Autor implícito e narratividade no drama de Ésquilo

Abstract

The concept of implied author is used by Wayne Booth in his study of literary fiction, being it an epopee, a novel or a short-story, starting from a discussion on the nature of narrative as part of rhetoric. In our understanding, the figure of the implied author, an intermediary and fictional entity placed on the boundaries between the real writer and the narrator, could be analyzed considering its role in traditional drama. In traditional drama, the implied author confers the power to narrate to narrators who are part of the dramatization process, such as the messenger, and in some cases, the chorus, and through them, articulates the structural organization of the plot. According to Booth, the process of narration involves, as in any literary discourse, the absence of objectivity and of impartiality. Considering these aspects in relation to the study of the tragedy The Persians, by Aeschylus, we identified, in the rhetoric and also in the epic resources that dominate this drama, a strategy of the implied author to formulate a view that, regardless a pamphletarian nationalism, praises the greatness and the victory of the Greeks in the Salamina Battle and the tragic error of the emperor Xerxes, commander-in-chief of the defeated Persian army.