Qu’est-ce qu’un ‘auctor’ ? Auteur et autorité, du latin au français

With reference to Foucault’s famous question (“Qu’est-ce qu’un auteur ?”, 1969), the collective inquiry conducted here aims to return to the semantic basis of this notion and its original connection with that of authority. The 15 contributions delve into the rich polysemy of the Latin word auctor, with its legal and political, philosophical and theological, rhetorical and literary implications, and into the evolution that led to ‘auteur’ in French. The first part presents the fundamental meanings of auctor (its etymology and connection with the verb augeo, a review of various instances of synonymy). The second section focuses on institutional and historical aspects (the meaning of the formula patres auctores concerning the Roman Senate, the political authority and historiographical auctoritas by Livius and Tacitus, the figure of Brutus over the centuries as the founder of Roman Republic and defender of liberty). The third deals with philosophical values (auctor and auctoritas in Cicero, the relationship between auctor and interpres by Seneca), with literary developments (how, during the 1rst century, the meaning changed from “guarantor” to “author” as a model or initiator of a genre, and then how Ieronymus constructed his auctorial persona) and with the idea of the “divine author” in the pagan and later in the Christian thought (auctor universi and similar expressions). The final part is devoted to the extensions and changes that came about in the Middle Age and the Renaissance (the author’s status in hagiographic texts and epistolary writing, the emergence in the 16th-17h centuries of the modern figure which freed itself from tradition and affirmed its originality).