Fictionality

Ruth Ronen: Possible Worlds in Literary Theory

mimesis - mimetic function of art

• Plato’s The Republic - poets banned from ideal Republic because their representation is twice removed from reality → lie = limitation of appearance, not of essence

  • fiction excluded from the philosophical discussion (fiction devoid of a truth value)

  • fictional means no referentiality?

  • is fiction mimetic? - metaphoric representation

Ruth Ronen, Possible Worlds

• literary theory has always regarded fictionality as the distinctive feature of literary texts → equated fictionality with literarity

  • fictionality is internal to the text

  • this results in the isolation of the text

• myths, dreams, wishes are also fictional → conditional sentences are also part of human nature

• provides a philosophical explanatory framework that pertains to the problem of fiction

• indicates that fiction is logically and semantically not an exceptional phenomenon

  • the oposite of what Plato argues

fiction

• propositions (statements) that seem like regular assertions yet do not refer tot actual states of affairs

• other cultural products with similar features, products that present nonfactual states of affairs through the power of language

  • conditionals, propositions relating to wishes, anticipations or memories of a speaker, myths

• part of a larger context of discources that do not refer to the way things actually are in the world

• literary worlds are possible in the sense that they actualize a world which is analogous with, derivative of, or contradictory to the world we live in

• fiction can be treated as a game with possibilities not actualized in our world

• fictionality and actuality can be relativized to a cultural perspective (legends about Greek gods)

• fictional texts not necessarily refer to imaginary beings - many fictions rely heavily on references to objects and events belonging to actual history (historical fiction)

the role of the author

• in understanding a fictional text and in making propositions about a fictional world one assumes the presence of an author

• authorship of a fictional text reflects an understanding of fictionality as an intentional action (world-projecting, imagining, belief-suspending)

• the author is distinct from the narrator

• the fictional text is the only source of information about the world it cinstructs → imposes on the structure of the fictional universe

• extension of the fictional universe: fan fiction

• the distinctive feature of fiction is the total dependence of its construct on the world-constructing act of a narrator or any constituiting agent