Fiction and Art Explorations in Contemporary Theory [Hardcover]

The nature of fiction has long been debated across the humanities, and is of considerable importance for philosophical aesthetics, literary theory, narratology and the history of ideas.

This volume offers something entirely new: a selection of multidisciplinary perspectives on fiction written by an international team of contributors at the forefront of their fields, providing a spectrum of approaches to compare and contrast. This volume, divided between historical, cognitive, aesthetic and non-western approaches, targets a wide range of topics, including mathematics, history, religion and metaphysics. This is a seminal volume on one of the most important topics in the humanities.

Dedication
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Ananta Sukla

I. Historical Perspectives

1. Fiction's False Start
David Konstan
2. The Poetic Pragmatics of Greek Myths:
Referential Fiction and Ritual Performance
Claude Calame

II. Interdisciplinary Perspectives

3. Fictionality of the Absolute:
On Truth and Lie in the Metaphysical and Aesthetic Sense
Peter Heron
4. Mathematical Fictions
Jody Azzouni
5. Why Suicide Bomber Bombs: Fictionality of Rituals
Ivan Strenski
6. Fiction and History
Allen Speight
7. Cognitive Value of (Literary) Fiction
Robert Stecker
8. Fiction, Cognition, and Confusion
Jukka Mikkonen
9. Epistemology and Fiction: Thought Experiments in Personal Identity
Aleks Zarnitsyn
10. Semantics of Fiction: Naming and Metonymy
Carl Ehrett
11. The Fictional Truth: Nonfiction and Narration
Sarah Worth
12. Fiction as a Creative Process
Amanda Garcia
13. Fiction and Emotion:
The Relation of Consciousness to the Economy of Evolution
Samuel Kimball

III. Aesthetic Perspectives

14. How to Reach Fictional Worlds
Lubom??r Dole??el
15. Literature, Fictionality, and the Illusion of Self-Presence
Samuel Kimball
16. Judicial Fiction and Literaryl3)