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The birth of the author
Author(s) -
Helle Sophus
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/oli.12250
Subject(s) - depiction , literature , persona , poetry , reading (process) , hymn , sumerian , akkadian , art , history , philosophy , linguistics , humanities
The Sumerian hymn known as the The Exaltation of Inana , which was attributed to the Old Akkadian priestess Enheduana, is the earliest known depiction of literary authorship. Through a close reading of the text, the essay argues that the figure of the author is created by a number of individuals acting together, including the addressee, performers, and copyists of the poem. Their involvement is necessary for authors to become authors, and authorship can therefore be seen as a collaborative creation even when a text is attributed to a single person. This notion of co‐authorship, not as a collaboration between delimited individuals, but as the collective creation of an authorial persona, makes the author an inherently fluid entity—waxing, waning, dispersed, and regrouped over the course of the text. Having identified this form of co‐authorship in the Exaltation , the essay then traces its dynamics across a wider selection of poems. 1