Author in the Book: Representation or Re-Presentation?

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Author in the book: representation or re-presentation? Frames are everywhere to help us interpret the world around us and represent and re-present it. Through representations and re-presentations, meanings are produced. This essay is going to look into the use of frames in texts and the ways in which issues in our real world are re-presented, by especially analysing the authorial presences in Diego Velázquez ’s Las Meninas and Akira Kurosawa’s “The Crows” segment in Dreams. Objects in nature present themselves while people establish frames to re-present and represent. the authors of the frames are actually present in the frames to different extent, whether they are aware of it or not. Imagine a painting frame or a photo frame, it confine and hold a certain visual moment inside it. Not only does it contain a moment, but it also restricts viewers’ observation towards it. We certainly cannot observe a moment from whatever angles I want but the only angle the painter or the photographer chose. The kind of limit imposed by frames is laid down by the constructers (i.e. the authors). Therefore, we can see authorial influence in texts by considering the use of frames. Not only can a frame has authorial influence, it can also have the author himself present in the frame, notwithstanding the literal author or a person he wants as to assume that is the author. One kind of authorial presence is self-portrait, but self-portrait is only a static record of an image. Another similar but different kind of authorial presence is to depict himself in his actual situation. In Las Meninas, Velázquez illustrates himself as a painter, which is his real occupation, inside a painting that he is painting. And inside the painting, the painter is painting a painting, which is what he is doing when he is painting Las Meninas. The painter drawn is a representation of

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