Assuming authority:Self-conscious authorship in contemporary fiction

Taking as its point of departure the "odd question" proposed by Michel Foucault--"What is an author?"--this dissertation examines the implications of self-conscious authorship in contemporary fiction: the implication (literally, the folding in, the writing in) of the author in the text, the implication of the self-conscious novel in its worldly and disciplinary contexts, the implications of strategies of self-conscious authorship. The dissertation works through readings of six novels: LETTERS by John Barth, Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, City of Glass by Paul Auster, Democracy by Joan Didion, Waiting for the Barbarians and Foe by J. M. Coetzee. The readings of individual novels are framed by an introductory chapter which focuses on the institutional and theoretical debates surrounding the function of the author, and a concluding chapter which re-addresses the question of the author in terms of the political or worldly concerns highlighted in Andre Brink's States of Emergency.