2) What is fiction?
Focus on Fiction (Dorrit Cohn, in: The Distinction of Fiction, 1999, p. 1-18)
- Hans Vaihiger: “The word ‘fiction’ is subject to chaotic and perverse linguistic usage; even logicians
employ it in different meanings, without taking the pains to define the term or to distinguish among
its different meanings”
- Divergences is the significance of the term are plainly visible from dictionary entries under fiction.
Their only common denominator is that they all designate “something invented”
* Latin root: fingere to make or form
- Use of fiction here: The title is foreshadowing segregating qualities that apply to the term only when
it is understood in its specific generic meaning as a literary nonreferential narrative text
* Not usual, because fiction is mostly used as the designation for an invented narrative
Four other meanings of fiction will be distinguished below: fiction as un-truth, fiction as
conceptual abstraction, fiction as (all) literature, and fiction as (all) narrative
The pluri-significance of “fiction”
- When, in our daily lives, we charge journalists or rumour mongers with having written or told “a
fiction”, we use the term in its derogatory meaning of a doubtful or untrue statement – alternately
attributing it to deliberate deception, faulty memory, or misinformation
- Though this reproachful sense of the word has been noted lexically, little attention has been given to
its potential consequences: that it may imbue the word fiction with a degree of covert negativity and
frivolity even when the term is overtly targeted to a quite different meaning. One may even suspect
that fiction is at times chosen over other available terms when denigration is (more or less
consciously) implied
- We may also conjecture that it was its prejorative meaning of untruth that delayed the lexical move
of calling novels “fiction” to a time where this genre had become a well-established, highly respected
literary form. Historians of the novel have shown that, as the century advanced and as readers
learned to accept the norms of literary realism, novelists tended to drop claims to reality or factuality
- In our own age, the negative meaning of fiction as “untrue statement” has melted away from its use
as a generic term, and with it the danger of these two meanings interfering with each other.
* Noteworthy: “The only reason that the phrase “fictional truth” (matters related to
literature) is not an oxymoron, as “fictitious truth” (matters related to life) would be, is that
fiction is a genre whereas lies are not
- Fiction means something entirely different in philosophical discourse than in the discourse
concerned with literature: The principal difference is that when philosophers employ the word, far
from its designating anything related to literature or narrative, it refers to a concept or idea
- Hamburger: when we perceive literary characters “as fictive, this is not based on an as-if-structure,
but rather on an as-structure”. Novels present us with a semblance or illusion (Schein) of reality so
long as we remain absorbed in it
- It is not always easy to separate fiction in the sense of its meaning as abstract concept from its
meaning as verbal or literary expression generally
- What all different conceptions have in common – aside from their vastness and vagueness – is an
understanding of fiction that is not primarily narrative in nature. When (as often the case) they do
include such genres as autobiography, narrative poetry, or the novel, they tend to regard them as
expressive, ideological, or visionary genres and to deemphasize their narrative structure or language.
It is primarily on this basis that the application of the word fiction to all of literature, and sometimes
even to other arts and/or systematic-theoretical works, differs from its application to all of narrative –
the category of meaning I am about to consider
“Fiction as a nonreferential narrative”
- Though the term fiction was used through the ages in all the meanings surveyed above, certain
,thinkers did prepare the way for its literary-generic meaning of nonreferential narrative (Aristotle)
- Aristoteles mimesis as “fiction”: “The poet must be a maker not of verses but of stories, since it is by
virtue of his fiction that he is a poet, and that what he feigns is action”
- It was only quite gradually in the course of the next century that fiction became the standard
anglophone term for literary prose narrative. This standardization of fiction as a generic term has not
resulted in eliminating its other meanings. And this is true despite the fact that in all four of these
meanings it is used as a synonym for other, readily available words: untruth, abstraction, literature,
narrative. Though it is no doubt futile to campaign for lexical reform, one may perhaps hope that a
clearer awareness of the word’s semantic instability will prompt literary critics to adhere to its
restricted generic meaning.
Use of fiction to discuss the next study: a literary nonreferential narrative
- Nonreferential narrative: both the noun and the adjective of this definitional phrase need to be
qualified before it can be meaningfully applied to matters relevant to the distinction of fiction
- Narrative: a series of statements that deal with a causally related sequence of events that concern
human (or human-like) beings. Conceived in this fashion, narrative most notably excludes all general
statements of “truth” that characterize theoretical, philosophical, explanatory, speculative, or critical
discourse. It also excludes purely descriptive statements and expressions of emotion. In the generic
sense, fiction clearly includes all the forms of discourse that this definition includes
- The term fiction cannot be reserved for texts that contain no extranarrative language whatever. Still,
one can propose that it be applied only to texts in which expository or descriptive language is
subordinated to narrative language: texts where the principal function of generalizations is to
elucidate, and of description to contextualize or symbolize, the narrated events and characters
- However, subordination is not a purely quantitative matter; readers may disagree about which
language is subordinated to which in a text
- Nonreferential: it signifieds that a work of fiction itself creates the world to which it refers by
referring to it. This self-referentiality is particularly striking when a novel plunges us from the outset
into the spatial perceptions of a fictional figure. If the adjective nonreferential is to be meaningful, it
must not be understood to signify that fiction never refers to the real world outside the text
- When we speak of the nonreferentiality of fiction, we do not mean that it can not refer to the real
world outside the text, but that id nee not refer to it. But beyond this, the adjective of my definitional
phrase also signifieds that fiction is subject to two closely interrelated distinguishing features: (1) its
references to the world outside the text are not bound to accuracy; and (2) it does not refer
exclusively to the real world outside the text
The reality effect (Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language. Trans. Richard Howard. Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1986. 141-49)
- Insignificant notation: taking this word in its stong sense apparently detached from the
narrative’s semiotic structure. It is related to description, even if the object seems to be denoted only
by a single word (in reality, the “pure” word does not exist)
- Predictive: schematizing to the extreme, and without taking into account numerous detours, delays,
reversals, and disappointments which narrative institutionally imposes upon this schema. At each
articulation of the narrative syntagm, someone says to the hero (or to the reader, it does not matter
which) if you act in this way, if you choose this alternative, this is what will happen (the reported
character of these predictions does not call into question their practical nature)
- Description: completely different, because it has no predictive mark. “Analogical” its structure is
purely summatory and does not contain that trajectory of choices and alternatives. Description
appears as a kind of characteristic of the so-called higher languages, to the apparently paradoxical
,degree that it is justified by no finality of action or communication. The singularity of description (or
of the “useless detail”) in narrative fabric, its isolated situation, designates a question which has the
greatest importance for the structural analysis of narrative. This question is the following: Is
everything in narrative significant, and if not, if insignificant stretches subsist in the narrative
syntagm, what is ultimately, so to speak, the significance of this insignificance? (end of page 143/2)
- The aesthetic goal of Flaubertian description is thoroughly mixed with “realistic” imperatives, as if
the referent’s exactitude, superior or indifferent to any other function, governed and alone justified
its description, or in its denotion. This mixture – this interweaving – of constraints has a double
advantage: on the one hand, aesthetic function giving a meaning to the “fragment”, halts what we
might call the vertigo of notion
- The irreducible residues of function analysis have this in common: they denote what is ordinarily
called “concrete reality” (insignificant gestures, transitory attitudes, insignificant objects, redundant
words). The pure and simple “representation” of the “real”, the naked relation of “what is” (or has
been) thus appears as a resistance to meaning; this resistance confirms the great mythic opposition
of the true-to-life (the lifelike) and the intelligible; it suffices to recall that, in the ideology of our time,
obsessive reference to the “concrete” (in what is rhetorically demanded of the human sciences, of
literature, of behavior) is always brandished like a weapon against meaning
- Resistance of the “real” (in written form) to structure is very limited in the fictive account,
constructed by definition on a model which, for its main outlines, has no other constraints than those
of intelligibility; but this same “reality” becomes the essential reference in historical narrative, which
is supposed to report “what really happend”: what does the non-functionality of a detail matter then,
when it denotes “what took place”; “concrete reality” becomes the sufficient justification for
speaking
- History is in fact the model of those narratives which consent to fill in the interstices of their
functions by structurally superfluous notations, and it is logical that literary realism should have been
contemporary with the regnum of “objective” history, to which must be added the contemporary
development of techniques, of works, and institutions based on the incessant need to authenticate
the “real” (photograph, reportage, exhibitions of ancient objects, tourism of monuments and
historical sites)
- All this shows that the “real” is supposed to be self-sufficient, that it is strong enough to belie any
notion of “function”, that its “speech-act” has no need to be integrated into a structure and that the
having-been-there of things is a sufficient principle of speech
- Opinable: it is entirely subject to (public) opinion
- Referential illusion: the truth of this illusion is that eliminated from the realistic speech-act as a
signifies of denotion, the “real” returns to it as a signifies of connotation; for just when these details
are reputed to denote the real directly, al they do is signify it
- The very absence of the signifies, to the advantage of the referent alone, becomes the very signifier
of realism: the realism effect is produced ,the basis of that unavowed verisimilitude which forms the
aesthetic of all the standard works of modernity
- The disintegration of the sign is of course present in the realistic enterprise, but in a somewhat
regressive manner, since it occurs in the name of a referential plenitude, whereas the goal today is to
empty the sign and infinitely to postpone its object so as to challenge, in a radical fashion, the age-old
aesthetic of “representation”
The "reality effect," as described by Roland Barthes, refers to the way certain seemingly
insignificant details in narrative texts are employed to create an illusion of reality. These details, while
not advancing the plot or contributing functionally to the narrative structure, serve to denote the
"real" through their very presence. This denotation does not directly signify reality itself but operates
as a connotation, giving the impression of authenticity and lifelikeness. The effect relies on the
, implicit assumption that such "useless" or "insignificant" elements are truthful representations of the
world, thus anchoring the text in the realm of realism. This creates a paradox where the absence of
explicit meaning becomes a signifier of realism, producing a sense of the tangible or historical truth
within the narrative.
Excerpt (W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz)
- The writer (someone who was traveling) saw Austerlitz after a visit to the zoo in a waiting room. The
writer noticed that, unlike other travellers who just stare apathetically into space, Austerlitz was
making notes and sketches which were obviously related to the room where they were both sitting.
Austerlitz says that no one understands the great thought behind architecture
- There are pictures in the text to illustrate something earlier described (big eyes of an animal, a fire
in a building)
- The main place is Antwerp Central Station
- The first part is about the Nocturama in Antwerp and he describes everything he sees, and his
feelings. They are written down so it feels like they are your own thoughts
- The text exemplifies how Sebald weaves together external observations and internal reflections,
making the reader feel as if they are experiencing the writers thoughts firsthand. This mirrors his
broader technique of dissolving the boundary between narrator and reader, making the narrative feel
intimate and universal at once
- The writer and Austerlitz met each other as travellers I think at the Antwerp Central Station. They
travel for a few days together and Austerlitz tells a lot about what he knows and the
places/buildings/history around them. You hear what Austerlitz tells, but you experience the feelings
and thoughts of the writer. They met up a few times more, and all the meet ups were by chance and
not planned
- Austerlitz knows a lot about history, architecture, etc (he observes very well)
- They also talk about Fort Breendonk, a military fort located near Mechelen in Belgium that was
repurposed during World War II as a Nazi prison and transit camp. It stands as a somber symbol of
the atrocities committed during the war. Breendonk often appears in works addressing the Holocaust,
human suffering, and the consequences of fascism, reflecting on its historical weight and the
atrocities committed within its walls
* The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million
Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. It also targeted millions of
other victims, including Roma, disabled individuals, political dissidents, and others deemed
"undesirable," aiming to annihilate entire communities through genocide
3) The Novel as Response to Modernity
Raymond Williams, Literature, in: Marxism and Literature, Oxford 2009 [1977], p. 45-54.
3. Literature
- Literature: full, central, immediate human experience (associated reference to “minute particulars”)
- Society (general and abstract): the summaries and averages, rather than the direct substance, of
human living. Other related concepts such as “politics”, “sociology”, or “ideology”, are similarly placed
and downgraded, as mere hardened outer shells compared with the living experience of literature
- Literature is the process and the result of formal composition within the social and formal
properties of a language the effective suppression of this process and its circumstances, which is
achieved b shifting the concept to an undifferentiated equivalence with “immediate living
experience” is an extraordinary ideological feat
- The very process that is specific, that of actual composition, has effectively disappeared or has been
Focus on Fiction (Dorrit Cohn, in: The Distinction of Fiction, 1999, p. 1-18)
- Hans Vaihiger: “The word ‘fiction’ is subject to chaotic and perverse linguistic usage; even logicians
employ it in different meanings, without taking the pains to define the term or to distinguish among
its different meanings”
- Divergences is the significance of the term are plainly visible from dictionary entries under fiction.
Their only common denominator is that they all designate “something invented”
* Latin root: fingere to make or form
- Use of fiction here: The title is foreshadowing segregating qualities that apply to the term only when
it is understood in its specific generic meaning as a literary nonreferential narrative text
* Not usual, because fiction is mostly used as the designation for an invented narrative
Four other meanings of fiction will be distinguished below: fiction as un-truth, fiction as
conceptual abstraction, fiction as (all) literature, and fiction as (all) narrative
The pluri-significance of “fiction”
- When, in our daily lives, we charge journalists or rumour mongers with having written or told “a
fiction”, we use the term in its derogatory meaning of a doubtful or untrue statement – alternately
attributing it to deliberate deception, faulty memory, or misinformation
- Though this reproachful sense of the word has been noted lexically, little attention has been given to
its potential consequences: that it may imbue the word fiction with a degree of covert negativity and
frivolity even when the term is overtly targeted to a quite different meaning. One may even suspect
that fiction is at times chosen over other available terms when denigration is (more or less
consciously) implied
- We may also conjecture that it was its prejorative meaning of untruth that delayed the lexical move
of calling novels “fiction” to a time where this genre had become a well-established, highly respected
literary form. Historians of the novel have shown that, as the century advanced and as readers
learned to accept the norms of literary realism, novelists tended to drop claims to reality or factuality
- In our own age, the negative meaning of fiction as “untrue statement” has melted away from its use
as a generic term, and with it the danger of these two meanings interfering with each other.
* Noteworthy: “The only reason that the phrase “fictional truth” (matters related to
literature) is not an oxymoron, as “fictitious truth” (matters related to life) would be, is that
fiction is a genre whereas lies are not
- Fiction means something entirely different in philosophical discourse than in the discourse
concerned with literature: The principal difference is that when philosophers employ the word, far
from its designating anything related to literature or narrative, it refers to a concept or idea
- Hamburger: when we perceive literary characters “as fictive, this is not based on an as-if-structure,
but rather on an as-structure”. Novels present us with a semblance or illusion (Schein) of reality so
long as we remain absorbed in it
- It is not always easy to separate fiction in the sense of its meaning as abstract concept from its
meaning as verbal or literary expression generally
- What all different conceptions have in common – aside from their vastness and vagueness – is an
understanding of fiction that is not primarily narrative in nature. When (as often the case) they do
include such genres as autobiography, narrative poetry, or the novel, they tend to regard them as
expressive, ideological, or visionary genres and to deemphasize their narrative structure or language.
It is primarily on this basis that the application of the word fiction to all of literature, and sometimes
even to other arts and/or systematic-theoretical works, differs from its application to all of narrative –
the category of meaning I am about to consider
“Fiction as a nonreferential narrative”
- Though the term fiction was used through the ages in all the meanings surveyed above, certain
,thinkers did prepare the way for its literary-generic meaning of nonreferential narrative (Aristotle)
- Aristoteles mimesis as “fiction”: “The poet must be a maker not of verses but of stories, since it is by
virtue of his fiction that he is a poet, and that what he feigns is action”
- It was only quite gradually in the course of the next century that fiction became the standard
anglophone term for literary prose narrative. This standardization of fiction as a generic term has not
resulted in eliminating its other meanings. And this is true despite the fact that in all four of these
meanings it is used as a synonym for other, readily available words: untruth, abstraction, literature,
narrative. Though it is no doubt futile to campaign for lexical reform, one may perhaps hope that a
clearer awareness of the word’s semantic instability will prompt literary critics to adhere to its
restricted generic meaning.
Use of fiction to discuss the next study: a literary nonreferential narrative
- Nonreferential narrative: both the noun and the adjective of this definitional phrase need to be
qualified before it can be meaningfully applied to matters relevant to the distinction of fiction
- Narrative: a series of statements that deal with a causally related sequence of events that concern
human (or human-like) beings. Conceived in this fashion, narrative most notably excludes all general
statements of “truth” that characterize theoretical, philosophical, explanatory, speculative, or critical
discourse. It also excludes purely descriptive statements and expressions of emotion. In the generic
sense, fiction clearly includes all the forms of discourse that this definition includes
- The term fiction cannot be reserved for texts that contain no extranarrative language whatever. Still,
one can propose that it be applied only to texts in which expository or descriptive language is
subordinated to narrative language: texts where the principal function of generalizations is to
elucidate, and of description to contextualize or symbolize, the narrated events and characters
- However, subordination is not a purely quantitative matter; readers may disagree about which
language is subordinated to which in a text
- Nonreferential: it signifieds that a work of fiction itself creates the world to which it refers by
referring to it. This self-referentiality is particularly striking when a novel plunges us from the outset
into the spatial perceptions of a fictional figure. If the adjective nonreferential is to be meaningful, it
must not be understood to signify that fiction never refers to the real world outside the text
- When we speak of the nonreferentiality of fiction, we do not mean that it can not refer to the real
world outside the text, but that id nee not refer to it. But beyond this, the adjective of my definitional
phrase also signifieds that fiction is subject to two closely interrelated distinguishing features: (1) its
references to the world outside the text are not bound to accuracy; and (2) it does not refer
exclusively to the real world outside the text
The reality effect (Roland Barthes, The Rustle of Language. Trans. Richard Howard. Farrar, Straus
and Giroux, 1986. 141-49)
- Insignificant notation: taking this word in its stong sense apparently detached from the
narrative’s semiotic structure. It is related to description, even if the object seems to be denoted only
by a single word (in reality, the “pure” word does not exist)
- Predictive: schematizing to the extreme, and without taking into account numerous detours, delays,
reversals, and disappointments which narrative institutionally imposes upon this schema. At each
articulation of the narrative syntagm, someone says to the hero (or to the reader, it does not matter
which) if you act in this way, if you choose this alternative, this is what will happen (the reported
character of these predictions does not call into question their practical nature)
- Description: completely different, because it has no predictive mark. “Analogical” its structure is
purely summatory and does not contain that trajectory of choices and alternatives. Description
appears as a kind of characteristic of the so-called higher languages, to the apparently paradoxical
,degree that it is justified by no finality of action or communication. The singularity of description (or
of the “useless detail”) in narrative fabric, its isolated situation, designates a question which has the
greatest importance for the structural analysis of narrative. This question is the following: Is
everything in narrative significant, and if not, if insignificant stretches subsist in the narrative
syntagm, what is ultimately, so to speak, the significance of this insignificance? (end of page 143/2)
- The aesthetic goal of Flaubertian description is thoroughly mixed with “realistic” imperatives, as if
the referent’s exactitude, superior or indifferent to any other function, governed and alone justified
its description, or in its denotion. This mixture – this interweaving – of constraints has a double
advantage: on the one hand, aesthetic function giving a meaning to the “fragment”, halts what we
might call the vertigo of notion
- The irreducible residues of function analysis have this in common: they denote what is ordinarily
called “concrete reality” (insignificant gestures, transitory attitudes, insignificant objects, redundant
words). The pure and simple “representation” of the “real”, the naked relation of “what is” (or has
been) thus appears as a resistance to meaning; this resistance confirms the great mythic opposition
of the true-to-life (the lifelike) and the intelligible; it suffices to recall that, in the ideology of our time,
obsessive reference to the “concrete” (in what is rhetorically demanded of the human sciences, of
literature, of behavior) is always brandished like a weapon against meaning
- Resistance of the “real” (in written form) to structure is very limited in the fictive account,
constructed by definition on a model which, for its main outlines, has no other constraints than those
of intelligibility; but this same “reality” becomes the essential reference in historical narrative, which
is supposed to report “what really happend”: what does the non-functionality of a detail matter then,
when it denotes “what took place”; “concrete reality” becomes the sufficient justification for
speaking
- History is in fact the model of those narratives which consent to fill in the interstices of their
functions by structurally superfluous notations, and it is logical that literary realism should have been
contemporary with the regnum of “objective” history, to which must be added the contemporary
development of techniques, of works, and institutions based on the incessant need to authenticate
the “real” (photograph, reportage, exhibitions of ancient objects, tourism of monuments and
historical sites)
- All this shows that the “real” is supposed to be self-sufficient, that it is strong enough to belie any
notion of “function”, that its “speech-act” has no need to be integrated into a structure and that the
having-been-there of things is a sufficient principle of speech
- Opinable: it is entirely subject to (public) opinion
- Referential illusion: the truth of this illusion is that eliminated from the realistic speech-act as a
signifies of denotion, the “real” returns to it as a signifies of connotation; for just when these details
are reputed to denote the real directly, al they do is signify it
- The very absence of the signifies, to the advantage of the referent alone, becomes the very signifier
of realism: the realism effect is produced ,the basis of that unavowed verisimilitude which forms the
aesthetic of all the standard works of modernity
- The disintegration of the sign is of course present in the realistic enterprise, but in a somewhat
regressive manner, since it occurs in the name of a referential plenitude, whereas the goal today is to
empty the sign and infinitely to postpone its object so as to challenge, in a radical fashion, the age-old
aesthetic of “representation”
The "reality effect," as described by Roland Barthes, refers to the way certain seemingly
insignificant details in narrative texts are employed to create an illusion of reality. These details, while
not advancing the plot or contributing functionally to the narrative structure, serve to denote the
"real" through their very presence. This denotation does not directly signify reality itself but operates
as a connotation, giving the impression of authenticity and lifelikeness. The effect relies on the
, implicit assumption that such "useless" or "insignificant" elements are truthful representations of the
world, thus anchoring the text in the realm of realism. This creates a paradox where the absence of
explicit meaning becomes a signifier of realism, producing a sense of the tangible or historical truth
within the narrative.
Excerpt (W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz)
- The writer (someone who was traveling) saw Austerlitz after a visit to the zoo in a waiting room. The
writer noticed that, unlike other travellers who just stare apathetically into space, Austerlitz was
making notes and sketches which were obviously related to the room where they were both sitting.
Austerlitz says that no one understands the great thought behind architecture
- There are pictures in the text to illustrate something earlier described (big eyes of an animal, a fire
in a building)
- The main place is Antwerp Central Station
- The first part is about the Nocturama in Antwerp and he describes everything he sees, and his
feelings. They are written down so it feels like they are your own thoughts
- The text exemplifies how Sebald weaves together external observations and internal reflections,
making the reader feel as if they are experiencing the writers thoughts firsthand. This mirrors his
broader technique of dissolving the boundary between narrator and reader, making the narrative feel
intimate and universal at once
- The writer and Austerlitz met each other as travellers I think at the Antwerp Central Station. They
travel for a few days together and Austerlitz tells a lot about what he knows and the
places/buildings/history around them. You hear what Austerlitz tells, but you experience the feelings
and thoughts of the writer. They met up a few times more, and all the meet ups were by chance and
not planned
- Austerlitz knows a lot about history, architecture, etc (he observes very well)
- They also talk about Fort Breendonk, a military fort located near Mechelen in Belgium that was
repurposed during World War II as a Nazi prison and transit camp. It stands as a somber symbol of
the atrocities committed during the war. Breendonk often appears in works addressing the Holocaust,
human suffering, and the consequences of fascism, reflecting on its historical weight and the
atrocities committed within its walls
* The Holocaust was the systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of six million
Jews by Nazi Germany and its collaborators during World War II. It also targeted millions of
other victims, including Roma, disabled individuals, political dissidents, and others deemed
"undesirable," aiming to annihilate entire communities through genocide
3) The Novel as Response to Modernity
Raymond Williams, Literature, in: Marxism and Literature, Oxford 2009 [1977], p. 45-54.
3. Literature
- Literature: full, central, immediate human experience (associated reference to “minute particulars”)
- Society (general and abstract): the summaries and averages, rather than the direct substance, of
human living. Other related concepts such as “politics”, “sociology”, or “ideology”, are similarly placed
and downgraded, as mere hardened outer shells compared with the living experience of literature
- Literature is the process and the result of formal composition within the social and formal
properties of a language the effective suppression of this process and its circumstances, which is
achieved b shifting the concept to an undifferentiated equivalence with “immediate living
experience” is an extraordinary ideological feat
- The very process that is specific, that of actual composition, has effectively disappeared or has been
