The Limits of Proofreading Literary Texts Based on the Concepts of Authorship and Style in Bakhtin

Abstract

Although the relationship between writers and proofreaders is traditionally tense, proofreading literary texts especially is no longer limited to regulatory aspects, such as spelling or typing correction. It expands to the observation of aspects, such as verisimilitude and narrative concatenation, which go beyond textual issues. Such tasks, however, can increase the tension between the writer and the proofreader as they bring authorship and style into play, which can be noticed in works, such as The History of the Siege of Lisbon. This study deals exactly with the limits of the proofreader, seeking, in Bakhtin’s Author and Hero in Aesthetic Activity and The Problem of Content, Material, and Form in Verbal Art, the concepts of authorship and style that can contribute to the understanding of the limits of the proofreader’s intervention. Such limits are set, as we will see, because the proofreader can never interfere directly in the basic sense of the world and of the “axiological value” expressed by the aesthetic object, under the risk of interfering with “style” and “authorship.”