NARRATIVE COMMUNICATION: AUTHOR, READER, TEXT
NARRATIVE COMMUNICATION: AUTHOR, READER, TEXT

Summary/Abstract: This study is an attempt to revisit the site of narrative communication by reassessing the role each of the three actors involved plays in the production and reception of a literary work. The theoretical considerations are put into practice in exemplifications based on the work of Jeanette Winterson, a contemporary British writer. Starting from Genette’s presentation of language as the object of linguistic and literary study, aimed to show to what extent language and narrative influence cultural perceptions of reality, through the horizon of expectations created in the readers by a literary work’s affiliation to one genre of another, I go on to discuss the impact of literary writing on the author, as well as on the reader. Drawing on Friedman’s critical commentary from “Point of View in Fiction”, I am trying to show that the death of each author should be pronounced on an individual basis. I am strongly in favour of judging the writer by the work, not the work by the writer. Still, this does not mean that we should condemn the author to death. In the case of Jeanette Winterson, at least, I could truthfully argue that the author is alive and well.

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