rapaport@cs.Buffalo.EDU (02/02/90)
The Graduate Group in Cognitive Science
of the SUNY Buffalo Center for Cognitive Science
DORRIT COHN
Harvard University
SIGNPOSTS OF FICTIONALITY
"Our understanding of fiction needs the contrast with history as much as
our understanding of history needs the contrast with fiction" (Louis
Mink). My presentation draws on an essay (to be published in POETICS
TODAY) that looks to narrative poetics for guidelines to define this
contrast. Though the boundary between fictional and non-fictional nar-
rative has been disregarded by narratologists themselves, it can be
shown that a number of their most important assumptions and conclusions
apply solely within the fictional domain. This holds true first and
foremost for the basic story/discourse dichotomy, a synchronic bi-level
model that excludes the referential claim of historiographic narrative.
The freedom of fiction from referential constraints in turn marks its
discourse itself in distinctive ways, notably by the presence of modal
devices (such as free indirect style) that open it to the presentation
of its characters' inner lives. A further demarcation concerns the
vocal instance (or origin) of fictional as compared to a non-fictional
narrative: the option offered the reader of fiction to separate its
narrator from its author, a move with far-reaching hermeneutic implica-
tions. Reference is made to the works of theorists of both literature
and history who have variously identified and ignored these differential
features.
Cohn, Dorrit. (1989). "Fictional versus Historical Lives: Borderlines
and Borderline Cases", Journal of Narrative Techniques. 19, 2-24.
Cohn, Dorrit. (1983). Transparent Minds. Princeton Univ. Press.
Date: 26 February 1990
Time: 4:00 pm
Room: Park 280
For further information, contact Erwin Segal 716-636-3671 (segal@cs.buffalo.edu
Dept. of Psychology. An evening discussion will also be held, at a
time and place to be announced.