Abstract
Literary theory should tell us something about literature and the world. Literature and literary theory are part of a social and cultural context and are ways of seeing and knowing. Humans, and this author, being so often blind, it is important to use as many tools to try to understand and know. One word for this multiplicity of options might be pluralism, although there are simpler ways of saying that many tools are better than one tool in most instances.
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Notes
Wayne C. Booth, Critical Understanding: The Powers and Limits of Pluralism (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1979), 220–32, 345–47.
R. S. Crane, Critics and Criticism: Ancient and Modern, ed. R. S. Crane et al. (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1952), 11.
A promising area of research is the intersection of game theory and the theory of fictional worlds. For systematic treatments of game theory, see Robert R. Wilson, “Three Prolusions: Toward a Game Model in Literary Theory,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 8 (1981): 79–92; “In Palamedes’ Shadow: Game and Play Concepts Today,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée 12 (1985): 177–99; “Rules/Conventions: Three Paradoxes in the Game/Text Analogy,” South Central Review 4 (1986): 15–27; “Play, Transgression and Carnival: Bakhtin and Derrida on Scriptor Ludens,” Mosaic 19 (Winter 1986): 73–79;
and Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978). Spariosu is important in this discussion of the relation of game and mimesis;
see Mihai Spariosu, Literature, Mimesis and Play: Essays in Literary Theory (Tubingen: Gunter Narr, 1982), especially 13–34.
See also Johan Huizinga, Homo Ludens (Leyden, 1938); English translation : Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture (New York: Ray Publishers, 1950);
Roger Caillois, Les Jeux et les hommes: le masque et le vertige (Paris: Gallimard, 1958);
Eugen Fink, Das Spiel als Weltsymbol (Stuttgart: G. Umbreit, 1960);
and David Miller, God and Games: Toward a Theology of Play (New York: World Publishing Co., 1970). For a view of pre-Socratic imitation,
see Gerald Else, “‘Imitation’ in the Fifth Century,” Classical Philology 53 (1958): 73–90, and for a more general view,
see Gérard Genette, Figures II (Paris: Seuil, 1969). Thanks to the editor of Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de Littérature Comparée (CRCL/RCLC) on behalf of the Canadian Comparative Literature Association for permission to reprint a revised version of “A Comparative Pluralism: The Heterogeneity of Methods and the Case of Possible Worlds,” CRCL/RCLC 15 (1988): 320–45.
See Raymond Bradley and Norman Swartz, Possible Worlds (Oxford: Blackwell, 1979);
Jerome Bruner, On Knowing: Essays for the Left Hand (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962) and his Actual Minds/Possible Worlds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986);
Edward Casey, Imagining (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1976);
Lubomír Doležel, “Narrative Worlds,” Sound, Sign and Meaning, ed. L. Matejka (Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Studies, 1976), his “Truth and Authenticity in Narrative,” Poetics Today 1 (1980): 7–25, his “Towards a Typology of Fictional Worlds,” Tamkang Review 14 (1984–85): 262–74, and his “Mimesis and Possible Worlds,” Poetics Today 9 (1988): 475–96;
Saul Kripke, “Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic,” Acta Philosophica Fennica 16 (1963): 83–94, his “Naming and Necessity,” in Semantics of Natural Language, ed. D. Davidson and G. Harman (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1972), and his Meinong and the Principle of Independence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983);
Doreen Maitre, Literature and Possible Worlds (London: Middlesex Polytechnic Press, 1983);
Félix Martínez-Bonati, Fictive Discourse and the Structures of Literature: A Phenomenological Approach (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1981) and his “Towards a Formal Ontology of Fictional Worlds,” Philosophy and Literature 7 (1983): 182–95;
Thomas Pavel, “Possible Worlds in Literary Semantics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 34 (1975): 165–76, his “Fiction and the Causal Theory of Names,” Poetics 8 (1979): 179–91, his “Ontological Issues in Poetics,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 40 (1981): 167–78, his “Tragedy and the Sacred: Notes Towards a Semantic Characterization of a Fictional Genre,” Poetics 10 (1981): 231–42, his “Fictional Landscapes,” Studies in 20th Century Literature 6–7 (1982): 149–63, his “Incomplete Worlds, Ritual Emotions,” Philosophy and Literature 7 (1983): 48–58, his “Borders of Fiction,” Poetics Today 4 (1983): 83–88, and his Fictional Worlds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986).
Maitre, Literature and Possible Worlds, 13, 23. See Floyd Merrel, Pararealities: The Nature of Our Fictions and How We Know Them (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1983). See Margolin’s perceptive review of Maitre (also of Merrel). Margolin distinguishes between ontological and epistemological approaches to possible worlds;
see Uri Margolin, “Dealing with the Non-Actual: Conception, Reception, Description,” Poetics Today 9 (1988): 863.
See Judith Ryan, “Validating the Possible: Thoughts and Things in James, Rilke, and Musil,” Comparative Literature 40 (1988): 305–17.
See Ed Cohen, “Writing Gone Wilde: Homoerotic Desire in the Closet of Representation,” PMLA 102 (October 1987): 801–13;
Margaret Drabble, “Mimesis: The Representation of Reality in the Post-War Novel,” Mosaic 20 (Winter 1987): 1–14;
Sandy Petrey, “The Reality of Representation: Between Marx and Balzac,” Critical Inquiry 14 (Spring 1988): 448–68;
Luiz Costa-Lima, “Erich Auerbach: History and Metahistory,” New Literary History 19 (1988): 467–99;
Lubomír Doležel, “Mimesis and Possible Worlds,” Poetics Today 9 (1988): 475–96;
Michal Glowinski, “Document as Novel,” New Literary History 18 (1988): 385–402;
Peter Hughes, “Painting the Ghost: Wittgenstein, Shakespeare, and Textual Representation,” New Literary History 19 (1988): 371–84;
Holger A. Pausch, “Anmerkungen zum Status der Literatur der Gegenwart und zur Bedeutung ihrer Sprachkonzepte,” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 23 (February 1987): 1–22;
Sandy Petrey, “Castration, Speech Acts, and the Realist Difference: S/Z versus Sarrasine,” PMLA 102 (March 1987): 155–65;
Jean Pfaelzer, “The Changing of the Avant-Garde: The Feminist Utopia,” Science Fiction Studies 15 (1988): 282–94;
Jeannette Laillou Savona, “Dé-lire et délit/ces: Stratégies des lectures féministes (Coward, de Lauretis, Moi, Cixous, Brossard, etc.),” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de la Littérature Comparée 15 (1988): 220–35. For instance, Savona examines episteme and ideology as premise in the dilemmas of theories and theoretical approaches among feminists.
Maitre, Literature and Possible Worlds, 30–34. See Lilian R. Furst, “Realism and Its ‘Code of Accreditation,’” Comparative Literature Studies 25 (1988): 101–26.
Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies: A Study in Mediaeval Political Theology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1957, rev. 1997);
Stephen Jay Gould, Ontogeny and Phylogeny (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1977);
and T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago, IL: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1962.
See John Neubauer, “Literature and Science: Future Possibilities,” University of Hartford Studies in Literature 19 (1987): 53–59;
Stuart Peterfreund, “Literature and Science: The Present State of the Field,” University of Hartford Studies in Literature 19 (1987): 25–36;
G. S. Rousseau, “The Discourse(s) of Science and Literature,” University of Hartford Studies in Literature 19 (1987): 1–24;
E. S. Shafer, “Literature and Science: Towards a New Literary History,” University of Hartford Studies in Literature 19 (1987): 37–52.
Maitre, Literature and Possible Worlds, 41–48, 54–56. See K. Anders Ericsson, “Concurrent Verbal Reports on Text Comprehension: A Review,” Text 8 (1988): 295–325;
Bruce Henricksen, “The Construction of the Narrator in The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus,’” PMLA 103 (October 1988): 749–58;
Steen F. Larsen and Uffe Seilman, “Personal Remindings while Reading Literature,” Text 8 (1988): 411–29;
William C. Mann and Sandra A. Thompson, “Rhetorical Structure Theory: Toward a Functional Theory of Text Organization,” Text 8 (1988): 243–81;
David S. Miall, “Affect and Narrative: A Model of Response to Stories,” Poetics 17 (1988): 259–72.
Martínez-Bonati, “Towards a Formal Ontology,” 182–84. See also Gerhard Deffner, “Concurrent Thinking Aloud: An On-line Tool for Studying Representations Used in Text Understanding,” Text 8 (1988): 351–67;
Paul Pickrel, “Character as Nominal: A Sketch for a Theory,” Novel: A Forum for Fiction 22 (1988): 66–85;
Michael Robertson, “Narrative Logic, Folktales and Machines,” Orbis Litterarum 43 (1988): 1–19;
Marie-Laure Ryan, “The Heuristics of Automatic Story Generation,” Poetics 16 (1987): 505–34;
Susan Wright, “Tense Meanings as Style of Fictional Narrative: Present Tense Use in J. M. Coetzee’s In the Heart of the Country,” Poetics 16 (1987): 53–73.
See Thomas Pavel, “Formalism in Narrative Semiotics,” Poetics Today 9 (1988): 593–608.
See John Haegert, “Autobiography as Fiction: The Example of Stop-Time,” Modern Fiction Studies 33 (1987): 621–38;
Terence Wright, “Choice and Choosing in Fiction,” The Modern Language Review 83 (1988): 273–86;
Robert Alter, “The Difference of Literature,” Poetics Today 9 (1988): 573–91;
Philip Dodd, “History or Fiction: Balancing Contemporary Autobiography’s Claims,” Mosaic 20 (Fall 1987): 81–89;
Robert Gould, “Spinoza and Lavater in Dictung und Wahrheit and the Paradoxical Nature of Autobiography,” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 24 (November 1988): 311–43;
Evelyn J. Hinz, “A Speculative Introduction: Life-Writing as Drama,” Mosaic 20 (Fall 1987): v–xii;
Linda Hutcheon, “The Postmodern Problematizing of History,” English Studies in Canada 14 (1988): 365–82;
Anthony Paul Kerby, “The Adequacy of Self-Narration: A Hermeneutical Approach,” Philosophy and Literature 12 (1988): 232–44; see the special issue, edited by Clayton Koelb, “Narrative Theory,” Modern Fiction Studies 33 (1987): 407–570—which includes his preface (407–12);
Ira B. Nadel, “Narrative and the Popularity of Biography,” Mosaic 20 (Fall 1987): 131–41.
See Nilli Diengott, “Thematics: Generating or Theming a Text?” Orbis Litterarum 43 (1988): 95–107; see Pavel, “Formalism,” (1988).
Bruner also discusses other hermeneutic divisions: “Nicholas of Lyra proposed many centuries ago [Postilla litteralis (1322 –31), Postilla mystica sen moralis (1339)], for example, t hat biblical texts are amenable to four levels of interpretation: litera, moralis, allegoria, and anogogia, the literal, the ethical, the historical, and the mystical” (Jerome Bruner, Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1986), 5, see also 172. It might be sometimes difficult to equate, as Bruner does, allegoria and the historical. Aquinas, Dante, and Boccaccio also follow or adapt Augustine’s four levels.
Bruner, Actual Minds, 83–87. See Jacqueline Henkel, “Speech-Act Theory Revisited: Rule Notions and Reader-Oriented Criticism,” Poetics 17 (1988): 505–30; Sandy Petrey, “Castration,” (1987). 114.
See Volker Durr, “Personal Identity and the Idea of the Novel: Hegel in Rilke,” Comparative Literature 39 (1987): 97–114; K. Ericsson, “Concurrent” (1988); Jacqueline Henkel, “Speech-Act,” (1988); Anthony Kerby “The Adequacy,” (1988); S. Larsen and U. Seilman, “Personal,” (1988); David Miall, “Affect,” (1988); the special issue, edited by Gary F. Waller, “The New Rhetoric and the New Literary Theory: Cognitive and Cultural Interaction,” Poetics 16 (1987): 103–208, including Waller’s introduction (103–07).
B rune, Actual Minds, 154. See Ihab Hassan, “Making Sense: The Trials of Post-Modernist Discourse,” New Literary History 19 (1987): 437–59.
See Harro Müller, “A Few Poisoned Arrows Wouldn’t Be So Bad: Ten Interjections on the Connection between Historical Theory, Hermeneutics, and Literary Historiography,” Poetics 16 (1987): 93–102;
Edward Pechter, “The New Historicism and Its Discontents: Politicizing Renaissance Drama,” PMLA 102 (May 1987): 292–303.
See Richard Creese, “Objects in Novels and the Fringe of Culture: Graham Greene and Alain Robbe-Grillet,” Comparative Literature 39 (Winter 1987): 58–73;
Ellen G. Friedman, “‘Utterly Other Discourse:’ The Anticanon of Experimental of Experimental Women Writers from Dorothy Richardson to Christine Brooke-Rose,” Modern Fiction Studies 34 (1988): 353–70;
Katherine C. Kurk, “Narration as Salvation: Textual Ethics of Michel Tournier and John Barth,” Comparative Literature Studies 25 (1988): 251–62;
Graham Law, “‘Il s’agissait peut-être d’un roman policier:’ Leblance, Macdonald, and Robbe-Grillet,” Comparative Literature 40 (1988): 335–57;
David Darby, “The Narrative Text as Palimpsest: Levels of Discourse in Peter Handke’s Die Hornissen,” Seminar: A Journal of Germanic Studies 23 (September 1987): 251–64; Petrey, “Castration,” (1987);
Marguerite K. Garstin, “Alain Robbe-Grillet and Pop Art: Technique and Iconography in ‘Dans les Couloirs du métropolitain,’ La Maison de rendezvous, and Projet pour la révolution à New York,” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature/Revue Canadienne de la Littérature Comparée 14 (1987): 25–59.
John Woods and Peter Alward, “The Logic of Fiction,” Handbook of Philosophical Logic, 2nd. ed., vol. 11, ed. D. M. Gabbay and F. Guenthner (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2004), 255.
John Divers, Possible Worlds (London and New York: Routledge, 2002), 299.
See David Lewis, “Truth in Fiction,” American Philosophical Quarterly 15 (1978): 37–46,
and Lewis, “Postscript to ‘Truth in Fiction,’” in Philosophical Papers, vol. 1 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), 277–80.
Peter Alward, “That’s the Fictional Truth, Ruth,” Acta Anal 25 (2010): 349–51.
Alward, “That’s the Fictional Truth,” 351. See G. Currie, “Fictional Truth,” Philosophical Studies 50 (1986): 195–212;
G. Currie, The Nature of Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). On making believe,
see Kendall L. Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the Representational Arts (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
Alward, “That’s the Fictional Truth,” 354. See A. Byrne, “Truth in Fiction: The Story Continued,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 71, 31. For some of Alward’s other work, see Peter Alward, “Leave Me Out of It: de re But Not de se Imaginative Engagement with Fiction,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64 (2006): 451–60;
Peter Alward, “Onstage Illocution,” Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67 (2009): 321–31.
This is something I admired but noted when I discussed semiotics in the 1980s. See, for instance, Jonathan Hart, ‘Keir Elam, The Semiotics of Theatre and Drama,’ Marlowe Society of America Book Reviews 4 (Spring 1985): 8–10. On speech-act theory and fiction,
see John Searle, “The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse,” New Literary History 6 (1975): 319–332,
and S. Hoffman, “Fiction as Action: Currie and Searle on Speech Act Theory and the Nature of Fiction,” Philosophia 31 (2004): 513–29.
Lubomír Doležel, Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998);
see Doležel, “Fictional Worlds: Density, Gaps, and Inference,” Style 29 (1995): 201–14 and “Possible Worlds of Fiction and History,” New Literary History 29 (1998): 785–809. On adaptation,
see Cindy Chopoidalo, “The Possible Worlds of Hamlet: Shakespeare as Adaptor, Adaptations of Shakespeare,” PhD thesis, University of Alberta, Fall 2009, which discusses Doležel and other theorists of possible and fictional worlds, especially in the introduction and chapter 1.
Lubomír Doležel, Possible Worlds of Fiction and History (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010), vii.
Ruth Ronan, Possible Worlds in Literary Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 1.
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© 2012 Jonathan Locke Hart
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Hart, J. (2012). Possible and Fictional Worlds. In: Fictional and Historical Worlds. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137012647_2
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