The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics by Gaut Berys; Lopes Dominic;

The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics by Gaut Berys; Lopes Dominic;

Author:Gaut, Berys; Lopes, Dominic;
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1172918
Publisher: Taylor and Francis


Truth in a fiction

It is generally agreed that it is true in the Sherlock Holmes stories that the famous detective resides at 221B Baker Street. But in virtue of what is this, or indeed anything else, true in a particular story or fiction, or “fictionally true”? The simplest answer would be: it is fictionally true in a story N that p if and only if it is explicitly stated in the text T, in which N is narrated, that p, where it is “explicitly stated” in a text that p if and only if the text contains, as a proper part, an expression of p. (The rider “as a proper part” is necessary if the content of expressions occurring in direct or indirect quotation in a text is to be excluded from what is “explicitly stated.”) Being explicitly stated in the text of N is neither necessary nor sufficient for being true in N, however. It is not necessary because we must allow at least some things to be true in a story though they are neither explicitly stated nor immediately derivable from what is explicitly stated – for example, characters in adventure stories presumably eat and sleep in between their explicitly described exploits. It is not sufficient, on the other hand, because we must allow for the “internal narrators” of stories to be deceivers or deceived (as in Nabokov's Pale Fire), or disposed to understate, exaggerate or employ irony.

The second of these problems is easier to resolve, for we encounter, and generally surmount, analogous difficulties in understanding nonfictional narratives. If we believe the author of such a narrative to be informed about the subject, truthful, reliable and speaking literally in a language we understand, then we generally infer the truth of whatever is explicitly stated. When we distrust the utterer, or believe the utterer to be ignorant of the subject, or to be speaking nonliterally, we make appropriate adjustments in the inferences we draw from what is explicitly stated. In our attempts to determine what is true in a fictional story, we can employ much the same strategies, as long we are able to gauge, from the fictional text, when the narrator is trustworthy, or deceived, or speaking nonliterally. Similarly, we can bring to our reading of fictions the same interpretive skills that enable us to determine when a speaker, in saying one thing, intends to communicate something else. Philosophers talk here of our capacity to grasp “conversational implicatures” (Grice 1975).

No such easy solution presents itself when we consider those fictional truths that are neither “explicitly true” – true in virtue of what is explicitly stated – nor conversationally implicated by a text. We infer most of what is nonexplicitly true in a story on the basis of what we take to be “given,” in the understanding of a story, as unstated background. For example, as noted above, unless informed to the contrary we assume that characters in novels are individuals possessed of the features and capacities characteristic of human agents, and we infer other nonexplicit fictional truths on the basis of such assumptions.



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