The Nature of Fiction

by Gregory Currie

This important book provides a theory about the nature of fiction, and about the relation between the author, the reader and the fictional text. The approach is philosophical: that is to say, the author offers an account of key concepts such as fictional truth, fictional characters, and fiction itself. The book argues that the concept of fiction can be explained partly in terms of communicative intentions, partly in terms of a condition which excludes relations of counterfactual dependence between the world and the text. This communicative model is then applied to the following problems: how can something be 'true in the story' without being explicitly stated in the text? In what ways does interpreting a fictional story depend upon grasping its author's intentions? Is there always a unique best interpretation of a fictional text? What is the correct semantics for fictional names? What is the nature of our emotional response to a fictional work? In answering these questions the author explores the complex interaction between author, reader, and text. This interaction requires the reader to construct a 'fictional author' - a character in the story whose personality, beliefs and emotional states must be interpreted if the reader is to grasp the meaning of the work.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction

236 pages, Paperback

First published October 26, 1990

About the author

Gregory Currie is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at the University of York.

Reviews

[Alina · Rating 4 out of 5]

Currie presents a compelling account of the ontological status of fictional objects (e.g., characters, places, happenings). It is particularly interesting to compare his account with Kendall Walton's, as found in Mimesis as Make-Believe. When Currie approaches his examination of fiction, he starts off with assuming that the theory to give here much be specific to language use. In contrast, when Walton approaches his examination of fiction, he starts off with a general theory of a type of imagining we can engage in -- called "make-believe" -- which is found across diverse human activities, from children's games of make-believe (e.g., pretending a banana is a telephone), to literary fiction, film, painting, and any representational art in general.

I take Walton's view to be more fundamental and illuminating as a while. Currie makes important points that are specific to literary fiction, but I think his theory would do better if seen as an application of Walton's theory. Let me here summarize Currie's and Walton's theories. Walton gives an analysis of fictional utterances, using his theory of make-believe. This is a pragmatic analysis of fiction utterances, which contrasts a semantic analysis of fiction (Currie is on the same boat here). It seems that semantic analyses of fictional utterances fail. Any fictional utterance may be either true or false. For Walton, a biography of Regan written in the first-person (Dutch by Edmund Morris) may consist of only true and yet fictional utterances. As readers, we know that the author isn’t Regan; we only pretend that the author is, so that we may encounter the experiential contents of the fictional world in which Regan recounts his own life. Even if all of the utterances of this biography are true, we still take the contents of our imaginative experience of these utterances as standing in for facts of the real world—this is a matter of make-believing. Moreover, there are works whose utterances are false, but we wouldn’t regard these as fictional. Take certain outdated scientific treatises, for example. When Newton expressed his views on the aether, he was not playing make-believe.

In contrast, Currie is concerned with fiction, which is not identical to make-believe. When we use the term “fiction,” in ordinary language, we sometimes refer to fiction as opposed to nonfiction, which are literary genres. Make-believe is a category of the pragmatics of experience, which is orthogonal to fiction, a category of the classification of representational works. We sometimes use “fiction” in a way that is synonymous with “make-believe.” For example, I may pretend that a banana is a telephone. We might say that this is a fiction, or that I'm engaged with a fiction. In this case of use, “fiction” is identical with make-believe; but in this case, we also are not using “fiction” in the sense of a certain literary genre.

Currie regards make-believe (which he defines as "fiction," as I've specified above) as a type of illocutionary force. The content of an utterance is distinct from the force by which the utterance is delivered. The content of an utterance is a proposition, which has semantic properties, like reference and truth-value. The force of an utterance is the illocutionary act, or the communicative goal to be achieved by delivering the utterance (e.g., asserting, commanding, or requesting)

While it is possible to construe make-believe in this way, once construed, this term no longer tracks the phenomenon which Walton calls make-believe. Pretending or make-believing, as Walton’s explanandum, is distinct from illocutionary force. Pretense can modify illocutionary acts, whereas illocutionary acts cannot modify pretense. We can pretend to assert that p or request p, for example, while we cannot make assertions or requests of pretense. We may only make assertions or requests about pretense, where “pretense” figures in only as a topic at the level of semantic content, which is not pretense qua a mode of experience, a pragmatic condition that operates upon and modifies experience. Moreover, pretending can modify imagined actions and emotions, which are not evidently constituted by semantic content and lack the dimension of illocutionary force altogether.

I'd recommend this book to readers interested in how imagination brings about the fictional worlds we find in artworks; and in how these fictional worlds are ontologically distinct from our real world. But for readers who want to get to the bottom of the nature of fiction, I'd recommend going to Walton's Mimesis as Make-Believe.

[Dbaguti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nie zrozumiałam pewnie połowy, ale co zrozumiałam--chef's kiss

[vio_lennard · Rating 1 out of 5]

leider ist er antirealist

[Esma Çayır · Rating 3 out of 5]

he kinda ate that (I do, however, recommend reading Stacie Friends criticism)

[M.k. Yost · Rating 5 out of 5]

Incredibly thought-provoking, yet written in an accessible style.