By Ruth Ronen
The idea that of attainable worlds, initially brought in philosophical good judgment, proves to be a effective instrument whilst borrowed by means of literary idea to provide an explanation for the concept of fictional worlds. Ruth Ronen develops a comparative examining of using attainable worlds in philosophy and in literary idea. She indicates new standards for the definition of fictionality; and during particular reports of domain names inside fictional worlds--events, gadgets, time and element of view--she proposes a thorough rethinking of fictionality quite often and fictional narrativity specifically.
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Additional resources for Possible Worlds in Literary Theory (Literature, Culture, Theory)
Sample text
In order to 34 Possible worlds, fictional worlds trace the steps by which this conclusion can be reached, I will examine two areas of philosophical discussion that pertain to the problem of fictionality: (1) The logico-semantic problem of the truth value of fictional discourse. (2) The problem of referring to fictional entities: the ontological status of fictional entities and of their properties. These two areas of discussion recently reveal new interpretations of concepts that have traditionally prevented the incorporation of fiction into a broader theory of logic or semantics.
Since possible worlds is a vague concept in itself, reflecting diverse philosophical methods and approaches, applying it to any other context requires prior interpretation and qualification. The philosophical divergence of interpretations given to possible worlds is hence bound to counteract any attempt to apply possible worlds directly to literary phenomena, as if the concept were not open to interpretation and its potential explanatory power subject to a polemic within the source-discipline itself.
When a speech act is pretended its standard truth values are suspended. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, the suspension of logical laws by means of attaching an operator indicating fictionality has been another widely proposed solution. Lewis (1978), for instance, describes a 37 Possible worlds in literary theory fictionality operator as an "intensional operator that may be analyzed as a restricted universal quantifier over possible worlds/7 In other words, when an assertion is prefixed by "in fiction f(p)," the truth of the given fictional proposition (p) is closed under implication of a fictional operator (f), which restricts the inferences drawn from such assertions.
