Fiction and the Weave of Life [Paperback]

Literature is a source of understanding and insight into the human condition. Yet ever since Aristotle, philosophers have struggled to provide a plausible account of how this can be the case. For surely the fictionality - the sheer invented character - of the literary work means that literature concerns itself not with the real world but withotherworlds - what are commonly called fictional worlds. How is it, then, that fictions can tell us something of consequence about reality? InFiction and the Weave of Life, John Gibson offers a novel and intriguing account of the relationship between literature and life, and shows that literature's great cultural and cognitive value is inseparable from its fictionality and inventiveness.

Introduction
1. The Loss of the Real
2. Literature & the Sense of the World
3. Beyond Truth and Triviality
4. The Work of Criticism
5. The Fictional & the Real
Conclusion

John Gibsonis Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Louisville.