Early irritations of the 'function' author.
Among the central paradigms of modern literature since the second half of the 18. Twentieth century authorship principle. As a function of the text, a concept of the author establishes itself within the framework of the aesthetics of genius, which provides the texts with notable senders and serves the "strict unification of paper pushes" (Kittler).
Foucault describes four "modalities" in which the function 'author' is played out to this day: The author functions as a uniform value level, which makes it possible to explain modifications or breaks in the author's work by recourse to the author's biography. The author acts as a unified field of a conceptual and theoretical context that supports the assumption of the Unity of the work legitimizes. The author acts as Stylistic unity, which can be recognized and fourth as a historical moment and Intersection of events outside of it, which he implements.
The time around 1800 is generally considered to be the high point of the establishment of the principle of authorship as "rule of the work" (Heinrich Bosse). However, it is often overlooked that this principle is at the same time experiencing the first lasting irritations. Disruptions that irritate the principle of masculinely connoted 'authority' over the text around 1800 have been brought into focus in recent years primarily by feminist-oriented literary analyses. However, textual productions of collective authorship also irritate the image of the author of genius-aesthetic provenance. Not only the fact that they are written by several, but also the intertextual references to the author's position in the texts of collective authorship around 1800 have an irritating effect on a functionalization that is becoming more and more established in this period, but is also questioned precisely. Using the novel 'The Trials and Obstacles of Charles' as an example. In the book 'Eine deutsche Geschichte aus neuerer Zeit' by Karl August Varnhagen, Wilhelm Neumann, August Ferdinand Bernhardi and Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué, which was published anonymously in 1808, the moments of irritation can be broken down in an exemplary way.
1. Texts of collective authorship irritate contemporary literary criticism. Established evaluation criteria are no longer effective in view of the uncertainty as to which author wrote which chapter. This is also how the critics react to 'The attempts. Obstacles Karls' pejorative. At the same time, attempts to assign individual chapters to the authors set in, with individual chapters being preferred.
2. Texts of collective authorship irritate the assumption of unity and completeness of the text. The authors of 'Attempts and Obstacles of Karl' write partly 'against each other', so that both the plot and the conception of the characters show breaks. Intertextually, the framework of the novel is broken up, not only by quoting texts of other authors, but by introducing as another central character 'Wilhelm Meister', who, freed from the domination of his author, is quite skeptical about Goethe, preferring instead Schiller "by far".
3. Texts of collective authorship irritate the function 'author' with regard to the assumption of a stylistic unity that can be recognized. If the critics tried to recognize the writing styles of the individual authors, this procedure is also led ad absurdum in the novel by means of the imitation of the writing styles of Jean Paul and Johann Heinrich Voß.
4. The function of the author as an intersection of historical events is, however, in terms of the search for collective identity also perceived by the authors' collective of the 'trials and obstacles of Charles. The novel ends with a 'canzone' after Petrarch, in which the defeat of Prussia in the war against France is justified by the lack of unity of Germany. The parody of the notion of the autonomous, meaningful access of both the author to his text and the subject to his life leads to a war-transfiguring vision of a collective 'Germany' to be founded.