Fiction
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
What is
Fiction?
We read books to find out who we are. What other
people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel, or
have done and thought and felt; or might do and
think and feel, is an essential guide to our
understanding of what we ourselves are and may
become. A person who had never known another
human being could not be introspective any more
than a terrier can, or a horse; he might (improbably)
keep himself alive, but he could not know anything
about himself, no matter how long he lived with
himself. And a person who had never listened to
nor read a tale or myth or parable or story, would
remain ignorant of his emotional and spiritual
heights and depths, would not know quite fully what
it is to be human. For the story from Rumpelstiltskin
to War and Peace is one of the basic tools invented
by the mind of man, for the purpose of gaining
understanding. There have been great societies
that did not use the wheel, but there have been no
societies that did not tell stories.
Ursula K. LeGuin, The Language of the Night
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
What is
Fiction?
Storytelling reveals
meaning without
committing the error of
defining it. . . . it brings
about consent and
reconciliation with things
as they are, and . . . we
may even trust it to
contain eventually by
implication that last word
which we expect from
the day of judgment.
Hannah Arendt
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
What is
Fiction?
I found by pretending that
things had happened which in
fact had not, and that people
existed who didn't, I could
achieve a lovely truth which
actuality obscures—especially
when I learned to abandon myth
and pattern my fabrications on
actual people and events.
John Barth, Lost in the
Funhouse
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
What is
Fiction?
The final belief is to
believe in a fiction, which
you know to be a fiction,
there being nothing else.
The exquisite truth is to
know that it is a fiction and
that you believe in it
willingly.
Wallace Stevens, "Adagia"
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
What is
Fiction?
Parmenides said, "one
cannot think of what is
not"; we are at the other
extreme, and say what
can be thought of must
certainly be a fiction.
Nietzsche, The Will to
Power
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
What is
Fiction?
The storytelling side of science is not just
peripheral, and not just pedagogy, but the very
point of it all. Science properly done is one of
the humanities, as a fine physics teacher once
said. The point of science is to help us to
understand what we are and how we got here,
and for this we need the great stories: the tale
of how, once upon a time, there was a Big
Bang, the Darwinian epic of the evolution of life
on Earth and now the story we are just
beginning to learn to tell: the amazing
adventure of the primate autobiographers who
finally taught themselves how to tell the story of
the amazing adventure of the primate
autobiographers.
Daniel Dennett, The Mind's "I"
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
What is
Fiction?
Fiction’s Manifestations
mythology
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction’s Manifestations
fairy tales: wonder tale involving
marvelous elements and occurrences,
though not necessarily about fairies. The
term embraces such popular folktales
(Märchen) as “Cinderella” and “Puss-inBoots” and art fairy tales (Kunstmärchen) of
later invention, such as The Happy
Prince (1888), by the Irish writer Oscar
Wilde. It is often difficult to distinguish
between tales of literary and oral origin,
because folktales have received literary
treatment from early times, and, conversely,
literary tales have found their way back into
the oral tradition. [Encyclopedia
Britannica]
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction’s Manifestations
fairy tales
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction’s Manifestations
the short story: a work
of fiction that can be read
in one sitting and usually
deals with a single,
significant event and its
aftermath
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction’s Manifestations
the novella: a longer
narrative, readable only
in a substantial time
commitment, involving
more than one
significant character
and events.
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction’s Manifestations
the novel: a work of fiction
of substantial length with
numerous characters, who
ordinarily undergo
substantial change(s) over a
long period of time (often
weeks and months if not
years). Originating in the 18th
Century.
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Watt on the origin of the
novel:
 The printing press
 The need for a middle
class and leisure time
 Early suspicions about
reading fiction
 The novel as a big book
Epiphany
James Joyce (pictured), the great
Irish writer, believed that
epiphanies are the essence of
the short story
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Point of View (POV)
POV: The perspective from which a
narrative—short story, novella,
novel--is told.
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
First Person: The narrator tells his or her
own version of a story in which he or
she is involved in some way.
First person fictions always raise the
possibility of an unreliable narrator: a
storyteller who is not completely honest,
either on purpose or out of ignorance,
about the incidents, motivation, or
significance of the narrative. Unreliable
narratives require the reader to suspect
that the narrator himself/herself is
perhaps more important, more worthy
of investigation, than the tale.
POV
Wayne
Booth
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Third Person Omniscient: A POV in which an all-knowing
storyteller, with access to the consciousness of numerous
(perhaps all) characters in the narrative and, in some cases, a
comprehensive understanding of past, present, and future, tells
the tale.
POV
Harry Crews
(1935-2012)
Third Person Central Intelligence (aka Third Person
Limited): A POV in which the storyteller’s access to
the consciousness of characters in the narrative is
ordinarily limited to one major character, and the
events in the story, and their significance, are
understood with that character’s knowledge and
from his/her perspective.
POV
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction Terms
character
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction Terms
climax
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction Terms
conflict
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction Terms
denouement
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction Terms
epistolary
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction Terms
frame tale
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction Terms
narrative
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction Terms
narrator/narratee
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction Terms
persona
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction Terms
plot
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction Terms
setting
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]
Fiction Terms
stream of
consciousness
ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]