exists within the text, for it is through the text that it is “fully actualized in its potential content” (Eco, 2004, p. 45) ⁷⁵ by the model-reader.

Therefore, the similarity between the two concepts lies in their dependence on and existence solely within the text. Within it, the author-creator, extra localized at its boundary - creates the artistic work, concludes the arc of the characters, and guides the reader. Similarly, within the text, the model-author exists as a textual strategy to be pursued and fulfilled by the model-reader.

From our perspective, the essence of the reader, as thought by both theorists, is also similar. Although we do not find an equivalent to the model-reader proposed by Eco in the natura naturans presented by Bakhtin, both theorists consider the reader as an active entity who - by following the “creative principles that have to be actualized” (Bakhtin, 1990, p. 208)⁷⁶ - recaptures, “with the closest approximation possible, the codes of the emitter” (Eco, 2004, p. 47). ⁷⁷ The fusion of these two figures is found in their interpretation, which is both active and creative, for “Creative understanding continues creativity […]” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 142)⁷⁸ of the author, in this case, the text itself.

Thus, distancing themselves from the pessimistic views of Barthes and Foucault, theorists Bakhtin and Eco affirm the existence, persistence, and significance of the author, as he fully embodies both model-author and author-creator: creative and strategic essences that forge the text in its potential interpretations. As both state “the text is there” (Eco, 2015, p. 93) ⁷⁹ and within it “Nothing is absolutely dead: every meaning will have its homecoming festival.” (Bakhtin, 1986, p. 170).⁸⁰

• 1
  BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. The Problem of the Text. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee. Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986, p. 170.
• 2
  In Portuguese: “O texto aí está.”
• 3
  FOUCAULT, Michel. What Is an Author: Aesthetics, Method, and Epistemology. Translated by James V. Harari. New York: The New Press, 1998, pp. 205-222.
• 4
  In Portuguese: “[...] não é de admirar, portanto, que, historicamente, o reinado do Autor tenha sido também o do Crítico, nem tampouco que a crítica (mesmo a nova) esteja hoje abalada ao mesmo tempo que o Autor” (Barthes, 2004, p. 63).
• 5
  In Portuguese: “[...] jamais a crítica clássica se ocupou dele; para ela não há outro homem na literatura a não ser o que escreve. Estamos começando a não mais nos deixar engodar por essas espécies de antífrases com as quais a boa sociedade retruca soberbamente a favor daquilo que ela precisamente afasta, ignora, sufoca ou destrói; sabemos que, para devolver à escritura o seu futuro, é preciso inverter o mito: o nascimento do leitor deve pagar-se com a morte do Autor” (Barthes 2004, p. 64).
• 6
  BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee. Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986.
• 7
  BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays. Translated by Vadim Liapunov. Edited by Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990. pp. 4-256.
• 8
  In Portuguese: “[os] conceitos de autor primário, autor secundário e imagem de autor como imanentes à estrutura do texto literário, especialmente do romance, é a resposta de Bakhtin para a chamada crise da autoria” (Bezerra, 2019, p. 133)
• 9
  In Portuguese: “sob o argumento de que o autor é o criador de todas as imagens da obra, logo, não pode ser imagem” (Bezerra, 2023, p. 299)
• 10
  In Portuguese: “como equivalente de autor secundário” (Bezerra, 2023, p. 299)
• 11
  BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. The Problem of the Text. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee. Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986, pp. 103-131.
• 12
  For reference, see footnote 11.
• 13
  For reference, see footnote 11.
• 14
  Citing Ferraresi, Umberto Eco also identifies three phases or stages of the author: “Ferraresi (1987) suggested that between the empirical author and the Model-Author (...) there exists a third figure, a somewhat spectral one, which he termed the Threshold-Author, or author ‘on the threshold’, the threshold between the intention of a given human being and the linguistic intention exhibited by a textual strategy” (Eco, 2015, p. 85).
• 15
  For reference, see footnote 11.
• 16
  For reference, see footnote 11.
• 17
  For reference, see footnote 11.
• 18
  For reference, see footnote 11.
• 19
  For reference, see footnote 11.
• 20
  In Portuguese: Notas sobre literatura, cultura e ciências humanas (edição brasileira).
• 21
  BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. From Notes Made in 1970-1971. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee. Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986, pp. 132-158.
• 22
  For reference, see footnote 21.
• 23
  In Portuguese: “[...] ao criar o esboço do que seria Os demônios, ele [Dostoiévski] vive inicialmente uma forte tensão entre o empenho de dar concretude máxima aos fatos e a concepção da forma mais verossímil possível de representá-los. E essa tensão é superada por uma solução composicional que revela uma concepção revolucionária da forma romanesca e antecipa a discussão de um tema que seria muito debatido no século XX: a problematização do estatuto [morte] do autor. Imbuído da plena consciência de que, para atingir o máximo grau de verossimilhança, terá de distanciar-se da narração, Dostoiévski assume a posição daquele que Mikhail Bakhtin chama de autor primário, isto é, aquela figura real que cria a obra, mas está fora dela, e cria também um autor secundário, ou imagem de autor (que é, de fato, um autor imanente à estrutura da obra), ou seja, alguém que integra a obra e de seu interior responde pela construção e condução da narrativa” (Bezerra, 2018, p. 692, itálico do autor, negrito nosso).
• 24
  LISPECTOR, Clarice. The Hour of the Star. Translated by Giovanni Pontiero. New York: New Directions paperbook, 1992.
• 25
  In Portuguese: “[à] luz de minha experiência de professor e estudioso de teoria literária, considero autor secundário ou imagem de autor como autor imanente à estrutura da obra, que nela permanece à margem de quaisquer abalos de estruturas e concepções romanescas, isto é, incólume, como é, por exemplo, o caso do defunto autor Brás Cubas, que sobrevive como autor mais de um século após a morte de Machado de Assis, seu criador e autor primário” (Bezerra, 2023, p. 299, itálico do autor).
• 26
  BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Toward a Methodology for the Human Sciences. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Speech Genres and Other Late Essays. Translated by Vern W. McGee. Edited by Caryl Emerson and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1986. pp. 159-172.
• 27
  In Portuguese: Notas sobre Literatura, cultura e ciências humanas (edição brasileira).
• 28
  For reference, see footnote 25.
• 29
  BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. The Problem of the Author. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Art and Answerability: Early Philosophical Essays. Translated by Vadim Liapunov. Edited by Michael Holquist and Vadim Liapunov. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990.
• 30
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 31
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 32
  BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. The Hero, and the Position of the Author with Regard to the Hero, in Dostoevsky’s Art. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail Mikhailovich. Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics. Translated and edited by Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. pp. 47-77.
• 33
  For reference, see footnote 31.
• 34
  DOSTOEVSKY, Fyodor. Notes from Underground. In: DOSTOEVSKY, Fyodor. Notes from Underground. Translated by Jessie Coulson. Penguin Classics, 1864. p. 7.
• 35
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 36
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 37
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 38
  As noted by Paulo Bezerra in the chapter O autor e a personagem [Author and Hero] in Estética da criação verbal [Aesthetics of Verbal Creation] [BAKHTIN, M. Estética da criação verbal. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2011], “Bakhtin uses this term derived from the Latin transgredior, which means, among other things, to go beyond, to cross, to exceed, to transgress” (Bezerra, 2011, p. 7). In this sense, transgredient refers to the I-other relation, essentially the I, opening itself to the other and going beyond the boundaries of particularism toward a more universal vision. However, as cited in the chapter “Methodology for the Human Sciences” from Aesthetics of Verbal Creation (2011), we cannot forget that even so, the I hides “an inner nucleus that cannot be absorbed, consumed, in relation to which only pure disinterestedness is possible; in opening itself to the other, the individual always remains also for itself” (Bakhtin, 2011, p. 394).
• 39
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 40
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 41
  For Bakhtin, in the chapter “The Problem of the Author’s Relationship to the Hero” from Art and Answerability (1990), the author needs to find an ideal point outside the work to conclude and consummate the character, that is, an “outsideness in space, in time, in values and meanings, which allows one to encompass the whole of the character, [...] to make him or her into a whole” (Bakhtin, 2023, p. 56; emphasis added).
• 42
  Bakhtin makes it clear that the distance between the author and the character leads to tension. Depending on the position the author wishes to assume in this relation and what they want from the character, the tension increases, and the battle becomes fierce. In short, “the position is conquered, andoften the struggle is not for life, but for death” (Bakhtin, 2011, p. 13).
• 43
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 44
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 45
  In Portuguese: A mão e a luva.
• 46
  In Portuguese: “Guiomar disse isto com tanta graça e singeleza, que a madrinha não pôde deixar de rir, e a melancolia acabou de todo. A sineta do almoço chamou-as a outros cuidados, e a nós também, amigo leitor. Enquanto as três almoçam, relanceemos os olhos ao passado, e vejamos quem era esta Guiomar, tão gentil, tão buscada e tão singular, como dizia Mrs. Oswald” (Assis, 1962, p. 58, our emphasis).
• 47
  In Portuguese: “Guiomar havia já alguns minutos que não atendia à interlocutora; tinha o ouvido afiado e assestado sobre o grupo da madrinha. Ninguém a observava; mas é privilégio do romancista e do leitor ver no rosto de uma personagem aquilo que as outras não vêem ou não podem ver. No rosto de Guiomar podemos nós ler, não só o tédio que lhe causava aquela opinião unânime contra o projeto da baronesa, mas ainda a expressão de um gênio imperioso e voluntário” (Assis, 1962, p. 154, itálico nosso).
• 48
  In Portuguese: “Eu disse - compadecia - e está só palavra, desacompanhada de outra coisa, pode fazer crer ao leitor que, durante aqueles dias em que a perdemos de vista, tornara-se Guiomar uma criatura desditosa. Nada disso; a situação era a mesma, não a mesma anteriormente à carta de Jorge, mas a mesma da noite em que ela a recebeu, situação, decerto, assaz sombria e carregada para um coração que receia ser constrangido, mas não desesperada nem angustiosa” (Assis, 1962, p. 163, itálico nosso).
• 49
  In Portuguese: “do superficial para o profundo, procurando atingir o imo das coisas.”
• 50
  If you wish to know more about the figure of the author-narrator in A mão e a luva [The Hand and the Glove], we suggest reading the article by Alex Alves Fogal, entitled O narrador de Machado de Assis e a desconstrução do romance romântico em A mão e a luva [The Narrator of Machado de Assis and the Deconstruction of the Romantic Novel in The Hand and the Glove].
• 51
  In Portuguese: “[...] voz que nos fala [como leitores] afetuosamente (ou imperiosamente, ou dissimuladamente), que nos quer a seu lado. Essa voz se manifesta como uma estratégia narrativa, um conjunto de instruções que nos são dadas passo a passo e que devemos seguir quando decidimos agir como leitor-modelo” (Eco, 1994, p. 21).
• 52
  VUONG, Ocean. On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous: A Novel. First edition, New York: Penguin Press. 2019.
• 53
  In Portuguese: “conjunto de condições de êxito, textualmente estabelecidas, que devem ser satisfeitas para que um texto seja plenamente atualizado no seu conteúdo potencial” (Eco, 2004, p. 45, itálicos do autor).
• 54
  In Portuguese: “no mais pífio dos romances pornográficos para nos dizer que as descrições apresentadas devem constituir um estímulo para nossa imaginação e para nossas reações físicas” (Eco, 1994, p. 23).
• 55
  In Portuguese: “descaradamente se revela aos leitores” (Eco, 1994, p. 23).
• 56
  In Portuguese: “Mas em que pensava ele, se não era em Estevão, nem nos autos, nem também, por agora, nas suas esperanças eleitorais? Paciência, leitor; sabê-lo-ás daqui a nada. Contenta-te com a notícia de que, ao cabo de vinte minutos daquela abstração, Luís Alves volveu a si” (Assis, 1962, p. 145, itálico nosso).
• 57
  In Portuguese: “Era uma vez uma menina que observava tanto as galinhas [...]” (Lispector, 1998, p. 140).
• 58
  In Portuguese: “[...] que lhes conhecia a alma e os anseios íntimos” (Lispector, 1992, p. 131).
• 59
  Eco uses this word in the sense of a play of lights, reflections that the model author promotes, like a mirror refracting various faces in the text, confusing/deluding the model reader.
• 60
  In Portuguese: “não pode deixar de cair [...] [neste] truque tão catóptrico” (Eco, 1994, p. 26).
• 61
  In Portuguese: “[...] o autor empírico, enquanto sujeito da enunciação textual, formula uma hipótese de Leitor-Modelo e, ao traduzi-la em termos da própria estratégia, configura a si mesmo autor na qualidade de sujeito do enunciado, em termos igualmente “estratégicos,” como modo de operação textual. Mas, de outro lado, também o leitor empírico, como sujeito concreto dos atos de cooperação, deve configurar para si uma hipótese de Autor, deduzindo-a justamente dos dados de estratégia textual” (Eco, 2004, p. 46).
• 62
  In Portuguese: “[a] hipótese formulada pelo leitor empírico acerca do próprio Autor-Modelo parece mais garantida do que aquela que o autor empírico formula acerca do próprio Leitor-Modelo. Com efeito, o segundo deve postular algo que atualmente ainda não existe e realizá-lo como série de operações textuais; o primeiro, ao invés, deduz uma imagem-tipo de algo que se verificou anteriormente como ato de enunciação e está textualmente presente nos enunciados” (Eco, 2004, p. 46).
• 63
  In Portuguese: “Isto implica dizer que o autor empírico, enquanto sujeito da enunciação textual, hipotetiza um certo leitor-modelo; e ao fazê-lo constrói seu texto como estratégia textual em que se constitui como um dado autor na qualidade de sujeito do enunciado. Por outro lado, também o leitor empírico dever [sic] configurar para si uma hipótese de Autor a partir das estratégias textuais. O importante para Eco é o que se coloca no espaço das estratégicas textuais em que estão hipotetizados autor e leitor-modelo e não as intenções que se podem atribuir ao autor e ao leitor empíricos. A cooperação textual é um fenômeno que se realiza entre duas estratégias discursivas e não entre sujeitos individuais” (Santos, 2007, p. 101, our emphasis).
• 64
  In Portuguese: “[entre] a inacessível intenção do autor e a discutível intenção do Leitor, está a intenção transparente do texto que contesta uma interpretação insustentável” (Eco, 2015, p. 91).
• 65
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 66
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 67
  In Portuguese: “Sim, claro, no final pode-se reconhecer o autor-modelo também como um estilo” (Eco, 1994, p. 21).
• 68
  Umberto Eco describes the symmetry between the moder author and author reader as: “Finally, there is a third entity, usually difficult to identify, which I have coined the model author as a way of creating symmetry with the model reader” (Eco, 1994, p. 20).
• 69
  In Portuguese: “Bakhtin: remate final.”
• 70
  In Portuguese: Notas sobre Literatura, cultura e ciências humanas (edição brasileira).
• 71
  In Portuguese: “Nas reflexões teóricas de Bakhtin sobre o romance, a extralocalização define a posição do autor-criador fora do mundo das personagens, ou melhor, estabelece realidades em tudo diferentes: no mundo das personagens não há autor nem leitor, no mundo do autor e do leitor não há personagens nem as circunstâncias que lhes marcam a vida. Esse conceito evolui na obra de Bakhtin e, em “Fragmentos dos anos 1970-1971,” nós o encontramos como distância ou distanciamento para designar a posição do leitor, que, extralocalizado e distanciado no espaço e no tempo em relação aos contextos antigos que sedimentaram as obras literárias, ou seja, de fora, no grande tempo, lê e interpreta do espaço e da posição de sua cultura as obras do passado e com elas estabelece um diálogo de culturas que amplia e atualiza o valor simbólico que elas irradiam” (Bezerra, 2017, p. 92; itálico nosso).
• 72
  In Portuguese: “as intenções virtualmente contidas” (Eco, 2004, p. 46).
• 73
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 74
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 75
  In Portuguese: “plenamente atualizado no seu conteúdo potencial” (Eco, 2004, p. 45).
• 76
  For reference, see footnote 7.
• 77
  In Portuguese: “com a máxima aproximação possível, os códigos do emitente” (Eco, 2004, p. 47).
• 78
  For reference, see footnote 21.
• 79
  In Portuguese: “[o] texto aí está” (Eco, 2015, p. 93).
• 80
  For reference, see footnote 25.

Research Data and Other Materials Availability

The contents underlying the research text are included in the manuscript.

• Reviews

  Due to the commitment assumed by Bakhtiniana. Revista de Estudos do Discurso [Bakhtiniana. Journal of Discourse Studies] to Open Science, this journal only publishes reviews that have been authorized by all involved.

REFERÊNCIAS

• ASSIS, Machado de. A mão e a luva São Paulo: W. M. Jackson Editores, 1962.
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail. O autor e a personagem. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal Introdução e tradução do russo Paulo Bezerra. 6. ed. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2011. p. 3-20.
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail. A forma espacial da personagem. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal Introdução e tradução do russo Paulo Bezerra. 6. ed. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2011. p. 21-90.
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Metodologia das ciências humanas. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Estética da criação verbal Introdução e tradução do russo Paulo Bezerra. 6. ed. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2011. p. 393-410.
• BAKHTIN, Mikhail. O texto na linguística, na filologia e em outras ciências humanas: um experimento de análise filosófica. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Os gêneros do discurso. Organização, tradução, posfácio e notas de Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2016. p. 71-107.
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• BARTHES, Roland. A morte do autor. In: BARTHES, Roland. O rumor da língua. Tradução Mario Laranjeira. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2004. p. 57-64.
• BEZERRA, Paulo. Bakhtin: remate final. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Notas sobre literatura cultura e ciências humanas. Organização, tradução, posfácio e notas de Paulo Bezerra, São Paulo: Editora 34, 2017. p. 81-96.
• BEZERRA, Paulo. Um romance de tons proféticos. In: DOSTOIÉVSKI, Fiódor. Os demônios. Tradução, posfácio e notas de Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2018. p. 689-699.
• BEZERRA, Paulo. O fechamento de um grande ciclo teórico. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. Teoria do romance III: o romance como gênero literário. Organização, tradução, posfácio e notas de Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2019. p. 113-133.
• BEZERRA, Paulo. O autor e a personagem na atividade estética: uma obra seminal. In: BAKHTIN, Mikhail. O autor e a personagem na atividade estética. Tradução, posfácio e notas de Paulo Bezerra. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2023. p. 286-305.
• DOSTOIÉVSKI, Fiódor. Memórias do subsolo. Tradução, prefácio e notas de Boris Schnaiderman. São Paulo: Editora 34, 2009.
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Translated by Michelle Allison Lebowe [e-mail]

Review I

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review I

The manuscript complies with the evaluated aspects: it has an appropriate title; a clear objective; and a coherent development of the theoretical discussion in focus. It demonstrates up-to-date knowledge and a bibliography that is relevant to the validation of the hypotheses raised. The manuscript presents suitable scientific language, and clear and precise argumentation regarding the theoretical elements under observation (model-author and author-creator). The text contributes to literary theory studies as it comparatively constructs possible conceptual relationships, which enhance the accessibility and understanding of the discussed concepts, in addition to provoking deep reflections on the relationships between author, text, and reader. APPROVED

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  01 Mar 2024

Review II

About the reviewer SCIMAGO INSTITUTIONS RANKINGS

Review II

The article effectively addresses the topic, yet it could have explored some concepts more thoroughly (it was overly reliant on the interpretations of Paulo Bezerra) and demonstrated more originality in its analysis. Additionally, a review of certain ABNT formatting elements is required due to minor errors (including an instance of an author’s surname capitalized in a citation and a publisher’s name incorrectly listed in the references). APPROVED

• peer review recommendation: accept

History

• Peer review received
  27 Mar 2024

Publication Dates

• Publication in this collection
  23 Sept 2024
• Date of issue
  2024

History

• Received
  18 Feb 2024
• Accepted
  16 Aug 2024