1. Fictionality

2. All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. "All persons, living and dead, are purely coincidental” (Vonnegut)

3. Mimesis Plato’s The Republic (Politeia) 4th c. BC Poets banned from ideal Republic (their representation twice removed from reality) – lie (imitation of appearance, not of essence) Are we still platonic? ”Based on real events”

4. Realist debate Platonic tradition: fiction excluded from the philosophical discussion (fiction devoid of a truth value). Fictional: no referentiality? Rorty, H. White: narrative structure links fictional to factual Is fiction mimetic? Metaphoric representation Realism works splendidly in everyday life we live according to it realistic assumptions (external world exists, other people are real like us etc.)- don’t undermine it

5. Double referentiality: fiction self-referential (PM theory emphasises) but also outside History vs fiction: task of the historian to establish a pattern, connections Raw material: historically verifyable texts

6. Ruth Ronen, Possible Worlds (1994) Lit. theory has always regarded fictionality as the distinctive feature of literary texts (and hence equated fictionality with literarity) fictionality: internal to the text this is isolation of the text however: myths, dreams, wishes also fictional! Conditional sentences (part of human nature) questions of ontology, in the distinction between fictional and nonfictional literary texts, in problems of representation, mimesis

7. Fiction and reality ”We are all in flight from the real reality.” (J. Fowles) Modernist fiction – epistemological uncertainties: How do we know? Postmodernist fiction – ontological uncertainties: Which is the real world? Historical fiction: Real compared to what? language: not a passive reflection (imitation) of the world, but active modelling. History (and also nature) is conveyed as it is organized in accordance with cultural conventions.

8. fictionality: no longer a property of the text but 1, type of speech situation, 2, position within culture 3, type of logic or semantics metaphysical insights behind formal logic

9. Possible worlds (Leibnitz, 1646-1716) Possible worlds stand in this study first as a general label for a set of modal and referential concepts developed in logic and borrowed by other disciplines to describe diverse issues: from universes of discourse in linguistics, through fictional worlds in literary theory, to physical reality in natural sciences.

10. (1) Possible worlds (and related concepts) borrowed from philosophical logic, indicate the legitimization of referential problems and of issues that have to do with the relations fiction-reality in literary theory. PM: ontological problems (text - extratextual) Representations of reality (cf. 1984, Matrix – simulacrum)

11. (2) Possible worlds provide for the first time a philosophical explanatory framework that pertains to the problem of fiction. This is an exception in view of the long philosophical tradition, from Plato to Russell, that has excluded fiction from the philosophical discussion (fiction has been viewed, for instance, as a sequence of propositions devoid of a truth value).

12. (3) Possible worlds indicate that fiction is logically and semantically not an exceptional phenomenon. Fiction: propositions that seem like regular assertions yet do not refer to actual states of affairs other cultural products with similar features, that present nonfactual states of affairs through the power of language (conditionals, propositions relating the wishes, anticipations or memories of a speaker, myth-constructing propositions, etc.). Fiction: part of a larger context of discourses that do not refer to the way things actually are in the world.

13. Text indexed as F: characters are viewed as participants in a parallel fictional world-system (logico-semantic autonomy relative to other world systems) F domain both ontological and structural (F worlds have organization! Not all possible worlds do!) The activation of conventions for fiction-reading means that the fictional world is grasped as logically autonomous relative to any notion of reality (although it might heavily rely on such reality notions).

14. Interpretation of Possible Worlds radical (modal realism): all modal possibilities are realized in some logical space (actual: the world you inhabit) moderate realism possible worlds exist as components of the actual world actual world: actual elements and non-actual possibilities included (as mental constructs) or: PW are abstract entities, hypothetical possible constructs form the non-actualized part of the world

15. 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. Literary theorists have adopted the possible worlds frame by arguing that, being non-actual states of affairs, fictional worlds form a subset of possible worlds fiction can be treated as a game with possibilities not actualized in our world

16. fictionality and actuality can be relativized to a cultural perspective (legends about Greek gods were presumably treated as versions of reality by people in ancient Greece). Fictional texts not necessarily refer to imaginary beings: many fictions rely heavily on references to objects and events belonging to actual history

17. The problem of the author In understanding a fictional text and in making propositions about a fictional world one assumes the presence of an author. The authorship of a fictional text reflects an understanding of fictionality as an intentional action (of world-projecting, of imagining, of belief-suspending). It is conventionally agreed that the ego of the biographical author of a fictional text is divided into an actual and a fictional part: the author as distinct from the narrator. By positing an author as a source of authority and control, one assumes that the fictional text is the only source of information about the world it constructs, which imposes specific constraints on the structure of the fictional universe.

18. Fictional entities do not exist from a logical point of view (there is no text-independent referent in the strict sense of the word for most fictional individuals), they do exist in our cultural practice (where one can refer to Don Quixote's properties), Fictional entities are inherently incomplete. Their incompleteness is primarily logical and secondly semantic. Fictional entities are logically incomplete because many conceivable statements about a fictional entity are undecidable.

19. Fictional entities as nonexistent? Exist in the logico-ontological spheres of their respective fictional worlds. (fiction operator) the distinctive feature of fiction is the total dependence of its constructs on the world-constructing act of a narrator or any other constituting agent.