Fiction and Conversation

Abstract

Exploring Rhees's analogy between everyday conversation and literature, the paper suggests a conception of form that encourages us to see literary works as contributions to conversation in virtue of their concern. How we might read for the concern of a literary work is exemplified by readings of Ibsen's Ghosts and The Wild Duck. These readings suggest that Rhees's analogy not only throws light on the communicative powers of literature: viewing everyday talk in the light of works of literature also gives us a better grasp of what goes on in conversation.

“I’ll teach you differences.” A meta-theoretical approach to narrative theory

“…Furthermore, in the case of both fiction and non-fiction one might find that to see oneself as spoken to by a narrative text is to read with a view not only to participate in the narrative action, but also to participate in the conversational and reflective space the narrative establishes; what we might call, with reference to Rush Rhees (1998), its conversational context. (For a reading of Rhees along these lines, see Greve 2012. ) In the case of fiction this conversational space clearly cannot be envisaged as a context in which the author tells the reader that such and such is the case.…”

“…6 The term "concern," as I use it here, is at the heart of the theoretical understanding of literary texts that the methodical system mentioned in the previous footnote is grounded in. For a presentation of this idea of concern as applied to fiction, seeGreve (2012), in which it is illuminated through a reading of Ibsen's The Wild Duck. The notion of concern, as it is used here, is also illuminated later on in the present article, in Section 6.…”