Ten Theses about Fictionality

Nielsen, Henrik Skov; Phelan, James; Walsh, Richard

doi:10.1353/nar.2015.0005

Cited by 125 publications

(30 citation statements)

References 18 publications

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“…Moreover, it often relies on metonymic relationships between the fictional and the referential components that amplify and exaggerate aspects of the satirical target (Simpson, 2003, p. 129). Whilst the exact thoughts attributed to May are 'invented' (Nielsen, Phelan & Walsh, 2015), the point of the satire is that there is, according to Rentoul, nonetheless some truth to them -they are an exaggerated caricature of what May 'really meant' and, crucially, they say something about the kind of dissembling and cynical politician he thinks May 'really' is. Perspectives such as the rhetorical approach which make a clear distinction between invention and reality cannot account for this ontological ambivalence.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Grishakova, 2013, p. 7), and some understand fictionality as a way to test different event scenarios (cf. Nielsen, Phelan & Walsh, 2015). Based on our emphasis on fictionality as a quality of narrative discourse modes we also propose that fictionality is a mode of language use, where linguistic modes can be invented and tested.…”

Section: Fictionality and Narratologymentioning

confidence: 99%

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“I can tell the difference between fiction and reality”

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Hatavara

2019

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This article approaches fictionality as a set of semiotic strategies prototypically associated with fictional forms of storytelling (Hatavara & Mildorf, 2017b). Whilst these strategies are strongly associated with fiction, they might also be used in non-fictional and ontologically ambivalent contexts to create ‘cross-fictional’ rhetorical effects. We focus on the representation of thought and consciousness. Using the concept of ‘mind style’ (Fowler, 1977, 1996; Leech & Short, 1981; Semino, 2007), we investigate the linguistic representation of the internal monologue of British Prime Minister, Theresa May, in a satirical newspaper article. The stylistic analysis of the PM’s mind style facilitates an account of the elaborate and nuanced mixing of May and the author’s ideological perspectives throughout the piece. We argue that this cross-fictional, stylistic approach better accounts for the satirical effects of fictionality in the text than those placing a premium on authorial intention and the invented nature of the narrative discourse.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Fictionality and Narratologymentioning

confidence: 99%

“I can tell the difference between fiction and reality”

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Hatavara

2019

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“…For example, Cohn defines fiction as ‘nonreferential narrative’, and argues that a fictional world, such as the world of Kafka's The Castle , ‘remains to its end severed from the actual world’ (Cohn , 9, 13). Similarly, in their recent essay ‘Ten theses about fictionality’, Henrik Skov Nielsen, James Phelan and Richard Walsh suggest that fictional discourse invites us to assume ‘that it is not making referential claims’ (Nielsen, Phelan & Walsh , 68). However, they importantly draw attention to the need to acknowledge ‘the double quality of some uses of fictionality, that it is not meant to be understood as true and yet is meant to shape our beliefs about the actual world’ (p. 68).…”

Section: The Actual and The Possiblementioning

confidence: 99%

Fiction, History and the Possible

Meretoja

2015

Orbis Litterarum

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The article explores the problematic assumptions underlying the traditional view that literature deals with the realm of the possible and history with the realm of the actual. This dichotomy risks dismissing how a sense of the possible constitutes an important dimension of every actual world, how literary fiction provides interpretations of actual worlds, and how it has its own literary means of giving us a sense of a past world as a space of possibilities. This argument is developed by analysing Jonathan Littell's Les Bienveillantes (2006, The Kindly Ones), which has created a heated controversy on the contribution of literature to the understanding of the Holocaust. The article contributes to developing narrative hermeneutics as an approach which, first, suggests that both historiography and fiction are ways of interpreting the world past and present, and, second, is sensitive to how fiction requires specific modes of interpretation and engagement. The analysis of Littell's novel shows that the interplay between immersiveness and critical distance can produce a narrative dynamic that allows the reader to engage emotionally with an ethically problematic lifeworld without uncritically adopting the protagonist's perspective. One important way in which fiction can produce insights into history is its ability to cultivate, through its specifically fictional means, a sense of history as a sense of the possible while at the same time reflecting on the conditions and limits of narrating, representing and understanding history.

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“…Narrative studies of fictionality that have continued to place emphasis on fictionality as a communicative strategy have since been classed as following the rhetorical approach, the foundation of which is Phelan's well known rhetorical approach to narrative as "somebody telling somebody else on some occasion and for some purpose(s) that something happened" (Phelan, 2005, p. 18). Nielsen, Phelan, and Walsh (2015) jointly apply this approach in their article "Ten Theses about Fictionality" by asking the question: "When, where, why and how does someone use fictionality in order to achieve what purpose(s) in relation to what audience(s)?" (p. 62).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The paradox of imagining the post-human world

Laakso

2019

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Since the beginning of the twenty-first century, works depicting a post-human world have become a popular non-fiction genre. This kind ofdisanthropyis an extreme form of apocalyptic thinking. In this article, I examine one such disanthropic narrative, Alan Weisman’s bestselling non-fiction bookThe World Without Us(2007), using the theoretical framework of narrative fictionality studies.The World Without Usfalls between the conventional oppositional pairing of factual and fictional narratives. The book bases its rhetoric heavily on scientific facts – or at least on scientific expectations – especially in its use of interviews with scientists. Nevertheless, the core idea of a world without humans is inevitably fictional since the presence of readers makes the book’s premise manifestly counterfactual and paradoxical. In my analysis, I adopt a rhetorical approach to fictionality and factuality to ask how particular techniques and strategies connected to fictionality and factuality are employed in Weisman’s text in order to discuss the anxieties, desires, hopes, and fears of the possibility of human extinction.

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Ten Theses about Fictionality

Cited by 125 publications

References 18 publications

“I can tell the difference between fiction and reality”

“I can tell the difference between fiction and reality”

Fiction, History and the Possible

The paradox of imagining the post-human world

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