Implied Author and Implied Reader in Rococo Novel

Abstract

The article concerns the forms and functions of the implied author and the implied reader in the novels by Lesage, Prevost, Marivaux, Crébillon, Bibiena, Diderot, Defoe, Fielding and Stern. Referring to the narrative on behalf of the hero, which is mainly used in the Rococo novel, as well as the narrative from the author in Fielding's novels equally, although in different ways, complicate the identification of the implied author, whose image is displaced by the explicit narrator. At the same time, there is a process of making the relations with readers intimate, both in the «Appeals to the reader» and in the novels themselves in various forms of appeal to explicit readers – to the community of friends, to a friend, etc. In the Rococo novelistic prose, an «uncertain narrative» is formed, consisting of a chain of stories within one story and a variety of narrators, which reveals the ambiguity of the implied author's statements and descriptions, as well as the breadth and indefiniteness of the reading public that the novelist actually addresses.