The present article articulates a functional perspective on the author as a central category in literary historiography. Taking as its starting point the common practices in Dutch literary historiography the paradoxes surrounding the authorial function -- even in so-called postmodern histories -- are analyzed. Authors remain a central dimension of literature and hence of its scholarly study, although the ‘death of the author’ has been claimed time and again. The present article does not plead for a further death or, alternately, a clear resurrection of the author. Rather it argues for an meticulous analysis of the authorial category as a crucial discursive category, which can be both analyzed and thematized in a Foucaldian way. A number of topics in relation to this discursivefunctionalist approach to literature are presented.