Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds 9780801857492

Citation preview

PARALLAX

••

RE-VISIONS OF CULTURE AND SOCIETY

Stephen G. Nichols, Gerald Prince, and Wendy Steiner SERIES EDITORS

Heterocosmica Fiction and Possible Worlds

Lubomir Dolezel

The Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore and London

© 1998 The Johns Hopkins University Press

All rights reserved. Published 1998 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 07 06 05 04 03 02 01 00 99 98 5 4 3 2 l The Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Maryland 21218-4319 The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data will be found at the end of this book. A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library. ISBN

0-8018-5749-X

801.3 DhFJ'6 h Every well-invented poem is to be seen as a history from another possible world. -J. J. Breitinger, 1740

It is rare for the imagination of artists to be linked directly to their situation. ... The artist needs precisely to leave, by some invention or other, the world of experience that worries, oppresses, bores or upsets him. -George Sand, 1854 The nature of a work of art is to be not a part, nor yet a copy of the real world (as we commonly understand that phrase), but a world by itself, independent, complete, autonomous; and to possess it fully you must enter that world, conform to its laws, and ignore for the time the beliefs, aims, and particular conditions which belong to you in the other worlds of reality. -A. C. Bradley, 1901 A novel examines not reality, but existence. And existence is not what has occurred, existence is the realm of human possibilities, everything that man can become, everything he's capable 0£ Novelists draw up the map of existence by discovering this or that human possibility. -Milan Kundera, 1988

I

Contents

Preface

Prologue T: From Nonexistent Entities to Fictional Worlds

ONE

ix

I

Narrative Worlds Starter Terms I

31

One-Person Worlds

37

Action and Motivation

55

III (A)

Multiperson Worlds

IV (T)

Interaction and Power

74 96

V (TE)

Narrative Modalities

113

TWO

Intensional Functions

I (A) II (T)

Starter Terms II

135

Authentication

145

VII (TE)

Saturation

169

VIII (A)

Modern Myth

185

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction: Postmodernist Rewrites

199

VI (TE)

Notes Glossary References Subject Index Author Index

227 279 283 321 333

I

Preface

The art of the folk storyteller or popular crimefiction writer produces variations on stock tales and characters and can thus be described by a "narrative grammar." But the creative energy of literature is beyond the grasp of such a restrictive model. Literary narratology needs a theory of poiesis, of the invention of new stories in and through new texts. Such a theory emerges, unexpectedly, when we refocus our attention from narrative as story to narrative as fiction. To be sure, the domain of fiction is broader than that of the story. Yet in this wider perspective a new vista on narrative opens: we come to understand the conditions and principles of story inventing as a special case offiction making. There are many approaches to fictionality in contemporary philosophy, aesthetics, literary theory, and so on. This book treats fiction within the paradigm of possible worlds. A concept with a venerable philosophical tradition, "possible worlds" was resurrected by contemporary logic and analytic philosophy and penetrated into the theoretical discourse of natural, social, and human sciences. Treating fictional narratives as possible worlds links literary theory to a dynamic interdisciplinary network and provides it with the model ofpoiesis we could not find in "classical" narratology. The universe of possible worlds is constantly expanding and diversifying thanks to the incessant world-constructing activity of human minds and hands. Literary fiction is probably the most active experimental laboratory of the world-constructing enterprise. We live in the era of poststructuralism, but this stage of intellectual history is more complex than some of its speakers would have us believe. To be sure, in Anglo-Saxon poststructuralist academic critiIX

Preface cism the French and German philosophical "imports" are much more popular than the "native" analytic philosophy. But who suffers from this puzzling paradox? Analytic philosophy has preserved the sober spirit of critical thinking at a time of bloated verbosity. This spirit, which requires controlled theory formation and testing, precise conceptual analysis, and fair assessment of the ideas of the past, has not died but has carried us into the computer age. We grasp fiction in opposition to reality (actuality). If reality is called fiction, a new word for fiction has to be invented. If we accept the assumptions of the realist ontology, we need not get bogged down in exasperating metaphysical issues but can devote our intellectual energy to tackling problems that lie within our expertise: How do fictional worlds come into existence? What are their structures and types? How do they depend on the literary text? How are they reconstructed in reading? How do they move through literary history? A realist ontology does not commit us to the postulates ofliternry realism. In fact, this book reserves its strongest criticism for the ancient but persistent doctrine of mimesis, a theory of fictionality that claims that fictions are imitations or representations of the actual world, of real life. Mimetic doctrine is behind a very popular mode . of reading that converts fictional persons into live people, imaginary settings into actual places, invented stories into real-life happenings. Mimetic reading, practiced by naive readers and reinforced by journalistic critics, is one of the most reductive operations of which the human mind is capable: the vast, open, and inviting fictional universe is shrunk to the model of one single world, actual human experience. Even if its sole merit were to offer an alternative to the doc~ trine of mimesis, possible-worlds semantics of fictionality deserves a hearing. Denial of the mimetic character of fiction making does not mean severing the strong links between fiction and actuality. The semantics of this book sees a bidirectional exchange: in one direction,.in constructing fictional worlds, the poetic imagination works with "material" drawn from actuality; in the opposite direction, fictional constructs deeply influence our imaging and understanding of reality. X

Preface However, the exchange can be properly observed and described only if we insist on a distinction between the actual and the fictional. By setting firm boundaries, we avoid confusion whenever our aesthetic desire or cognitive project invite us to transworld travel. At least since Romanticism, the study ofliterature has faced a fundamental challenge: how to fuse "nomothetic" and "ideographic" research, how to pursue concurrently abstract theory and concrete text analysis. The zigzag method, pioneered by Wilhelm von Humboldt in his monograph on Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea (1799) and popularized by Roland Barthes in his study of Balzac's "Sarrasine" (1970), responds to the challenge: concepts of a theory are tested in text analysis, and, in turn, the analysis inspires new developments on the theoretical level. In the composition of the present book I advance the zigzag method by differentiating three kinds of chapters: theoretical (T), theoretical with examples (TE), and analytical (A), corresponding to the three epistemological modes of poetics-theoretical, analytical, and exemplificatory. We observe literary phenomena in a dual perspective: as particulars of a literary work and as universals of a systematic theory. Moreover, each of the two parts of the book starts with a special section defining the basic theoretical vocabulary. In order to substitute for the lack of examples in the purely theoretical chapters (II and IV), cross-referencing to literary works analyzed in chapters I and III is provided. The number of the works analyzed is necessarily limited. The purpose of the theoretical chapters is to provide the reader with a systematic account of the basic concepts of fictional semantics and invite him or her not only to expand and refine the theory but also to undertake further analytical ventures. All quotations from non-English primary and secondary sources are translated; only when it is indispensable for precise understanding is the original wording quoted after the translation. The list of primary sources contains only the literary works that are treated at some length and particularly those for which page references are given. After a quotation from a translated literary text, two page numbers appear; the first refers to an edition in the original language, Xl

Preface the second to an English translation; both are included in the list of primary sources. Since all translations are my responsibility, references to the extant English translations are provided only for the reader's convenience. I trust that the book's composition and style will greatly facilitate its reading. The reader need not follow the order of the exposition but is invited to browse. I have worked on this book for a long time, but I believe that even in this time of microwave cooking and fast-food take-outs, patience, meticulousness, and a flair for seasoning are still necessary for preparing a fine meal. I have been publishing papers on fictional semantics for more than twenty years. But all material taken from my previous writings has been substantially reworked, so that this book is a new text both in overall design and in particular formulations. It is impossible to list all the friends and colleagues who stimulated my thinking about literary fiction by their encouragement, comments, and criticism. Yet the names of four friends and comradesin-arms have to be spelled out: Benjamin Harshaw (Hrushovski), Thomas G. Pavel, Gerald Prince, and Marie-Laure Ryan. I owe special gratitude to Nancy H. Traill for her invaluable assistance in my struggle to reconcile conceptual precision and readability.

XU

I

Prologue T From Nonexistent Entities to Fictional Worlds

Fictionality is a popular topic in modern logic and philosophy, where it is closely linked to the venerable issue of nonexistent entities. Two questions have dominated the debate: (1) what is the ontological character of nonexistent or fictional particulars (golden mountain, Odysseus, the present king of France); and (2) what is the logical status of fictional representations, especially the reference of fictional terms and the truth-conditions of fictional sentences. The inconclusiveness of the philosophical debate is only partly due to the complexity of these questions. The main culprit is the atomistic approach, which has burdened analytic philosophy. Opposed to "system-building" (Lindenfeld 1980, 198), analytic philosophers have practiced a dated, prestructural (presystemic) methodology. The second culprit is the parochialism of much contemporary philosophizing. If, as P. F. Strawson posits, "one of the principal philosophical drives is ... to relate and connect our various intellectual and human concerns in some intelligible way'' (1992, 12), then contemporary philosophy, in contrast to classical philosophy, fails in this "drive." The human and social sciences have developed sophisticated methods of investigation and formulated theories of high standard; it is no longer possible to pursue a philosophy of language, literature, mental phel

HETEROCOSMICA

nomena, or human society and completely ignore linguistics, literary study, psychology, and sociology. When treating the problem of fictionality philosophers cannot continue ignoring the theoretical developments in literary studies, semiotics, art history, anthropology, and so forth. 1 In their turn, students ofliterature and the arts, giving in to relaxed theoretical and conceptual standards in their disciplines, have only rarely been influenced by the spirit of critical thinking and' conceptual rigor emanating from analytic philosophy. Yet today, in our interdisciplinary age, we cannot feel comfortable in "splendid isolation"; we are able-indeed, obliged-to proceed toward a unified theory of fictionality. The ground for the unified theory has to be prepared by bringing together in comparison and confrontation the various conceptions of fictionality, which have been formulated in isolation. I believe that fictionality is primarily a semantic phenomenon located on the axis "representation (sign)-world"; its formal and pragmatic aspects are not denied but have an auxiliary theoretical role. Consequently, the focus of this prologue is on extant semantics of fictionality, while formal and pragmatic theories are only touched upon (Pr.1.5).

r .. One-World Frame The best-known theories of fictionality are based on the assumption that there is only one legitimate universe of discourse (domain of reference), the actual world. My presentation of these semantics follows not a chronological but a logical order, a succession that corresponds to the degree to which they accept the legitimacy of fictional representations. 1.1. Bertrand Russell: empty terms. Russell's view is at the extremity of the one-world semantics of fictionality because he was absolutely consistent in his "robust" realism: "There is only one world, the 'real' world .... It is the very essence of fiction that only the thoughts, feelings, etc., in Shakespeare and his readers are real, and that there is not, additional to them, an objective Hamlet" (1919, 169). 2 Russell is consistent in accepting the necessary consequences of 2

Prologue: From Nonexistent Entities to Fictional Worlds

the one-world model: fictional entities do not exist, fictional terms lack reference (are "empty"), and fictional sentences are false. Fictional entities are lumped together with other nonexistent entitiesimpossible objects (square circle), empty mathematical terms (the even prime other than 2), erroneous designations (the present king of France), discarded scientific concepts (phlogiston), and so on-and share their ontological and logical fate.3 The core of Russell's logic of nonexistent entities is his well-known theory of descriptions ([1905] 1974). We need not rehearse the details of this analysis, which, Russell believed, eliminates empty terms from logical language and rational discourse. What concerns us here are the consequences of Russell's views for the theory of literary fiction. Since names of fictional particulars are empty terms, both "Emma Bovary committed suicide" and "Emma Bovary died of tuberculosis" have one and the same truth-value-false. No decisions about individuating properties of fictional particulars can be made, no descriptions of their appearance or activity can be offered. 4 Russell tried to bypass these implausible consequences by claiming that only concepts enter propositions and, on this level, we can make a distinction between unicorn and sea-serpent: 'I met a unicorn' or 'I met a sea-serpent' is a perfectly significant assertion, if we know what it would be to be a unicorn or a sea-serpent, i.e., what is the definition of these fabulous monsters .... Since it is significant (though false) to say 'I met a unicorn,' it is clear that this proposition, rightly analyzed, does not contain a constituent 'a unicorn,' though it does contain the concept 'unicorn'" (1919, 168). Russell does not explain where the knowledge of fictional concepts comes from. However, by admitting that fictional terms, despite their lack of reference, do not lack signification, he in fact abandoned his extreme position and unwittingly switched to a softer version of one-world semantics of fictionality, the Fregean doctrine. 1.2. Gottlob Frege: pure sense. Frege's semantic treatment of fiction rests on his well-known distinction between two aspects of meaning, reference (Bedeutung) and sense (Sinn). Reference is the denotation of an entity in the world; sense, "the mode of presentation'' of the refer3

H E T E R O C O S M I C A

ence ([1892] 1969, 41; 57). Frege makes no allowance for fictional reference: if Odysseus is a fictional name, then it lacks reference (47; 62). On this question, Frege and Russell are allied. It ~annot be otherwise, since both of them deny fictional entities domicile: there are no worlds behind fictional words. But since Frege's semantics is two-dimensional, it can stipulate that fictional terms (representations), while without reference, are meaningful, their meaning constituted and exhausted by sense. Softer truth-conditions for fictional sentences can be posited: lacking reference, they lack truth-value, that is, are neither true nor false. 5 Fiction is part and parcel of poetry (Dichtung), a pure-sense language liberated from reference and truth-valuation. Poetic language has to be so exempt in order to serve its proper aim-providing "aesthetic delight." In contrast, the language of science can fulfill its aim-the pursuit of knowledge-only if it is a referential language subject to truth-valuation (48-63). The differentiation of cognitive (referential) and poetic (pure-sense) language leads us to designate Frege's doctrine as a semantics of one world with two languages. After a long delay, the significance of Frege's ideas was recognized in logical semantics (see, e.g., Dummett 1973; Sluga 1980; Carl 1994; Schirn 1976; Sluga 1993, esp. vol. 4) and, to a certain degree, in literary theory (Gabriel 1975; Levin 1978; Dolezel 1982). The Fregean conception is implicitly present whenever a functional and semantic (truth-conditional) opposition between the language of cognition and the language of fiction is postulated. 6 Despite the epistemological significance of this postulate (Pr.3; VI.I), we should not hide a major difficulty in Frege's conception of pure-sense language: if sense is defined on the basis of reference, that is, as the referent's "mode of presentation," then it seems impossible to speak about the sense of terms that lack reference. The difficulty has been spelled out by Evans: "It is really not clear how there can be a mode of presentation associated with some term when there is no object to be presented" (1982, 22). Obviously, if the idea of pure-sense language is to become logically sound, sense has to be defined independently of reference. Such a recasting of sense is achieved in Saussure's theory of meaning. 4

Prologue: From Nonexistent Entities to Fictional Worlds 1.3. Ferdinand de Saussure: self-reference. Saussure was convinced that the notion of reference is tied to an obsolete, primitive view oflanguage as a transparent medium, as nomenclature, "a list of terms each corresponding to a thing" ([1916] 1972, 97; 65). In contrast to "passive" referring, Saussure assigns to language an active semiotic role. The meaning of the linguistic sign is not defined on the external axis "language-world" but on the internal nexus "signifier (signifiant)l signified (signifie)." The form of the linguistic expression, the signifier, is assigned a sense, a signified, by convention. The semantic structure oflanguage was thus made independent of the structures of the world. A concept of sense independent of reference is now available: sense is determined by the formal structure of the signifier,? Saussure's views have had a strong impact on twentieth-century linguistic and literary semantics. They also inspired an influential theory of poetic language: liberated from extralingual reference, poetic language is "self-referential." 8 It is an active source of new meaning produced in unconventional manipulations of the signifiant I signifie nexus. There is no denying the importance of the Saussurean shift for the understanding of poetic meaning production. But how does the concept of fictionality fare in a semantics without reference? Searching for a theory of fictionality in a semantics without reference brings disappointment. Saussure himself did not ponder the issue, and the Saussureans have either evaded it or dissolved it in the concept of poetic language. Having put a "moratorium on referential issues" (Pavel 1986, IO), literary semantics inspired by Saussure have been theories of poeticity, not of fictionality. 9 At this point, we are beginning to suspect that the one-world frame is not a propitious ground for fictional s~mantics. Russell's faceless fictional nonentities are theoretically explained by being eliminated. In Frege's and Saussure's semantics, "fictionality'' is absorbed into broader categories-poetry (Frege) and language (Saussure)characterized by lack of reference. Before we lose faith in the oneworld model frame, however, we have to inspect the most ancient and authoritative version of fictional semantics, the Person2): Stephen lives far from Theresa. MentState (Person): Lisa is angry. MentRelation (Person!> Person2): Marion loves Brian.

Dynamic Motifs

N-Event (NF): The storm passed. N-Event (NF, Object): The wind blew the fire out. N-Event (NF, Person): The earthquake killed rwenty people. PhysAct (Person): Paul ran away. PhysAct (Person, Object): Nancy planted a tree. Physlnteract (Person,, Person2): Caspar hit John. MentAct (Person): Peter was thinking. MentAct (Person, Object): Lucy calculated the speed oflight. SpeechAct (Person): Richard screamed in pain. SpeechAct (Person, Object): Michelle wrote a poem. SpeechAct (Person!' Personi): Bob asked Michael.

sional representations of particular motifs as "The Warsaw train was approaching Petersburg," "Des Esseintes moved secretly from Paris to Fontenay," "Little Dorrit married Arthur Clennam," and "Werther believes that Lotte loves him." Paraphrase representations are the crux of motif semantics, used in summarizing, analyzing, and interpreting narratives. It is also safe to assume that they have a cognitive role: motifs are probably stored in memory in paraphrase representations. The extensional representation (both universal and particular) is not an analysis of isolated motifs; it is assigned after a careful examination of a motif's context. This holds especially true about the crucial elementary units of narrative-event and action motifs. This book provides such an examination by anchoring extensional motif semantics in action theory (chaps. II and IV). 2.3. The third level ofmotif representation is texture. (The term was used loosely by Ransom [1938]-see Righter 1963, 110-11-and adopted as a theoretical concept by Sebeok [1974] and Stoddard [1991].) Texture is the exact form of expression, the original wording 35

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

in which the motif appears in the literary text. The motifs paraphrased above (STI.2.2) occur in the following texture: V konce nojabrja, v ottepel', casov v devjat' utra, pojezd Peterburgsko-Varsavskoj zeleznoj dorogi na vsech parach podchodil k Peterburgu. (Dostoevsky, The Idiot, 5) 11 [Des Esseintes] mit les mac;:ons sur la maison qu'il avait acquise, puis, brusquement, un jour, sans faire part a qui que ce fut de ses projets, il se debarrassa de son ancien mobilier, congedia ses domestiques et disparut, sans laisser au concierge aucune adresse. (Huysmans,A Rebours, 89) And they [Amy and Arthur] were married with the sun shining on them through the painted figure of Our Saviour on the window. (Dickens, Little Dorrit, 894) Nein, ich betriige mich nicht! Ich Iese in ihren schwarzen Augen wahre Teilnahmung an mir und meinem Schicksal. Ja ich fiihle, und daring darf ich meinem Herzen trauen, class die-o darf ich, kann ich den Himmel in diesen Worten aussprechen?-dass sie mich liebt! (Goethe, Die Leiden des jungen Werther, 41) For the purposes of comparative literary study the concept of texture has to encompass wordings rendered in a faithful translation. By texture, the motif's intensional structure is determined. Fictional semantics is a fusion of extensional and intensional meaning. Starter terms I (STI) continues in starter terms II (STII), and part 1 of this book links up with part 2.

I

CHAPTER I

(A)

One-Person Worlds

The one-person world is an artificial and precarious structure,. because it suffers from a severe restriction: one and only one person is admitted into the world. But the theoretical importance of this primitive narrative world is much greater than its rarity in literary fiction would warrant. Isolating a person from others bares the rudimentary features of acting and mental life. The one-person world is the most felicitous and instructive starting point for fictional semantics. 1 I begin exploring it by analyzing three rather different works of fiction: Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719), Ernest Hemingway's "Big Two-Hearted River" (1925), and J.-K. Huysmans's A Rebours (1884).

I.

Robinson Crusoe: The Art of World Making

For the history of ideas, the one-person world of Robinson Crusoe is a thought experiment on the popular 17th- and 18th-century topic of the natural (primitive) state of man: What would happen to a human being left for a considerable time in complete isolation? Defoe constructs fictionally one possible outcome of the experiment by leaving Crusoe all alone on an island for more than twenty years.2 The one-person world has a shorter duration than Crusoe's solitude. 37

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

It is sharply demarcated by two events arranged in a chiasmic pattern: the shipwreck on the northern shore and the discovery of a human footprint on the southern beach. Both events radically alter the novel's world structure. The first thrusts Crusoe involuntarily from a multiperson into a one-person world. The second marks implicitly the end of the one-person world: it signifies the presence of other, unseen persons.3 From that moment on, a life "in constant Snare of the Fear ofMan" (163) begins for Crusoe. The solitary's actions are now preventive reactions to the threat posed by a hidden enemy. Although Crusoe remains alone for several more years, the structure of his world and the motivation of his acting have irreversibly changed. 1.1. Crusoe and nature. Determined to survive, Crusoe as agent applies himself to implementing an ambitious program: transforming nature into culture, the world-without-man into a world-for-man. The transformation requires much hard labor, many physical actions affecting and changing states of nature. To be sure, nature is not a mere stage for Crusoe's performance; it is a powerful force with an inexhaustible capacity for causing events. Crusoe reminds us of the culture heroes of mythology and legend who performed extraordinary, often supernatural, deeds in their struggles with nature. But unlike culture heroes, Crusoe does not treat nature as an antagonist and does not try to triumph over it. To neutralize its destructive potential, he takes protective action, such as storing his supplies in a cave or surrounding his fields with a fence. But his cleverest strategy is to use nature in support of his acting. 4 A model instance of this cooperation is constructed in Crusoe's hauling of supplies from the shipwreck to the shore. When his raft runs aground and the cargo is about to fall into the water, Crusoe props the chests up against his back for almost half an hour until "the rising of the Water brought me a little more upon a Level, and a little after, the Water still rising, my Raft floated again" (51). Crusoe's cooperation with nature does not alter the fact that his engagement with the N-force is asymmetrical on at least two counts. First, the N-force is more powerful, and its events (earthquake, disease, sea current) remind Crusoe again and again of its superiority. Second, because the N-force is intentionless, it can be

One-Person Worlds

equally destructive, productive, or neutral with respect to Crusoe's ends. In contrast, Crusoe's acting, intentional and purposeful, is always productive, He is tempted into self-destructive acting only once, in the immediate shock of his involuntary landing.5 Crusoe's resourceful projects, which create world-for-man, belong to the most popular narratives of world literature. Crusoe follows the path of civilization by pursuing in succession or in alternation two kinds of productive activities: (1) he adapts objects of nature to serve his needs-sows the seeds he has found, tames wild goats; and (2) he produces artifacts from material provided by nature-builds a dwelling, makes furniture, sews clothing. However, before Crusoe devotes himself to the productive activities, he acquires the basic inventory of his world by the most primitive of all activities, gathering. He saves from the shipwreck provisions, tools for future acting, and texts for future reading. Thanks to this initial stock, Robinson Crusoe's world is not, as Rousseau's romantic vision would have it "deprived ... of all artificial aids" (1762, 53); in fact, even before the hauling is over, Crusoe can boast of "the biggest Maggazin of all Kinds ... that ever were laid up ... for one Man'' (55). 6 1.2. Crusoe as rational agent. Productive praxis requires knowledge and skills. Crusoe constantly expands his knowledge of the world by observation and experiment (trial-and-error). A patient recording of facts leads him to uncover by induction the basic laws of his world, for example, the character of the island's climate: "I found now, that the Seasons of the Year might generally be divided, not into Summer and Winter, as in Europe; but into the Rainy Seasons, and the Dry Seasons" (rn6). Through trial-and-error Crusoe acquires the basic cultural skill, agriculture. His first experiment is unsuccessful, but he learns from his failure "when the proper Season was to sow" (rn5). The rational character of Crusoe's acting is epitomized in his decision making. At the very beginning of his solitary existence he has to make a crucial decision: what would be the best kind of shelter, and where should it be built? The first question is settled by considering two alternatives: the dwelling could be either "a Cave in the Earth, or a Tent upon the Earth"; ingeniously, Crusoe "resolv'd upon 39

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

both'' (58). The decision about the optimal place for the dwelling is a consequence of the first decision. Defoe exhibits the structure of rational acting from the initial need to the end product: "If I wanted a Board, I had no other Way but to cut down a Tree, set it on an Edge before me, and hew it flat on either Side with my Axe, till I had brought it to be thick as a Plank, and then dubb it smooth with my Adze" (68). Rational agency is Defoe's solution to the thought experiment of solitude: even in the most adverse circumstances, Crusoe is in control of his life because he acts as a rational agent. Since practical reasoning determines the course of Crusoe's acting, failures are, as a rule, due to deficiencies in planning. Crusoe's building of the first boat is a case in point. Instead of determining exactly how the boat will be launched, he is satisfied with a "foolish answer": "Let's first make it, I'll warrant I'll find some Way or other to get it along, when 'tis done" (126). This serious gap in the project's design and reliance on improvisation causes the loss of many months oflabor. But again, Crusoe is wiser from the experience: he will build another boat in such a way that it will launch easily. Productive activity affects not only his environment but also, reflexively, the agent himsel£ First, Crusoe's physical appearance changes as he provides himself with dress, cap, umbrella, tools, weapons (149-50). Second, his productive activities expand as he acquires successively new skills (agriculture, pottery making, carpentry, and others). These physical changes are exterior signs of a more radical change: the transformation of an agent into a multidimensional fictional person. 1.3. Crusoe's mental life. Crusoe's mind is first and foremost a practical mind, oriented toward acting, busy with formulating intentions, designing plans, choosing optimal alternatives. At a certain point, however, Crusoe's inner life is substantially enriched by operations unrelated to acting, by inward-looking, self-reflective contemplation. Solitude, we are told, stimulates "self-discovery and self-realization" (Storr 1988, 21). In Crusoe's particular case, the contemplative mind is awakened by a dream (87-88) and reinforced by memories of the pre-island life. Still, the self-reflection is only a preparatory stage 40

One-Person Worlds of an upward-looking, transcendental contemplation. Made impotent by a serious illness, Crusoe regains religious belief and arrives at a mythological interpretation of his ordeal: his fate was determined by universal laws of Christianity (92). World of man becomes God's world. The mythologization of the world brought about by Crusoe's "conversion" changes the character of acting in solitude. The N-force, Crusoe's inanimate foe and helper, is metamorphosed into an animate, supernatural partner in quasi-interaction. And when the text of the Bible becomes the "Word of God" (96), Crusoe's reading and praying turn into quasi-communication. In the mythological interpretation the one-person world of Robinson Crusoe has reached its limit. Let us add that in the particular mythology that transforms Crusoe's world, the actional and communicational exchange with the Other remains a subjective experience; the divinity does not appear as a person. The asymmetry that characterized the interface between the person and the N-force before the world's mythologization is iterated in the intercourse between the person and his invisible divinity. Moreover, in the praxis of running his world the human agent remains autonomous. Crusoe's God does not interfere in human affairs, he does not expect more than recognition of his existence and supremacy. 7 r+ Crusoe as scriptor. When he reaches the peak of his contemplative life, religious belief, Crusoe breaks out of his solitude. His writing (text-producing activity) serves the same function by different means. Crusoe's narrative is a personal record-a journal, later, by necessity, changed into a summarizing report-but it is not a private text. Not unlike a captain's log, the record is destined for an absent future addressee. It is a rudimentary form of literature and will be fully realized only when it finds its reader. Crusoe's first-person narrative constructs the fictional world in all its constituents and levels. 8 When the contemplative mind starts writing, the text often passes from world construction to world interpretation. Crusoe's failure to launch his first boat, discussed earlier as a fictional event, gives him occasion to formulate a maxim that is 41

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

set off from the narrative by a shift from the acting "I" to the universal "we": "Now I saw ... the Folly of beginning a Work before we count the Cost; and before we judge rightly of our own Strength to go through with it" (128). Similarly, starting from a subjective evaluation of his progress, Crusoe shifts to a universal quantifier to propose another maxim: ''As Reason is the Substance and Original of the Mathematics, so by stating and squaring every thing by Reason, and by making the most rational Judgment of things, every Man may be in time Master of every mechanick Art" (68). In these and other imaging digressions, the fictional text reaches toward the actual world. Crusoe's solitary struggle is raised to a proof of rationalistic philosophy, which links the fictional world of the novel to the intellectual atmosphere of Defoe's time. 9 There is only a small step from maxims to moralizing. Crusoe, the scriptor, takes this step quite frequently, thus fulfilling the promise of the editor's preface: to offer his report "to the Instruction of others." Presenting his experience as a rhetoric exemplum, Crusoe reinforces the public, literary character of his text. A monologic text addressed to an absent reader and a one-person world oriented towards an invisible partner both result from endowing the protagonist with "suprapractical" mental capacities-contemplation and text production. As Christian scriptor, Crusoe doubly transcends his solitude; communicating both with a divinity and with potential (implied) readers. The story of one person's deprivation becomes a source of general wisdom. At this point, a structural parallelism between Defoe's fictional world and his fictional text comes clearly into view. The fictional world is constructed as a gradual expansion of Crusoe's activity and consciousness. The fictional text, itself the result of the highest productive activity, is an expanding set of discourse types. The "furnishing" of the fictional world and the writing of the fictional text are both activities of ever increasing complexity. Robinson Crusoe demonstrates step-by-step how text writing is the art of making and understanding a world.

42

One-Person Worlds 2.

"Big Two-Hearted River": The Agent in Repose

Hemingway's hero Nick Adams enters the one-person world at the very beginning of the narrative when an auxiliary person, the baggage man, vanishes with the departing train. Having found that "there was no town," Nick turns to nature, to the river, which "was there" (209). Nature will be the setting of Nick's temporary solitude. This stage and Nick's frame of mind make this sojourn a sort of vacation: "He had left everything behind, the need for thinking, the need to write, other needs" (210). 10 Having no urgent needs, Nick engages in a minimum of physical and mental acts. Unlike Crusoe, who has to "furnish'' his world and, in the process, expands his mental life, Nick possesses all the provisions, tools, knowledge, and skills necessary for his leisurely pursuits. He is not a world maker; he appropriates a world already made. 2.1. Person and animal. Nick's physical acting during his stay in the one-person world is restricted to the iterative actions of walking, pitching tent, preparing meals, smoking, and fishing. Productive activities are replaced by consumer activities: Nick does not cook his dinner, he warms up tinned food and opens a can of apricots.1 1 Nick's main activity, fishing, is for pleasure and thrill, not for satisfying need; the curtain falls on Nick's world before the catch is turned into a meal. Hemingway compensates for the small range of Nick's physical actions by constructing them with a considerable degree of semantic redundancy: a. A macroactivity is constituted as an oversaturated sequence of minimal actions. The construction of tent pitching is a telling example, and it suffices to quote just its first stage, "preparation of the ground," to demonstrate the technique (nonactional sentences are omitted): "[Nick] took the ax out of the pack and chopped out two projecting roots .... He smoothed out the sandy soil with his hand and pulled all the sweet fern bushes by their roots .... He smoothed the uprooted earth.... He spread his three blankets. One he folded double, next to the ground. The other two he spread on top" (214). 43

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

In the chronological and paratactical enumeration all the constituent actions are given equal importance for the performance of the macroact. The minimal action itself is often detailed by an explicit introduction of the instrument: "He started a fire with some chunks of pine he got with the ax from a stump. Over the fire he stuck a wire grill, pushing the four legs down into the ground with his boot' (215; emphasis added). b. The action is coupled with its end state: "Nick sat down ... and smoked a cigarette"/"Nick sat smoking" (211); "Nick stood up"/"He stood with the pack on his back" (212); "Nick lay down in the shade"/"He lay on his back'' (211-13). One and the same act is thus presented in two different aspects, once as performance, then as resulting state-an instance of Hemingway's favorite figure of semantic redundancy, "repetition with variation'' (see Dolezel 1971, rno-rn2; Hily-Mane 1983, 203-14). Iterative actions create a narrative world without dramatism. 12 Only Nick's fishing for the big trout stands out as a unique action. Its dramatic effect is achieved by constructing the big trout as an actional partner and Nick's fishing as a duel. The duel is presaged by the big trouts' display of prowess, observed by Nick from the bridge (2rn), and culminates in an action exchange: ''AB he [Nick] put on pressure the line tightened into sudden hardness and beyond the logs a huge trout went high out of water. As he jumped, Nick lowered the tip of the rod" (226). Neither Nick's skills nor his sophisticated instrument ensure victory in the struggle with "a power not to be held" (226). The big trout escapes, and nature force reasserts its superiority over an expert and perfectly outfitted human agent. It does so not through a brute event but through elegant quasi-actions of an animal. In the duel, Nick's one-person world is pushed to the limit. Like Defoe's divinity, Hemingway's big trout transforms the one-person world of acting into a world of quasi-interaction. 13 2.2. Nick the expert. Nick is physically active in his leisure, but his practical mind is constricted. This seemingly paradoxical asymmetry is due primarily to truncated practical reasoning. There is no

44

One-Person Worlds positing and choosing of alternatives; Nick knows from experience the optimal way of performing the iterative actions. "He knew where he wanted to strike the river" and therefore walks in that direction despite tiredness (212). "He wanted to make camp before he cooked" and so pitches his tent despite being "very hungry'' (214). The bond between intention and action is so firm that the action can be inferred from the stated intention: "He wanted them [the pegs for the tent] long and solid to hold in the ground"; clearly, they are made such because Nick will drive them into the ground "deep" (214). Omission of acting as well is determined by a set negative intention: "Nick did not want to go in there now'' and, therefore, postpones the swamp fishing (231). "He was certain he could catch small trout in the shallows, but he did not want them"; therefore, he "did not rebait his hook and held it in his hand as he waded" (225). Let us note that the counterfactual ("he could catch small trout") does not state an alternative possible action but just reasserts Nick's practical experience. Because of his expert knowledge, Nick's acting is flawlessly executed: "He had wet his hand before he touched the trout, so he would not disturb the delicate mucus that covered him. If a trout was touched with a dry hand, a white fungus attacked the unprotected spot" (225). Consequently, his iterative actions-in contrast to the duel with the trout-are almost always successful. Failure occurs rarely and, ironically, only when Nick has a choice in acting: knowing two ways of making coffee, he becomes confused, and the result is not quite satisfactory (218). The automatic transition from intention to performance gives Nick's actions the character of routines. The expert acts by following a script; the text constructing Nick's preparing his breakfast pancake reads like a recipe: "Rapidly he mixed some buckwheat flour with water and stirred it smooth, one cup of flour, one cup of water" (222) .14 Just as the mental antecedents of routine acting are restricted to bare minimum, so are its emotional effects. Euphoric but subdued satisfaction is the reward of a successful performance: Nick is "glad" when he gets to the river, he is "happy'' when he crawls inside the pitched tent, he feels "awkward" but "professionally happy'' when he 45

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

puts on his fishing gear (213, 215, 223). Only the duel with the trout, again, stands out, accompanied as it is by a complex sequence of spontaneous, uncontrollable emotions. First Nick experiences such an intense thrill that "his heart feeling stopped with the excitement"; when the trout is lost, Nick's mouth gets "dry," his heart is "down," his hand "shaky." In the dysphoria of failure Nick feels "vaguely a little sick." The recovery is most explicitly construed as spontaneous mental process: "Slowly, the feeling of disappointment left him. It went away slowly, the feeling of disappointment that came sharply after the thrill" (226,227). & soon as the excitement of the duel is over, Nick's control is restored and keeps the force of spontaneity at bay. 2.3. Nick the impressionist. Nature in "Big Two-Hearted River" plays a no less significant role than in Robinson Crusoe. The river of the title, the rolling hills, the pine plain stretching to the distant Lake Superior height, the swamp, the earth and the sky with their animals, all this is given to the solitary. But nature is not an independent fictional domain; it gains entry into the world through Nick's sensory perception. Nick's senses, particularly his eyes, shape the fictional landscape. The primacy of sight is established at the beginning of the text (in Nick's watching the river) by an accumulation of verbs of ocular perception: "look," "watch," "see," "follow with his eyes." It is reinforced by a pronounced contrast between the spontaneous "to see" and the intentional "to look," as well as a neologism (a rare device in Hemingway's style): "half-look." We can claim, with only a slight exaggeration, that the fictional existence of a nature object depends on Nick's seeing it, as in the case of the distant hills: "There was nothing but the pine plain ahead of him, until the far blue hills that marked the Lake Superior height ofland. He could hardly see them, faint and far away in the heat-light over the plain. If he looked too steadily they were gone. But if he only half-looked, they were there, the far-off hills of the height ofland" (2n). The river appears and reappears up to Nick's last look: "He looked back. The river just showed through the trees" (232).

One-Person Worlds Hemingway's impressionistic technique of nature construction is most perspicuous in the orientation of the landscape toward the perceiver. The coordinates of space are determined by Nick's position; with respect to this origo, space is divided into left and right, front and back, proximate and distant: ''Ahead of him, as far as he could see, was the pine plain. The burned country stopped off at the left with the range of hills. On ahead islands of dark pine trees rose out of the plain. Far off to the left was the line of the river" (2n). 15 Having entered through his senses, nature becomes the main source of Nick's emotions. It generates exclusively euphoric feelings: from the moment Nick discovers the river, he is in a state of happiness. The feeling intensifies into exaltation when he crawls out of his tent "to look at the morning": "Nick was excited. He was excited by the early morning and the river" (221). This is one of the peaks of Nick's emotional life during his stay in the one-person world, the other one set off by his duel with the big trout. Both episodes of excitement are triggered by Nick's engagement with nature, actional in the first case, sensory in the second. 2.4. Minimal mind. A person who leaves behind "the need for thinking" can be expected to have a restricted mental life. & we have observed, Hemingway centers Nick's mind in two outward-oriented domains, the practical and the sensory, and the accompanying emotions. Even these domains of mental activity are minimalized and generally subdued. Rarely, remembering is activated, evoking short flashbacks of camping and fishing expeditions; only the memory of Hopkins is allowed to develop into a sketchy story. Otherwise, the contemplative domain of the mind is gapped: Nick lacks self-reflection and imagination, offers no interpretation of his existence, has no dreams. 16 There are no imaging digressions in Hemingway's text. A special benefit derives from this lack: the story is entirely free of moralizing. The gaps in Nick's mind structure do not mean that he is a primitive. His practical mind is the mind of an expert, his sensations are focused on nature, and the contemplative mental faculties are sup-

47

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

pressed intentionally. At the end of the day, Nick's mind "was starting to work." But Nick is able to "choke it" (218) and enter the state of the most intense repose-sleep.

3. A Rebours: Exclusive Mind Defoe's and Hemingway's heroes find themselves in the one-person world after catastrophic events that happen against their intentions. The retreat of Huysmans's protagonist into solitude is a planned, intentional act. Des Esseintes's "refined Thebaid" (86; 22) is the last station of a pilgrim's regress. A well-prepared withdrawal enables the solitary to keep the services of carefully selected auxiliary agents (the servants, the gardeners, the architect, the lapidary). The auxiliaries contribute to the creation and maintenance of Des Esseintes's world but are not admitted into its activities.17 The solitude is interrupted by the "London trip," a short and unsuccessful attempt to return to the multiperson world. The end of solitude is, in contrast to its beginning, involuntary: Des Esseintes leaves his "haven" on the orders of his doctor (352; 213). 3.1. Against nature. The most conspicuous feature of Des Esseintes's world is the suppression of physical acting and nature.The deletion of physical action is almost absolute. Liberated from the necessity of procuring his material needs, Des Esseintes restricts his physical acting to drinking and eating, moving around his rooms, leafing through his books, sorting out his prints, mixing perfumes. Some of these activities are necessary for survival, but most of them are simply the physical prerequisites of mental activities that constitute the solitary's life history. 18 The suppression of physical activity does not prevent Des Esseintes from creating his environment. He creates his environment by separating practical reasoning from productive acting: Des Esseintes decides on a design and then charges a professional auxiliary agent with its implementation (see Sanger 1978, 171). The selection of colors, decoration, and furniture for his Fontenay retreat is the most telling example of this "division of labor." The separation of mental designing from physical implementa-

One-Person Worlds tion places Des Esseintes in contrast to Robinson Crusoe, a person who, we saw, both designs and performs productive activity (I.1.2). Nature is eliminated from the solitary's world by ideological motivation. Nature, Des Esseintes claims, "has finally and utterly exhausted the patience of refined observers by the revolting uniformity of her landscapes and skyscapes" (107; 36). Nature's lot is to be exploited as a source of exotic materials for producing artifacts. When its objects (the turtle, the plants) are admitted into the world designed "against nature," it is only as hybrids, looking like, or made to look like, artifacts. To make sure that nature will not disturb the artificial environment, it is not only banned from the "thebaid" but pushed beyond the horizon of observation. Only once, at night, -Des Esseintes "had examined the silent landscape stretching down to the foot of a hill" (109; 38); only twice did he open his window (137, 236; 57-58, 129), in the second case because he was forced to by dizziness. 3.2. The aesthete's mind. Having expelled nature, Des Esseintes furnishes his world with works of art. He is highly selective in this enterprise; his elitist taste does not admit artworks "polluted" by popularity or by academic recognition. The intimate aesthetic enclosure, surrounded by a "dark, silent and dead" outside world, is the ideal stage for what Barbey d'Aurevilly appositely called the "history of a mind" [l'histoire d'une a.me] (qtd. in Issacharoff 1970, 69). It is a history of the last passion of an exhausted debauchee-of aesthetic pleasure. An "amateur" in the proper sense of the word (Fumaroli 1977, 32), Des Esseintes spends long hours in communion with his favorite books and paintings and in his own "artistic" pursuits. These activities stimulate intense sensory experiences. It is typical of Des Esseintes that he cultivates the "lower" senses, neglected by ordinary persons: taste and smell "procure pleasures equal to those obtained through hearing or sight" (222; n9; see Laforet 1975) . 19 Des Esseintes is particularly fascinated by the "art of perfumery'' and becomes not only its sophisticated practitioner but also theorist (see below). Olfactory art provides him with the highest synesthetic sensation: in blending and alternating various scents, he creates for himself fleeting

49

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

but distinct "spectacles" of landscapes, meadows, trees, women (228-31; 123-25). His notorious "mouth organ" is another source of synesthesia, affording auditory (musical) sensations through taste perceptions. Des Esseintes's emotions are most strongly affected by music. The "desolate music" of Schubert's Lieder "terrified and fascinated him at the same time" (341; 205). But Des Esseintes lives before the time when music-recorded-would enter the world of a recluse; it is painting and poetry that provide the present impulse for aesthetic emotions. Huysmans mobilizes all his stylistic craft to construct this affect. In front of Gustave Moreau's "Salome," Des Esseintes experiences repeated "raptures of delight"; he feels "like the old King" "crushed, overwhelmed, dizzied" [ecrase, aneanti, pris de vertige] (152; 68; see Trudgian 1934, 235-52; Pellerin 1985, 33-38). The "radiant" figure of Melancholy in a picture by Odilon Redon dissipates, "as if by magic," Des Esseintes's gloom; "a sweet sadness, an almost languorous sorrow would take possession of his thoughts" (160; 7 4). In contrast, the "appalling plates" of the Dutch engraver Jan Luyken made "Des Esseintes's flesh creep ... and he remained rooted to the spot, choking with horror" (156; 71). The emotional impact of visual art is matched only by the "incredible charm" of Baudelaire's poetry; Des Esseintes's "admiration for this writer knew no bounds" (260; 146). Des Esseintes's aesthetic activities culminate in theoretical and critical contemplation, in the formulation of a "decadent" aesthetics and impressionistic critical judgments. Nowhere is the essence of his aesthetic elitism revealed more clearly and definitely than in his postulate for an "ideal" novel: condensing "in a page or two" the "cohobated juice of the hundreds of pages" of ordinary novels, the perfect work "would become an intellectual communion between a magic writer and an ideal reader, a spiritual collaboration of a dozen superior persons scattered across the world, a treat offered and accessible to no one but the most discerning" (331; 199). Considering Des Esseintes's predilection for the olfactory art, we are not surprised that the most advanced part of his aesthetics is a semiotics of the "lan-

One-Person Worlds guage" of smells, comprising a "syntax," a "dialectology," and a history (223-24; 120-21). Governed by his aesthetic principles, Des Esseintes's criticism sweeps over the expanse of ancient and modern art, annihilating whole periods and displaying for admiration a few exquisite jewels. Its most memorable achievement is a highly original reevaluation of the Latin silver age and modern French literatures. The discovery of the aesthetic significance of Petronius's Satyricon and of many poets of the Latin "decadence" is matched by a precocious appreciation of contemporary French poets, such as Verlaine, Corbiere, Mallarme, held in contempt by the contemporary public, "incapable of understanding them'' (313; 185). The prominent position of aesthetic theorizing in Des Esseintes's mental life has a crucial impact on the structuring of his fictional world: it makes it perfectly homogeneous. Idiosyncratic aesthetic theory becomes a personal ideology from which issue nonconformist critical judgments and exquisite sensations and emotions. It determines the selection of his artworks, so that the structure of Des Esseintes's physical environment is a projection of his ideology. 2 Finally, the elitist aesthetic attitude is generalized into a philosophy of life, epitomized in Des Esseintes's reinterpretation of Schopenhauer (184-85; 92-93) and his sharp critique of contemporary society in all its classes and institutions (353-61; 213-19). The aesthete's world is perfectly homogeneous, because it is hermetically closed. Locked in a fixed ideology and shut off from new impressions and experiences, the "overstocked" mind starts reprocessing accumulated information: rereading select literary monuments, reexamining favorite paintings and objets d'art, redoing familiar experiments. Even imagination takes on a reproductive character; its aim is "to substitute the dream of reality [le reve de la realite] for reality itself" (107; 36) and to supplant "chimerical pleasures [de chimeriques delices] similar in all respects to the pleasures of reality" (106; 35). Vividly evoked religious scenes and ceremonies (182-83; 90-91) reveal a more active imagination, but their goal is ultimately the same: to provide a

°

51

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

substitute religious experience in lieu of genuine religious belief. 21 Only in dreams and nightmares, such as the horrific vision of Pox (199-203; 103-6), is the imagination, freed from logic and causality, capable of creating original, complex, phantasmagoric images that are indirectly (perhaps allegorically) related to Des Esseintes's experience. Remembering plays a major role in the reproductive mind's workings. Having been admitted after some resistance (see below), it brings forth first a rather banal memory of toothache and extraction (140-43; 60-62). But when it begins to dominate Des Esseintes's mental life, it reenacts entire episodes of the past: childhood, school years, erotic and other adventures of adulthood. The only document of Des Esseintes's poetic creativity, his "anthem," is also recalled from the past (the "Pantin episode," 233-35; 127-29). 3.3. The revenge of nature force. Meticulously and systematically, Des Esseintes designed his world as a fortress of an exclusive mind to keep at bay the exterior forces of nature and society and past anxieties. Solitary existence was to be the dominion of a sovereign, free mind that creates its environment and indulges in aesthetic pleasures. However, as the novelty of solitude begins to wear off, a different effect can be felt: "The confused mass of reading and meditation on artistic themes that he had accumulated since he had been isolated like a barrage to hold back the current of old memories, had suddenly been carried away, and the flood was let loose [le flot s' ebranlait]" (174; 84). Now we understand why Des Esseintes tried to suppress remembering. Once released, it becomes a mental force, intentionless and uncontrollable; it disrupts the pleasures of the present by dragging in the shadows of the past. Progressively, uncontrollable forces take over the solitary's mind. The sovereign dominion of the intentional mind is destroyed, and Des Esseintes's mental life becomes a playground for antagonistic, spontaneously generated images, anxieties, and horrors. The substantial weakening of Des Esseintes's control over his mental life is brought out clearly in Huysmans's imagery: it assimilates mental activity to nature events: "current" of emotions, "torrent" 52

One-Person Worlds of anguish, '1hurricane" of rage (342, 360; and 206; 219). This figurative influence of nature force on the functioning of the solitary's mind is overshadowed by its increasingly strong direct impact on his physical existence. Now it becomes clear that Des Esseintes's experiment was doomed to failure from the outset: his world cannot be protected from the N-force because his body is a part of nature. Des Esseintes's malady, an N-event par excellence, disregards all protective walls, coming and going capriciously and unpredictably. AB his physical state deteriorates and his mind is defeated by growing neurosis, aesthetic pleasures turn into pathological hallucinations. The art of perfumery, which provided Des Esseintes with finely controlled olfactory sensations, now produces dizzying "hallucinations of the sense of smell" (222; n8). The hallucinatory scent comes from the outside world ("from the valley of Fontenay''), which was supposed to be empty. Overpowered, the master of the olfactory art "fell fainting, almost dying, across the windowsill" (236; 129). The game of splendid isolation is over. 22 3.4. The fictional and the actual. The fictional world of A Rebours is as elitist as its aristocratic protagonist and as postrealistic as its author. But, surprisingly, its construction includes massive importation of actual-world material. The fictional "thebaid" is "furnished" with works by actual artists. The artworks are integrated into the fictional world by becoming individuated fictional objects-books in Des Esseintes's library, paintings on the walls of his rooms, prints in his collection. Actual literary works are meticulously individuated as unique volumes ranging from "a superb copy'' of the Satyricon ("in the octavo edition of 1585 printed by J. Dousa at Leyden" [119; 44]) to a bibliophilic volume of Mallarme's L'Apres-midi d'un faune (with covers "made of Japanese felt as white as curdled milk ... fastened with two silk cords, one China pink, the other black'' [329; 197]). Because Des Esseintes's aesthetics is based on actual artworks, Huysmans's text shows a hypertrophy of imaging digressions: antiacademic views on ancient and modern art are expounded in coherent essays. This aesthetics is a stage in a remarkable circle of intertextuality that leads from historical text(s) to fictional text and back again. 53

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

Des Esseintes's critical history of Latin literature is a striking example of this intertextual movement: the history written by a fictional person is a direct challenge to the academic history by an actual historian, Desire Nisard (Etudes sur les poetes Latins de la decadence), published in 1834 (see Livi 1972, 84). At the same time, Des Esseintes's essay draws in part on Adolph Ebert's history of medieval literature (whose first volume dealing with the early Christian Latin literature, appeared in a French translation in 1883). This intertextuality is implicit, but the next move is explicit: in his historical work, Le Latin Mystique (1892) Remy de Gourmont quotes the opinions of the fictional essayist Des Esseintes: "as judged by Des Esseintes" (35), "to delight Des Esseintes" (57), "to justify Des Esseintes" (66), "Des Esseintes found" (rn2). In the "Introduction," however, Des Esseintes's essay is ascribed to Huysmans, and in the index the quoted references are gathered under the entry, "Huysmans." In other words, de Gourmont assumes that the I-digressions in Huysmans's fictional text are very close, even identical, to those expressed in his nonfictional criticism.23 The fate of Des Esseintes's essay confirms the basic role of imaging digressions: it is fiction's means of judging the affairs of the actual world. However, as Huysmans's world and text demonstrate, the strong bond to the actual does not destroy the autonomy of the fictional: actual artworks have to be transformed into fictional objects, and historical texts can be incorporated into the fictional text only as digressions.

54

I

CHAPTER II

(T)

Action and Motivation

The concept of narrative world, defined by the presence of at least one fictional person-agent (STl.1.3), enables us to leave behind the split that traditional narratology created by separating story from character.I A narrative semantics based on action theory radically psychologizes the story and, at the same time, features fictional characters as persons for and in acting. Action theory (logic of action) emerged within analytic philosophy in the 1960s and has been actively cultivated ever since. 2 Advances in cognitive psychology provide another, complementary source of inspiration for our semantics. The one-person world is a most propitious starting point. It allows us to avoid the common confusions that arise when action is theorized in the standard multiperson framework. The presence in the world of other persons obscures the necessary and sufficient features, structures, and conditions of acting.

r. Action and Event Von Wright, the founder of the modern logic of action, based the concept of action on that of event and, in turn, derived "event" from the classical concept of state (or state of affairs): event is the transfor55

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

mation of an initial state into an end state at a certain time (19636, 27-28; 1968, 37-38). 3 No less significant is von Wright's introduction of the possible-worlds framework into action theory: from any given initial state the agent can proceed toward two or more possible end states. In the possible-worlds perspective a person's life history is a vector in multidimensional space. The person-agent advances from one node to another by bringing about or allowing to happen one of the alternative changes available at each node. 4 "Every description of an action contains, in a concealed form, a counterfactual conditional statement. When we say, e.g., that an agent opened a window, we imply that, had it not been for the agent's interference, the window would, on that occasion, have remained closed. When we say that an agent prevented a door from closing, we thereby intimate that 'otherwise,' e.g., had it not been for the agent, the door would have closed on that occasion'' (von Wright 1968, 43-44). In order to know an agent's life history "we must know not only how the world actually changes, but also how it would have changed from one occasion to the next, had it not been for the agent" (47). The substratum of action is bodily movement: the person does something by activating the appropriate muscles and parts of the body, such as hands, feet, or speech organs. Physical action is overt and observable. It is called intransitive if the bodily movement affects just the acting person, changes his or her states, properties, and so on (I.2.1: Nick walking toward the river). 5 Intransitive actions, together with life-sustaining biological processes, provide the necessary conditions for the person's existence. But acting is by no means restricted to the intransitive sort; it is first and foremost the person's engagement with the world. The agent performs transitive actions by bringing about changes in the world, by moving objects, altering their shape, transforming one object into another, and so on. Transitive acting is asymmetrical: the object affected by an action cannot affect the person by an identical reaction. A person can kick a ball, but a ball cannot kick a person. 6 The most radical changes in the world result from productive and destructive acting. In the first kind, the agent brings a hitherto nonexistent object into existence, in the sec-

Action and Motivation ond one, he or she annihilates an existing object. Productive actions create artifacts, objects surviving the act and existing independently of the agent that produced them. Through productive acting the person enhances the world by expanding the store of its objects (I.I.I: Crusoe building a dwelling, making furniture, sewing clothing), while destructive acting impoverishes the world. Both intransitive and transitive actions are often performed with the aid of various objects that serve as instruments, so that we can distinguish between simple and instrumental actions (I.1.2: Crusoe felling a tree with his ax). Acting occurs in time, and we can make a distinction between momentary actions requiring a minimal interval of time (I.2.1: Nick standing up) and durative actions occupying a shorter or longer period (l.2.1: Nick smoking a cigarette). When necessary for the sake of clarity, we designate (following von Wright 19636, 41-42, and van Dijk 1977, 176) momentary actions as acts, durative actions as activities. When a sequence of different acts or activities or both is required to accomplish a task, such as building a house or pitching a tent (I.1.3, l.2.1), we speak about macroaction (macroactivity).7 Iterative actions are usually functionally subordinate to singular actions but in some narratives acquire prominence (see Genette 1972, 145-56).

2.

Intentionality

Viewing action solely as bodily movement has been useful for differentiating its elementary kinds but does not explain it as a specific kind of change. Both contemporary theory of action and postbehavioristic psychology have emphasized that human acting is not just bodily movement but is necessarily linked to, or even caused by, mental factors. 8 The proximate mental event, the one that initiates and triggers acting, is intention. By defining action as an intentional change of state (intentional event) our semantics accepts a view widely held in contemporary action theory (Bernstein 1971, 269-73; Davidson 1980, 229; von Wright 1983, 36-38; van Dijk 1977, 173; Beardsley 1978, 181; Apter 1979, 45-49; Searle 1983, 79-m; Ajzen 1985, n-12; Coval and Campbell 1992, 1-29; Mele 1992, 4, 121-241; 57

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

Neuberg 1993, 83-86). However, intention is a puzzling notion, and its logical status and psychological correlative have caused much disagreement. 9 The needs of narrative semantics will be satisfied if 'intention' is accepted as a primitive notion, irreducible to other mental factors of acting, such as desires, reasons, or beliefs (see Harman 1976, 436). In other words, it is sufficient for us to follow Davidson's precept: ''An event is an action if and only if it can be described in a way that makes it intentional" (1980, 229). Intention in and for acting orients the agent toward the future, directs him or her to proceed from a given initial state to an anticipated end state. Because it is future oriented, intentionality makes acting goal oriented (purposeful). To be sure, durative actions and, especially, macroactions might require during their performance shifts of intentions (corrections, modulations, canceling, and so on), but these tactical mental maneuvers do not affect the strategic role of intentionality in purposeful transformations of the person's world (l.1.1; l.3-1). Intentionality is not to be confused with conscious acting. While persons always act intentionally, they perform many actions without conscious awareness. This distinction can be well demonstrated in the case of routines, actions handled automatically thanks to the agent's inborn or acquired skills. It would be logically inconsistent to say that when a beginning driver shifts gears in full consciousness he or she performs an action but to deny that an experienced driver who shifts "automatically'' performs the same action (Donagan 1987, no). In the sequence of acting, routine actions are, as a rule, interwoven with conscious actions, but in some cases they are foregrounded (l.2.2: Nick's fishing). 10 Intentionality is mental property and therefore assigned to persons and denied to inanimate objects. Animals, who play a considerable role in narratives, pose a special problem for action theory. The conception of animal behavior depends on how much and what kind of mental life we grant them. Today's ethology has challenged the traditional narrow view of animal intelligence, emotionality, and instinct, but the matter is far from settled. Fortunately, fiction has been extremely liberal in the way it has constructed animals. Fictional se-

Action and Motivation

mantics follows this example by positing animals as an intermediate category that is molded differently in different fictional worlds. In some worlds, animals serve as objects in the pursuit of the person's goals (l.1.1: Crusoe's goats), in others they engage in quasi-interaction with persons (I.2.1: Nick's big trout); in the worlds of animal stories, fairytales, fables, and so on, they become full-fledged agents, on their own or alongside persons (V.2.1).

3. Nonintentional Events & a universal determinant of acting, intention enables us to mark off actions from nonactional events. Actions are flanked, on one side, by nature events and nature processes caused by the intentionless nature force, on the other side, by accidents where intentionality is frustrated. These two categories of nonintentional events play crucial roles in narrative fictional worlds and, therefore, deserve much more attention in narrative theory than they have received up to now. 3.1. Nature event. Persons do not act in a static environment; they have to cope with a multitude of occurring or potential nature events. The never-ceasing movement of nature is due to an operative form of the laws of nature, which our semantics denotes as nature force (N-force) (STl.1.2). 11 N-force is a constituent of all narrative worlds, but the degree of its intervention varies from central to marginal (I.1.1: permanent presence in Crusoe's life; I.2.1: unique dramatic intervention in Nick's fishing; l.3.3: end event of Des Esseintes's solitude; see also IIl.1.3). The encounter between acting person and N-force is the elemental dynamic of narrative. Two of its aspects are of utmost importance for fictional semantics: a. Due to the N-force's lack of intentionality, the encounter is asymmetrical: in response to nonintentional N-events, which are beyond his or her control, the person has to design and execute appropriate intentional actions that are within his or her capacity. Faced with destructive N-events, the person takes protective action (I.1.1: Crusoe storing his supplies in a cave). When the N-event can be gar-

59

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

nered for the purposes of intentional acting, the person engages the N-force in asymmetrical cooperation (I.r.1: Crusoe freeing his raft). b. The N-force operates in conformity with natural laws, but its effect on persons is haphazard. All persons are mortal, but the death of a particular individual is a random event. The impact of the Nforce is strengthened by the fact that it affects the person not only externally but, primarily, internally. The person's body is the locus of numerous biological N-events and processes that determine his or her very existence-birth, growth, biological functions, aging, disease, death. Thus, we can say, the most crucial events of the person's life history are outside intentionality. Surveying the world, the person sorts its events into those that are potentially under his or her actional control and those that he or she can do nothing about. 12 While this polarity is best observable in physical events, it applies to mental and social life as well (II.8; see further IIl.2.1; IIl.3-1; VIll.3). 3.2. Accident. Intentional acting, I have noted, is future oriented and purposeful. The person performs an action in order to transform an initial state into an intended end state. If the intended state is achieved, the action is successful. If, however, the agent finds himself or herself in an end state different for the one intended, an accident has happened.13 Ordinarily, we think of accidents as failures of acting with "sad consequences," a view prevalent in psychology, sociology, and medicine (Kay 1971). Narrative semantics, however, needs a notion of accident that encompasses both lucky and unlucky cases (see Reason 1979, 68-69; Rescher 1995). If the end state reached is more favorable for the acting person than the intended state, the accident is lucky; ifless favorable, it is unlucky. 14 The one-person world provides an excellent framework for the study of the conditions and varieties of accidents, because interventions by other persons are eliminated and the impact of the N-force can be bracketed. In simple (noninstrumental) actions, the source of the accident is the agent. I speak about agential accidents, adding that a majority of them are mistakes or errors, such as taking a wrong direction or hitting the wrong key on a keyboard. 15 Instrumental ac-

60

Action and Motivation cidents, in contrast, are due to a failing of the instrument used by the agent in acting (I.2.1: Nick's fishing rod breaking). In one respect, accidents are like N-events: they are beyond the agent's control. The acting person is their patient, indeed, their victim. For this reason, accidents have the same aura of fatality as earthquakes or heart attacks. 16 But here the similarity ends. In N-events no mental factor, no intention, is involved. In contrast, accidents occur only where intentional acting is pursued. They are incursions of randomness into the realm of purposefulness.

4. Special Categories of Acting ''Accident" is one of the special categories that cluster around the notion of acting, the others being "trying," "omission" ("forbearing"), "letting happen," "failing," and so on. The individual members of this family have to be introduced in relation to the core notion, as well as in their mutual relations. Let me demonstrate this approach by focusing on the categories of trying and omitting. 4.1. Trying is a stage in acting, together with starting, continuing, terminating, abandoning, and so on, all best displayed in durative actions (activities). Trying can be defined as truncated action: the agent stops the performance, for whatever reason, before reaching the intended end state. We cannot speak about trying if the action is canceled because of shift in intention. An athlete does not try to jump two meters if, having had a change of mind, he or she does not start running toward the lath. This conception of trying is inspired by von Wright's and Danto's. Von Wright links trying to "preventive interference": "If the preventive interference occurs within the specious present of the action but after the agent has commenced acting (set himself to act, embarked upon the road to the end), then we usually describe the case by saying that he tried but failed to accomplish the thing" (1983, 28). Danto uses the image of "the abrupt paralysis, the shadow fall[ing] between doing and deed" that is responsible for "an incomplete performance: a truncated event" (1973, 77). Some philosophers claim that every action presupposes trying. While this may be 61

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

true in a strictly formal sense, we commonly use "the 'language of attempts' only when there is doubt (in our minds) as to whether the action will be, is being, or has been successfully carried out" (Zimmerman 1984, 192). 4.2. "Omission," "forbearance," and "negative action'; are different designations for a complex and perplexing category. All of the nonactions can be comprehended only within a possible-worlds framework. Omission to act is a serious issue in moral and legal philosophy, because it relates to the agent's responsibility. The basic question asked in this context is "whether there is a significant and clearly identifiable difference between the concepts of actively doing something and passively letting it happen'' (Walton 1980, 319). The equivalence of omission and acting is denied by those philosophers who claim that "omissions have no consequences, since they lack the required causal efficacy'' (Weinryb 1980, 3). Narrative semantics should judge omissions on logical rather than ethical grounds. In principle, omission is equivalent to acting if two conditions are satisfied: (1) the refraining from acting is intentional; and (2) the person has the ability and opportunity to perform the corresponding action. In other words, the agent must intentionally omit to do what he could do in the given circumstances, or he must let something happen that he could prevent by acting (for a similar view, see von Wright 19636, 45-48; Rehbein, 1977, 229-30; Gorr 1979; Green 1979; Zimmerman 1984, 166-69). The first condition is a consequence of the universal intentionality of acting: if omission is to be classed as a kind of act, it has to be intentional. It makes little sense to speak about nonintentional omissions, since the number of such nondoings at any point of the agent's history is practically unlimited. The second condition stipulates that the concept of omission can be applied only to the range of the actions that are in the agent's purview. 17 The agent has to have at his or her disposal the alternative to act or not to act (I.2.2: Nick not fishing in the swamp). Special categories of acting play significant and multifarious roles in the structuring of narratives but have been neglected by narratologists. Our sketch of "trying" and "omission'' should stimulate further

Action and Motivation investigations, both theoretical and analytical, which would fill a major gap in narrative semantics.

5. Motivation Intention is the defining and universal condition of acting, but it is rarely declared by agents and is, therefore, unnoticed by observers of acting (see Neuberg 1993, 83-84). We are faced with a curious discrepancy: while in the philosophy of action the problem of intentionality is at the center of interest, empirical studies of acting, including narratology, have hardly noticed its existence. This discrepancy becomes less puzzling if we recognize that intention is a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of acting. Action in context, in its link to the person-agent and its societal embedding, is molded by mental factors beyond intentionality. These factors, designated by the general term motivation, determine "the choice, the intensity and the persistence of activities" (Birch and Veroff 1966, rn). While intention is undifferentiated and ungraded, motivational factors are diverse in both quality and quantity. Because they are habitual features of a person's character, they produce regularities in acting, modes of acting characteristic of individuals and personality types. Whereas intention delimits the domain of acting from nonactional events, motivation is the key to understanding the diversity of acting, the why and how of actions. The study of motivational factors is to become an important part of a semantics of fictional narrative. And we will look to motivational psychology for inspiration. ts 5.1. Influential trends in twentieth-century psychology restricted motivational factors to drives (instincts, Triebe), such as hunger, thirst, sexual drive, and avoidance of pain. This limitation is still apparent in Birch and Veroff's taxonomy (1966), which proposes seven motivational systems. 19 The psychologists claim that their systems taken together "account for most of man's significant recurrent behaviors," a claim based on the fact that drives are "mandatory," that is, almost automatically lead to characteristic (satisfying) actions: hunger - eating; thirst - drinking. 20 More recently, motivational psycho!-

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

ogy has expanded substantially the set of motivational systems and restricted drives to "the maintenance of the body and the propagation of the species" (Izard 1977, 164; see also Deci 1980). This is a major event in the psychology of acting with far-reaching consequences. Narrative semantics especially appreciates that the newly legitimated (or, rather, rehabilitated) motivational factors include the cognitive and the emotional capacities of persons. 5.2. The cognitive system of motivation harks back to the ancient idea of practical reasoning. It was formalized in Aristotle's practical syllogism, a deductive schema with the major premise expressing the person's desire, the minor one stating the presence of the desired object; the conclusion leads to (or is) an action: "For example. Let me drink (desire says). This is a drink (imagination or perception or thought says). lmmedia~ely, he drinks" (De motu 701a 28 ff.; qtd. from Charles 1984, 90; see also Hintikka 1974, 89-91; Schick 1991, 9-21). Following Anscombe (1957), von Wright modernizes the schema of "practical inference"; it consists of the statement of an end, an action leading to this end, and, finally, the intention to perform that action (1983). At the same time, it has been recognized that practical syllogism is only one of the cognitive factors of acting (see Hintikka 1974, 94-102). The main lesson to be drawn from the Aristotelian heritage is that all processes of knowledge acquisition and representation-sensory perception, belief, information processing, evaluation, theoretical thought, and so on-motivate acting. Present-day cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence research demonstrate that persons apply the cognitive capacities at all stages of acting, in goalsetting, in formulation and selection of alternatives, in monitoring of performance, and in evaluation of results. Two cognitive factors are especially important for narrative semantics: a. Decision making (I.1.2: Crusoe deciding on the best kind of shelter) is a procedure inherent in the possible-worlds conception of acting: If from any given initial state the agent can proceed toward two or more possible end states, then he has to determine which of

Action and Motivation the alternatives is best (optimal, most desirable) in the given circumstances (Donagan 1987, 44; see also Davidson 1980, 234-37; Aune 1977, 131-42; Daval 1981, 8, 193-96). 21 b. Many compound acts and activities, such as eating in a restaurant or taking a trip, follow a "prescribed" sequence. Artificial intelligence research has put much emphasis on this factor and differentiates between conventionalized scripts and individually prepared plans (designs) (see Brand 1984, 204-21; Velleman 1989, 215-40). Scripts do not necessarily restrict acting to one stereotype; for many activities "hypothetical scripts" are available, charting alternative courses of acting (Abelson 1976, 35). Scripts and plans serve as guides for individual acting (l.2.2: Nick preparing his breakfast pancakes) and become indispensable in the pursuit of complex social activities. 5.3. Emotions have regained their status as powerful motivational factors but continue to elude theoretical grasp. Despite enormous literature on the topic, a fairly recent monograph puts it quite bluntly: "Nothing about the emotions is really well understood, in any strong sense of understanding" (de Sousa 1987, xix). The principal reason is the difficulty of describing in objective terms the subjective experiential (phenomenological) nature of emotions. Emotionality is the one domain of psychology where a developed fictional semantics could be more giving than receiving. Indeed, fictional constructs of emotions enjoy much popularity among philosophers and psychologists and are often evoked instead of, or in addition to, actual cases. 22 The traditional approaches to emotions (summarized, for example, by Lyons [1980, 1-52] and de Sousa [1987, 37-46]) seem to be reductionist; emotions are analyzed by being eliminated. The Cartesian view reduces emotions to (bodily) sensations, the behaviorist view to operant behavior, the psychoanalytic to suppressed drives, the cognitive to beliefs and evaluations, the contextualist to conventional consent. In contemporary philosophy and psychology, however, emotionality is treated as an autonomous mental (motivational) force. Philosophy has drafted a model of the mind in which emotions "are not reducible to more primitive faculties or functions" and take their

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

own place alongside perceptions, beliefs, and wants (de Sousa 1987, xvi, 19). Psychology has set emotions apart from their most common cover-up, the drives. Thus, for example, the "unpacking" of the aggression drive reveals an independent motivating emotion-anger. 23 Izard went so far as to promote "the emotion system" to "the primary motivational system for human beings over the life span" (1979, 167; 1977, 3, 43-44).

It is commonly believed that emotions are aroused by objects and events in the world and in this sense are intentional. Danto claims that "there is not feeling which is not the feeling 'of' something" (1973, 155). He strengthens his case by distinguishing between a basic case, where the object of emotion is a particular (sadness at losing a parent, the desire for a flower, excitement over a work of art) (I.3.2), and "more abstract cases," where the emotion~ "tinge the whole world for the sufferer" (spleen, melancholy). Abstract emotions easily translate into "philosophical postures in which depression or anxiety have as objects the whole of reality, taken as absurd or empty or fearful" (1973, 160). 24 But Danto's fine analysis could also serve to support the claim for objectless emotions. After all, his abstract emotion resembles strongly some fictional constructs where the "sufferer" is not linked to the world but is rather divorced from it (I.3.4: Des Esseintes's anxieties). Intentionality of emotions is closely linked to the controversy over whether persons have power over their emotions, that is, whether they are capable of inducing, maintaining, or suppressing them. Danto has argued in the negative: "The will is (which means that we are) impotent to do our feelings: we are in their grip (slaves of passion), and though we may dissolve them or induce them through causes, and so attain a degree of indirect mastery over them, we are, basically, impotent to have or not to have them" (1973, 151). Lyons vacillates between the view of emotions as "unpremeditated reactions" and the belief that "there are a number of ways in which we can control our emotions" (1980, 185, 193, 196-200). Izard (1977, 50-53) points out both the "restrictions" and the "freedoms" of the emotional system. De Sousa's analysis leads to a similar result. Hav-

66

Action and Motivation

ing asserted the rationality of emotions, de Sousa nevertheless comes to the conclusion that they fluctuate between "the rational and the irrational, the objective and the subjective, the active and the passive, the real self and the persona, and even determinism and indeterminism" (1987, 17). Such a dynamic solution-emotionality is a mental domain where spontaneity and control clash-is necessary for fictional semantics. Fictional persons experience both intentionally cultivated and spontaneously arising emotions, often alternating with dramatic fluidity (l.2.2: Nick's emotional turmoil during the duel with the big trout; l.3.2: Des Esseintes's aesthetic emotions; see also

111.1.2). The remarkable qualitative variety of emotions has challenged philosophy and psychology for centuries. Traditional lists of emotions have been supplanted by structural matrices, proposed both by psychologists (De Rivera 1977, 38-74; Apter 1989, 184-190) and by semioticians (Parret 1986). These models are attempts to penetrate through the indefiniteness and complexity of emotions to a more manageable "deep structure." But the logic of the matrix often requires that some slots be filled by terms that do not designate emotions or, on the contrary, that commonly experienced emotions be omitted. Thus, in Apter's matrix we find an emotion called virtue, but love and hatred are missing. Narrative semantics will be well served by accepting the concept of basic emotions, proposed already by John Locke and developed in contemporary psychology. Epstein gives one list-fear, anger, sadness, joy, love, affection (1983, 99); Izard gives a somewhat different one-interest-excitement, joy, surprise, distress-anguish, anger, disgust, contempt, fear, shame, guilt (1977, 83-92). 25 From the basic emotions, composite ones are derived by combinations (fusions); jealousy, for example, is a blend of love plus hatred plus fear (see Neu 1980). These and similar classificatory attempts assume that emotions form a system of correlations. The most venerable pairs are those of euphoric (pleasurable, positive) and dysphoric (unpleasurable, negative) emotions: joy/sadness, love/hatred, admiration/contempt, excitement/fear, mirth/anger, and so on (l.2.3; l.3.2). The dichotomy

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

turns into a triad if we include the absence of emotion, a "zero" emotion-apathy. Arranging emotions into oppositions should not obscure the ambivalence of emotions, a coalescence of opposites (love + hatred). This puzzling property extends into their motivational potential: on different occasions, one and the same emotion may bring about different, even contradictory, actions (see Izard 1977, 8-9). The law of the excluded middle does not apply to emotional life. In the quantitative aspect, intensity, emotions range from ardor to apathy. Narrative semantics can make good use of the English-language offer to designate the emotions of highest intensity as passions. 26 Substantial diversities in temperament (the affective dispositions of persons) make the intensity of emotions a personal characteristic. "Some people are readily aroused to feel emotion, and their emotions are strong and difficult to keep under control. Others are more placid, and their emotions are relatively weak" (Vernon 1969, 83). The same diversity applies to the motivational force of emotions. In general, passions are more likely than weak emotions to lead to acting, but the individual's actional response to emotional motivation depends very much on his or her personality structure: excitable temperaments easily translate emotions into acting, but "strong" personalities can omit or suppress acting even under the pressure of very intense emotions-Ricoeur's "energie subie" (1977, 90) (see 111.1.4, on the power of passion). Emotions are often accompanied by spontaneous physiological events, such as increased pulse rate, palpitations, twitches, and so on. When the events are observable (blushing, sparkling eyes, gestures) or audible (laughing, crying, exclamation of pain, tone of voice), they become signs (indices) of emotions (crying= grief, laughter= joy). These expressive events ("affect displays," "body clues") are mostly nonintentional but can also be acted out intentionally and used in a deceptive, concealing, or insincere manner (see Portch 1985, 9-rn). Psychologists and anthropologists have been engaged in a prolonged controversy about the universality or cultural specificity of the physical expressions of emotions (for a summation, see Evans 1989, 139-40). Having studied facial displays, Ekman has come to the con68

Action and Motivation

clusion that as symptoms of some basic emotions (such as happiness, surprise, fear, anger) they are universal, but the facial displays of other emotions seem to be culture specific (1980, 97-99). 27 Whether universal or culture specific, expressive behavior is regulated by learned cultural habits and by the personality structure. This principle applies especially to expressive verbalization. 28 The "reading" of manifest symptoms (both bodily events and speech acts) is a popular method of inferring a person's emotional state. Conversely, the symptoms are a powerful device for constructing fictional emotions: inner, inaccessible subjective emotional states are posited indirectly by their observable or audible "objective correlatives" (Eliot 1950, rno) (see Vl.3.3). Every person at any time can experience a number of emotions. Compatibility of emotions increases their motivational power. Yet often a person's emotional life is charged with schiwid tension between incompatible emotions or by ambivalent ("mixed") emotional attitudes toward one and the same object (see Greenspan 1980; Storr 1988, IOI). These tensions give rise to motivational conflict; the person's ability to act may be permanently impaired or, at least, action deferred until the conflict is resolved. Emotions show remarkable dynamism: they appear and disappear, and their intensity might fluctuate wildly. Changes in the objects and in the intensity of emotions are crucial events in a person's life history, leading to substantial shifts in the course of his or her acting. Obviously, less intense emotions are more prone to change, whereas passions tend to become ingrained. Painful and prolonged withdrawal symptoms provide most of the drama in the death or agony of passion. 5.4. Motivational systems-drives, emotions, cognitive factors -can be isolated in theory, but in the practice of living they operate jointly, in clusters (see Kuhl and Beckman 1985, IOI). They fuse into motivational clusters, complex and entangled propellers of acting (IIl.3-1, IV.2.4). If the cluster includes contradictions, motivational conflicts arise. The person is pulled in opposite directions, and a serious disruption of acting ensues. Davidson, who called this conflict

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

"the Medea Principle" (1982, 294), is skeptical about its logical legitimacy since it involves a clash between rationality and an "alien force." If, however, we transcend the persistent linking of acting to rationality, typical of Western philosophy (see below), and posit several motivational systems, then nothing "alien" is involved in the conflict. Motivational conflict is, I believe, at the core of the most notorious irregularity in acting, so-called akrasia (incontinence or weakness of will). In action theory, this puzzling phenomenon has been discussed since antiquity; in narrative semantics, it has yet to be mentioned. For the ancient philosophers, akrasia became a cause celebre because it stood out as a paradox within their rational philosophy of acting. According to practical syllogism, the agent selects the action • optimal in the given circumstances and then performs it. How, then, can a reasoning person become an akrates, pursuing a course of action that is detrimental to his or her interests? 29 By understanding akrasia as motivational conflict, an answer to these questions can be suggested: a "correct" intention resulting form the person's practical deliberation is not carried out; it is overridden by the agent's drive or passion, and an "incorrect" action is performed. This interpretation of akrasia satisfies Davidson's desire to dissociate it from moral considerations (1980, 30) but avoids the logician's plight to explain it within a strictly rational conception of acting. The akrates's acting is a manifestation not of irrationality but of an irreconcilable discordance within his or her motivational cluster.30

6. Action Modes A theory of acting, pursued in this chapter, makes overt physical action conditional on covert mental states or events. The character of an action is determined not so much by what is done as why it is done. Searching for the explanation of a particular action, we search for its motive. There is no question about the need and usefulness of this search. However, motivational systems provide a means to proceed beyond the explanation of particular actions to understanding regularities in the conduct of acting. My semantics treat these regu-

Action and Motivation Schema 1 Rational

Impulsive

Akratic

Irrational

Insane

larities under the label of action modes. I propose a taxonomy of four action modes, represented in circular schema (schema 1); the pointer from the lowest node leads into the domain of pathology. Rational acting (Miller, Galanter, and Pribram 1960; Jeffrey 1965; Grether 1980; Audi 1993, 281-318) is determined by cognitive motivational factors. It has often been considered the essential human mode of acting, since it is guided by reason, supposedly the highest, and exclusively human, mental capacity. The concept of free agent makes sense only within this mode: the person has control over his or her acting if his or her reason (ratio) is in control (Pears 1984, 15) (I.1.2: Crusoe's control over his world). The rationality of acting is not dependent on the duration of its cognitive preparation. Building a cathedral and slamming on the car brakes are both rational actions; yet the first activity requires long and meticulous designing, while the second is performed instantaneously, thanks to the agent's routine skills. Impulsive acting is motivated by drives and in some respects is the opposite of rational acting; it is spontaneous, unpremeditated, quite often reflex stimulated. Under the pressure of drives, the person's 71

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

control over his or her acting is minimized.3 1 This formulation respects the fact that in the social world of cultural training drives do not automatically lead to acting. Acting motivated by emotions fluctuates between the rational and the impulsive modes. Because of their polarity (II.5.3), emotions are flexible motivational factors. They can submit to reasoning or suppress it. They decrease agential control in different degrees, depending on the kind, duration, and intensity of the emotion, on its object, on the person's temperament and overall personality structure, and so on. Moving in the opposite direction along schema r, we encounter akratic acting, which, as already defined (ll.5.4), flouts rationality. The person is aware of the rational path but is deflected from it under the pressure of drive or passion. Both directions of the circle lead to the zone of irrational acting. According to Davidson the concept of irrational acting involves a logical paradox: "There is a conflict between the standard way of explaining intentional action and the idea that such an action can be irrational" (1982, 293). In representing irrational acting as the extreme point of a dynamic typology we avoid, I believe, Davidson's "paradox of irrationality." We can say that irrational acting is a mode where the import of cognitive factors and practical reasoning is minimal. 32 But it is precisely this minimum that prevents a total annihilation of intentionality. Only in insanity, where the person's mind is severely impaired or even destroyed, is intentionality null and void. Insane behavior is semantically identical to nature events. When intentionality disintegrates, nature force takes over.

7. Mental Acts and Spontaneous Generation The concepts of intentionality and motivation define the "outwardly'' oriented domain of the mind, the practical mind directing, controlling, and monitoring acting and its results (see Hintikka 1974, 80). There are, however, mental operations that have no connection with acting-the "inward-looking" workings of the contemplative mind (I.1.3: Crusoe's transcendental contemplation; l.2.4: Nick's 72

Action and Motivation

minimal contemplations; l.3.2: Des Esseintes's aesthetic contemplation). In contemplation persons construct mental images of their past, possible futures, and alternative presents; they interpret their world, life, and existence, formulating a more or less consistent, totalizing personal ideology, philosophy, religion, myth (IY.2.2). The operations of the practical mind, such as practical reasoning, decision making, calculation, planning, scripting, and the like, are prototypes of mental acts. 33 In contrast, the contemplative mind, having no actional commitment, is free to spontaneously generate mental events (processes). The polarity of intentional acting and spontaneous generation is thus introduced into the model of the mind. Although the origin of these modes of operation is associated with the practical and the contemplative mind, their scope is not. All mental faculties, from sensory perception to emotionality to thinking to remembering and imagination, operate between the poles of intentional acting and spontaneous generation (I.1.2; I.2.3; l.3.3-4).34 The spontaneous generation of mental events appears as a work of intentionless mental force that. overwhelms the person's mind with obsessive thought, automatic mental images and associations, fantastic daydreams, stream-of-consciousness displays (I.3.4; 111.2.4). Its purest manifestation is the dream, mental imaging in sleep, over which the person has no control. 35 It is not difficult to see that in their semantic structure mental acts are analogous to physical actions, whereas mental events (processes) are similar to nature events, especially to the biological processes occurring in the person's body. Physical actions and mental acts are intentionally done by the person; physiological and mental events, caused by intentionless forces, happen to him or her. Action theory starts by presupposing the duality of body and mind, but the act/ event contrast, cutting across this duality, reasserts the unity of the acting person.

73

I

CHAPTER III

(A)

Multiperson Worlds

The one-person world, although theoretically simulating, is quite limited in its narrative potential. The most fertile ground for narrative is the fictional world where two or more persons, potential agents, are present. The persons' interaction, individually or in groups, is the prime source of stories. The works of three major European writers, EM. Dostoevsky, Charles Dickens, and Milan Kundera, provide us with the first insights into the narrative complexity and plasticity of the multiperson world.

The Idiot: Agents Losing Control The Idiot (1874) is probably the least understood of Dostoevsky's major novels. Interpreters have had difficulty with its unorthodox structure, so different from the well-arranged patterns of the other novels. 1 Many critics, prompted by Dostoevsky's casual remark that he wanted to write a novel about a "wholly beautiful" or "wholly good" man, do not proceed beyond this cliche about its archetypal hero. 2 1.1. Coming together. The one-person worlds of Robinson Crusoe, Nick Adams, and Des Esseintes came into existence through the 74

Multiperson Worlds elimination of all potential coagents. The construction of a multiperson world requires just the opposite: to assemble a group of persons (minimally two) for face-to-face contact. To form the agential constellation of The Idiot, Dostoevsky first resorrs to the popular device of travel: prince Myskin, on his return to Russia from Switzerland, meets Rogozin and Lebedev on the Warsaw-Petersburg train (bk.1, chap.1). They parr upon arrival, but their contact will prove to be permanent: Rogozin will join Myskin in the small set of protagonists, Lebedev will become a member of the more numerous group of secondary characters. Other fictional persons who will play significant roles in the world are introduced on the same occasion, but in absentia: the Jepancin family and Nastasja Filipovna are topics of conversation, and Nastasja's portrait is shown by Rogozin; some minor future agents are at least mentioned (Pavliscev, Konyov, Lichacov). The next stage in the constellation formation is the prince's visit to the Jepancin family (chaps. 2-7). Servants, the secretary Ganja, and the whole Jepancin family (the general, his wife, and their three daughters) all engage in conversation with Myskin. Yet by several inconspicuous moves the relationship between Myskin and the youngest daughter, Aglaja, becomes special; at the end of the visit Aglaja selects the prince as her confidant (informing him about Ganja's courrship). Moreover, in a casual remark an indirect relationship between Aglaja arid Nastasja Filipovna is established when Myskin, not suspecting any trouble, compares Aglajas beautiful face with that of her future rival (66; 98). At this point, all the protagonists have entered the fictional world in person, with the exception of Nastasja Filipovna. Dostoevsky reserves for this exceptional heroine an exceptional means of gradual introduction. First, she is the topic of conversation-she is a verbal sign. Second, presented through her portrait, she becomes a pictorial sign. 3 Only in the third stage does Nastasja Filipovna appear in person, when she unexpectedly visits the lvolgin apartment and takes Myskin for a servant (86; 123). As the story unfolds, the protagonists form a double "triangle of desire," with the hero, Myskin, as its pivot (see Miller 1981, 219-20):

75

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

Myskin

. / ~ Agap 1. N astasJa ~ D v• J:'-Ogozm This quartet plays out the tragedy of The Idiot. r.2. Fragile links. The positions of the protagonists in the agential constellation remain fixed for the duration of the story (Holthusen 1969, 9); but their connections, dominated by the ambiguous love/hate emotional relation, are unstable and subject to sudden reversals (see Dalton 1979, 96-99). Dostoevsky elaborates in detail the ·reversals in the Myskin-Rogozin link. In a moment of closeness, the two rivals exchange their crosses and become "brothers"; Rogozin asks his mother to bless the prince "just as if it was your own son." And, in the ultimate gesture of friendship, Rogozin "cedes" Nastasja Filipovna to Myskin (bk.2, chap.4). Since the text keeps meticulous track of time, we know that this scene occurs at half past two in the afternoon. Around seven o'clock the prince returns to his hotel and is confronted by Rogozin, who tries to kill him. Within a short period of four and a half hours, brotherhood swings to murderous hostility. But the Myskin-Rogozin relationship reverts to brotherhood again at the end of the novel, when the two stay together in night wake for the murdered Nastasja (bk.4, chap.n). They are separated by force, to be sent to different kinds of exile, Rogozin for his crime to Siberia, Myskin for his idiocy to Switzerland. Nastasja Filipovna's vacillation between Rogozin and Myskin, her running away from one to the other and back again, is the most conspicuous manifestation of emotional instability. Her passional swings end only when she is killed by Rogozin. Myskin himself vacillates between Nastasja Filipovna and Aglaja. When Nastasja leaves Rogozin, he accepts her in Moscow with love-pity (bk.2, chap.3). But later, deserted by Nastasja, he proposes to Aglaja and almost becomes her fiance (bk.4, chap.5). In the final turn, rejected by Aglaja, he is about to marry Nastasja Filipovna, only to be abandoned at the last moment before the wedding (bk.4, chap.IO). Aglaja's emotional swings

Multiperson Worlds are, perhaps, the most sudden. For some time, she makes contradictory statements about her attitude toward Myskin but finally declares unequivocally her love for him (472; 584); only a few minutes later, she leaves him forever with a terrible look of suffering and hatred, being unable to accept "even a brief moment of his hesitation" (475; 588). Similar contradictions and reversals mark the relationship of Nastasja Filipovna and Aglaja; in her letters to Aglaja, Nastasja expresses friendship and affection (bk.3, chap.IO), but in their momentous face-to-face confrontation the two women have nothing for each other but words of spite and hatred (bk.4, chap.8). r.3. Overcome by passion. The radical shifts in the personal links are manifestations of the intense emotionality of Dostoevsky's protagonists. Bonds between passionate persons are unstable, because they are constantly threatened by their unpredictable and uncontrolled impulsive actions. The rational antecedents of acting are minimized: the crucial deeds of the heroes and heroines of The Idiot are unreflected leaps from desire or despair to physical or verbal acts. At one point, the text, shifting from narrative to imaging digression and back, spells out the contrast between practical reasoning and unreflected impulse. The prince "was anxious to think over, and decide about, a certain step. But that 'step' was not one of those one thinks over, but of those which one precisely does not think over, but settles on: he was suddenly overcome by a strong desire to leave everything here and go back to where he had come from, to some far-away solitary place" (256; 326). 4 The passions and drives that motivate the acting of Dostoevsky's character are volatile, appearing, disappearing, changing arbitrarily on the spur of the moment. At a certain point, Mrs Jepancin becomes so irritated by Myskin's behavior that she forbids him ever to enter their house again; a few moments later, driven by a contrary impulse, "she suddenly pounced on the prince, seized him by the arm, and dragged him after her" [to their house] (268; 340). This is a minor incident, but it indicates what kind of acting decides the fate of the novel's protagonists. Even when impulsive acting is triggered by the best intention, it turns, usually, destructive or

77

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

self-destructive. In Dostoevsky's :fictional world, impulsive acting is often indistinguishable from akrasia. 5 The impulsive and irrational personal confrontations combine wih random interventions of the nature force to create a chaotic :fictional world.6 The nature force intervenes most drastically in Myskin's epileptic :fits, biological events that instantaneously cancel whatever intentions he was pursuing. The agent is turned into a patient, uttering involuntary screams and twisting in spasmodic convulsions. Myskin's epilepsy, like Des Esseintes's unspecified disease, is latent and thus ever threatening; it takes command of him randomly, for no apparent or known reason. Myskin's epileptic seizures occur at two crucial points in the story, once saving the prince from Rogozin's knife (bk.2, chap.5), the second time wrecking his reputation at the Jepancins' party (bk.4, chap. 7). Myskin's very existence as an acting person is temporary, delimited by a prehistory and a posthistory of idiocy, a state where the nature force destroys his mind and his capacity for acting. Madness, the ultimate manifestation of nature's pathological impact on persons, permeates the world of The Idiot both as a :fictional fact and as a :figure of speech. Myskin's "literal" insanity, the initial and the end state of his story, is the source of the :figure of madness, attached to many persons and incidents in the novel. Thus Myskin, although temporarily sane, is repeatedly called "idiot"; Nastasja Filipovna's as well as Rogozin's acting is often explained by "madness" (for example, in the quoted episode at the end of book 1). Both literally and :figuratively, Dostoevsky's :fictional world hovers precariously between sanity and madness. 1.4. The "hideous scenes." The strains of impulsive, akratic, and "insane" acting converge to create the peak interactional episodes of The Idiot, the scandals,? Shortly after entering the :fictional world, Myskin is drawn by accident into one of its most complex and remarkable exhibits (bk.1, chaps.8-rn). He has just taken up lodgings at the lvolgins' and hardly knows the members of the family. Nevertheless, he is not spared from witnessing a dispute in which a delicate family matter is aired, Ganja lvolgin's possible marriage to Nastasja

Multiperson Worlds Filipovna. The family, especially Ganja's sister, is strongly opposed to the prospect. The verbal exchange becomes more and more impassioned and hostile, until Ganja is overcome by anger and starts acting "without any restraint and with almost a growing enjoyment, no matter where it may lead him' (86; 121). At that critical moment and in a most unusual way (III.1.1), Nastasja Filipovna herself enters the apartment. Her impertinent remarks and offensive laughter further increase the tensions between the participants of the scene. The verbal conflict is on the brink of becoming physical assault-against the most innocent person, the bystanding prince: ''All Ganja's spite seemed suddenly to turn against the prince: he seized him by the shoulder and looked at him in silence, vindictively and with hatred, as though unable to utter a word. A general commotion ensued" (88, 124). At the last moment, Ganja "recovered his self-possession," and physical violence is averted. A brief respite is provided by General lvolgin, who offers a sample of his impulsive lying. In the meantime, two other persons make their appearance, Kolja and Ferdyscenko, enlarging the set of spectators. The next, more violent wave of the scandal begins to surge when another uninvited and unexpected visitor appears-Rogozin. With Rogozin's entourage the group of spectators turns into a "chorus" (95; 133). When Rogozin notices Nastasja Filipovna, "he turned so pale that his lips went blue" (96; 133). The subdued passions are ready to burst out and bring about the climax of the scandal. The escalation begins when Rogozin asks a strictly private question in front of the gathered crowd: Will Nastasja Filipovna marry Ganja Ivolgin or will she not? Against all expectation, Nastasja's answer is negative, giving Rogozin the opportunity to continue the scene in a most original manner-by "bidding for" Nastasja Filipovna. As he increases the amount of money offered, the scene becomes "extremely disgraceful." Rogozin, "in ecstasy," is called "mad" and "drunk" (98; 136). All the participants of the interaction have now lost control and exchange insults, screams, and cries. When Varja calls Nastasja Filipovna "a shameless woman," the scandal

79

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

reaches the level of physical violence, earlier averted. Ganja "in a fury threw himself on Varja and violently seized her hand"; Varja, "beside herself, suddenly spat in her brother's face" (98-99; 136-37). Only then does Myskin intervene; protecting Varja, he receives Ganja's retaliatory blow. The prince's response to this physical attack is astonishing: "he covered his face with his hands, went to a corner of the room, stood with his face to the wall, and said in a faltering voice: 'Oh, how ashamed you'll be of what you've done!"' (99; 137). These words and the omission of physical retaliation are so incongruous with the structure of the scandal that they bring about its collapse. In a "friendly'' denouement Nastasja Filipovna kisses Mrs. lvolgin's hand and leaves the apartment. All ingredients, stages, and patterns of the scandal as a special kind of interaction are displayed in this episode. It begins rather inconspicously as the private encounter of a small group of fictional persons who meet to discuss a delicate, controversial matter. But the private event becomes a public spectacle when a crowd of outsiders gathers around the original group. The scandal is obviously modeled on theatrical performance, where spectators are allowed to witness intimate exchanges staged by the fictional persons of the dramatic world. The scandal's basic structure is a sequence of antagonistic semiotic acts, particularly verbal and gestural, which become more and more heated and hostile. As the participants lose control over their passions and succumb to impulsive, irrational, and akratic acting and as new, unexpected agents intervene, the conflict escalates and reaches its furious climax in physical violence. As a concert of uncontrolled passions, violent words, and senseless acts, the Dostoevskian scandal exhibits supremely the potential of rational beings for irrational acting. 1.5. Crime of passion. Scandal is an effective means for bringing out into the open the hidden, suppressed thoughts, passions, and relationships of fictional persons. When persons lose control over their acting, their "soul" is exposed (Bachtin [1929] 1984, 175). Paradoxically, at this depth, the intention and motivation of the person's ac-

80

Multiperson Worlds tion is muddled and incomprehensible. Since there are no reasons for impulsive acting, it cannot be explained by reason. The most crucial event of the novel, Rogozin's murdering Nastasja Filipovna, is also its deepest mystery. 8 Myskin never asks, and Rogozin never tells, why he committed the crime. Only Rogozin's "adroit and eloquent" lawyer comes up with an explanation: "He proved clearly and logically that the crime was a consequence of brain fever, which had set in long before the crime was committed, as a consequence of the great distress of the accused" (507; 629). This rational explanation, while obviously accepted by the jury, explains, in fact, nothing; it just disguises dark passion as a pathological nature event. The results of impulsive acting in The Idiot are disastrous. If we look at the final state of the four protagonists, we are remided of the fate of the heroes of Greek tragedy: Nastasja Filipovna murdered, Myskin in the darkness of terminal idiocy, Rogozin in a Siberian "house of the dead," Aglaja married to an impostor and swindler. The tragedy of Dostoevsky's heroes is a tragedy of those who lose control over their acting and, consequently, over their destiny.

2. Little Dorrit: Apart from the Rough World In the novel Little Dorrit (1857), Charles Dickens constructed a fictional world where the persons' capacity for intentional and purposeful acting is severly impaired. Two global conditions are responsible: rigid social organization and a propensity for accidents. Dickens' narrative is propelled by the agents' striving to cope with the oppressive conditions reigning in the world into which they have been thrown. 2.1. Social powers. Society (written with a capital S) in Little Dorrit is a hierarchy of roles, a predetermined network of social positions in which some inhabitants of the world are assigned a place.9 Those who are not given any role are outside society, even though they are individualized as fictional persons (the Plornishes, for instance). Two allied institutions, one political, the state, the other fi-

81

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

nancial, the Bank, are the principal role givers. The major rearrangement within the agential constellation that occurs between parts I and 2 does not affect the hierarchy of the social and subsocial. The political institution achieves absurd perfection in that remarkable Dickensian construct, the Circumlocution Office. 10 The office is "effectual" precisely because it is committed to the principle of "how not to do it" (in the sense of "how to avoid doing anything whatever"). One of its "managers" explains to a discontented subject its true purpose: "It's like a limited game of cricket. A field of outsiders are always going in to bowl at the Public Service, and we block the balls" (804). In this "infinitely complex bureaucracy" (Miller 1965, 234), all intentional activity ceases. Vis-a-vis the alien, impenetrable institution, a person is, in Mr. Meagles' words, "a man with no rights ... a mere outlaw" (161). While this aspect associates the Circumlocution Office with court or prison (see Reid 1967, 28), its mechanistic operation makes it similar to nature force. The analogy is not lost on the rational agent, the inventor Doyce: "As I know what such a metal will do at such a temperature, and such a body under such a pressure, so I may know (if I will only consider), how these great lords and gentlemen will certainly deal with such a matter as mine" (145). In a world where ultimate decisions about the fate of persons are made by specialists in nondoing, all activity is hampered, and creative activity becomes impossible. 11 In contrast to the tightly knit clan that runs the Circumlocution Office, the institution of financial power is embodied in one person only, Mr. Merdle. Fully identified with its head, the Bank is an "immature" institution, operating in an arbitrary and conspiratorial manner. It is just a name, a fac;:ade behind which the financier pursues his personal ambitions. The fate of the Bank, its rise and fall, necessarily follows the fate of the man, first a "lucky winner in the lottery oflife" (Thurley 1976, 251), then a catastrophic loser. The social domain of Dickens' fictional world is epitomized in that most crippling of institutions, the prison, especially the debtors' prison of the Marshalsea. But the opposition freedom/incarceration does not cancel the world's social hierarchy. 12 The Marshalsea yard is

Multiperson Worlds divided into the "aristocratic or Pump side" and the "Poor side" (264). John Chivery, the son of a free man, believes that the family of the prisoner Dorrit is "far above" his own, the turnkey's (261). Expressing the same belief, Fanny claims (in a conversation with Mrs. Merdle) that her father's position is "eminently superior ... even in the Society in which he now moved" (287). This position is due to his status as "gentleman," a set of inborn properties the imprisoned William Dorrit possesses and his free brother Frederick lacks (264, 270). But when a sensitive person like Clennam finds himself in prison, he succumbs to its devastating effect: "Imprisonment began to tell upon him. He knew that he idled and moped" (803). 2.2. Justification of the World Order. The social structure of Dickens' fictional world is made understandable and is justified by social representations. Dickens constructs three mutually reinforcing systems: rules of social hierarchy, conventions of propriety, and dogmas of religion. Social representations are invariably propounded and propagated by female characters. Thus, a remarkable division oflabor by gender obtains in Dickens' fictional world: men pursue social acting, while women reveal its principles and formulate arguments in its defense. , Mrs. Merdle is the arbiter in matters pertaining to social status and relations. Acknowledging that Society is an "artificial system," she nevertheless asserts that its hierarchy is given; the chasm between the privileged and the deprived could be removed only by a complete restructuring of the world, possible only in "a Millenium."13 Mrs. General is the authority on proper comportment, speech, and mores (see Frye 1968, 61). Having no opinions of her own, she is an ideal speaker and promoter of social conventions. The essence of propriety is the deletion of anything unpleasant, disturbing, disruptive: "Mrs. General was not to be told of anything shocking. Accidents, miseries, and offences, were never to be mentioned before her. Passion was to go to sleep in the presence of Mrs. General, and blood was to change to milk and water." When the world is purged of these defects, the task of propriety is "to varnish'' the rest (503). The third system of social representations, Mrs. Clennam's religious dogma, has an inter-

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

textual source; it is derived from the Book (224). Demanding a severe punishment for all "sinners," this "Calvinistic religion" (Leavis 1970, 231) sweeps the world clean of any enjoyment. Appropriately, Mrs. Clennam, incapacitated in her thinking by a rigid dogma and in body by paralysis, thinks of herself as being "in prison and in bonds" (89). The "pilots" of a merciless religion crown the set of social restrictions under which the inhabitants of the fictional world have to labor. This oppressive atmosphere seems to justify Miller's claim that Little Dorrit is "Dickens' darkest novel" (1965, 227). Miller, however, does not notice a tension within the world, created by a few fictional persons who actively oppose the social order and its semiotic justification. Fanny's temperament and passion put her on a collision course with Society: she is "an Angry Young Woman, in revolt against her life and circumstances" (Reid 1967, 39). But she decides rationally to fight the system from within. Her personal dislike of Mrs. Merdle and Mrs. General is the emotional consequence of an ideological opposition, of her rejection of the social representations these women embody and propagate. The principal opponent, Miss Wade, collides with Society not so much because she has an "unhappy temper" (734) but because she is sensitive to hypocrisy. She perceives that Society relieves its guilt when it calls "swollen patronage and selfishness ... kindness, protection, benevolence and other fine names" (734). In contrast to the norms of propriety, the "self-tormentor" holds unorthodox personal beliefs and pursues an alternative lifestyle. Finally, let us not forget Mistress Affery: her passionate outburst at the end of the story compensates for a life of passive submission: "I have broken out now, and I can't go back. I am determined to do it. I will do it, I will, I will, I will!" (835). Mistress Affery's courageous deed and Pancks's attack on his "proprietor" Casby demonstrate the potential for rebellion inherent in the oppressive world. 14 2.3. Accident-prone world. The constrictions imposed on personal acting by social organization are, paradoxically, compounded by the high frequency of accidents. Most critics dismiss this narrative practice without recognizing its semantic energy: the high occurrence

Multiperson Worlds of accidents contributes substantially to the weakening of intentionality in Dickens' world. 15 In an accident-prone world anything unexpected might happen, and anything expected might not occur, despite all personal efforts. In a penetrating imaging digression, the ironic observer of life, Miss Wade, perceives that randomness is a means of fatal necessity: In the course through life we shall meet the people who are coming to meet us, from many strange places and by many strange roads ... and what it is set to us to do to them, and what it is set to them to do to us, will all be done .... You may be sure that there are men and women already on their road, who have their business to do with you, and who will do it.... They may be coming hundreds, thousands, of miles over the sea there; they may be close at hand now; they may be coming, for anything you know, or anything you can do to prevent it, from the vilest sweepings of this very town. (63-64) Miss Wade singles out the model case of interactional accident-fortuitous encounter (see Frye 1968, 52). Its redundancy, best documented by Cavaletto's meeting of Rigaud in a seedy inn in Chalons-sur-Saone (bk.1, chap.II), is proof that it is needed not for emplotment but for the construction of an accident-prone world. It is through accidental encounters that most persons enter the agential constellation. The device is "laid bare" at the very beginning of the novel. The Marseilles prison cell brings together Rigaud/ Blandois and Cavaletto, who will become involved in the story when they unexpectedly turn up in England. At the same time, but in another part of the French port, persons randomly assembled for a temporary stay in quarantine, Arthur Clennam, the Meagles family, and Miss Wade, will become prominent members of the constellation. 16 The device works consistently and in gradual steps, until, to use Dickens' words from his introduction to the 1857 edition, "the pattern is finished." 17 It is then perfecly within the order of such a world that Clennam meets Cavaletto by happening to be at the street corner where the Italian is hit by a post carriage (bk.1, chap.13); that he first sees Rigaud when, in a busy London street, he catches sight of

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

Tattycoram and the Frenchman walking together (bk.2, chap.9); and that he is coming to his mother's house exactly at the moment when Rigaud is knocking (bk.2, chap.IO). Reversals of fortune, such as the Dorrits' impoverishment, then wealth, then poverty again, are yet an~ other product of the fictional world's randomness. The well-known network of mysteries in Little Dorrit is a by-product of the random order of its world. 18 The pivotal secret that is at the same time the prime mover of the story is the entanglement of the Clennam and the Dorrit families. It is closeted in the Clennams' "grim" family home, which, for Arthur, is the very symbol of mysteriousness (596). Under the dual restriction of rigid social organization and accidental randomness, the acting persons are deprived not only of intentionality but also of responsibility for their acting. Persons are not responsible for their life histories, because they are victims of supraindividual social forces and uncontrollable incursions of random events. In its general order Dickens' fictional world transcends by far the material of social history that went into its making and reaches out to modernism. 2.4. The story of tender hearts. We know that rebels exist in the fictional world of Little Dorrit (III.3-1). But is is the "tender hearts" who represent the strongest opposition to the order of this world. 19 Their opposition is motivated not by ideology or personal injury but by their innermost character, particularly their emotionality. Tender hearts are "good-natured' in the sense of having been given, having been born, with compassion and the ability for self-sacrifice. 20 As they observe and act in the '!rough'' world, these inborn traits crystallize. Amy Dorrit, the "child of the Marshalsea" and witness of its many sufferings, acquires "a pitiful and plaintive look," while her brother, witnessing the same conditions, becomes a pure egotist. 21 The sensitive Amy often escapes into solitude, dreaming of a different world, of home and simple happiness (216-17). The main dreamer of the novel is, however, Arthur. Locked in the social role of businessman, he imagines alternative courses of his life history "that might have been better directed and happier to speculate upon'' (80). Again, as in the case of Amy, he is a tender heart because of his "na86

Multiperson Worlds ture" and despite the circumstances of his upbringing: "Bred in meanness and hard dealing, this had rescued him to be man of honourable mind and open hand. Bred in coldness and severity, this had rescued him to have a warm and sympathetic heart" (206). Clennam's inborn gentleness makes him "the most disinterested doer of good" (although in his dealing with Little Dorrit he is originally motivated by "the vague idea of making amends for an old wrong") (House 1942, III). Amy, unlike her sister Fanny, does not rebel; she does not have to. She is "apart from the rough world," outside its hierarchy, impregnable to its social representations. Being exempt from the world, she is above it and thus, paradoxically, dominates it. Physically weak and socially powerless, she gives strength to others by a different power, the power of her compassion (see Miller 1965, 246). Little Dorrit is no "idiot," but she does not formulate her alternative to the reigning social representations; she simply ignores them. 22 Exposed to Mrs. General's teachings and her father's pressure to adopt the principles of propriety, Amy, feeling "a faint misgiving" (530), remains her own sel£ She does not need explicit principles of conduct, she spontaneously practices acts of kindness. Because the tender hearts are exempt from the general order of the fictional world, their life history is not formed by the restrictions of social hierarchy, institutional power, fixed social roles, and accidental randomness. On the contrary, the more adverse the external circumstances, the more beneficial they are for their emotional bonding. Prison is the most propitious setting. Amy falls in love with Clennam while living in the Marshalsea and working in his mother's houseprison. She is separated from him when she leaves the incarceration and departs into the open world. While a free man, Clennam falls in love with the beautiful but egocentric Minnie Meagles. Only when he is committed to the Marshalsea does he discover Little Dorrit's importance for his life: "Looking back upon his own poor story, she was its vanishing-point. Every thing in its perspective led to her innocent figure" (801). Naturally, Amy rushes to Clennam's rescue the moment she returns from her travels. But the asymmetry of their conditions

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

overrides the benefit of the prison. Now it is Clennam's turn for selfsacrifice, because a tender heart cannot carry another one down to disgrace (829). 23 Only when Amy loses her wealth and Clennam regains his honor can the story of tender hearts be brought to its inevitable happy end. Voiding the order of the ugly world, the story of the tender hearts is composed in an aesthetic pattern-symmetry. Clennam returns from foreign lands to discover Amy in the darkest corner of his mother's gloomy house. When Amy returns from her travels, she finds Arthur confined in what had been her father's Marshalsea cell. Throughout part 1, Clennam supports Amy by his sympathy and kindness; in part 2, Amy's love becomes Clennam's sole support. At the end of part 1, Amy is carried out of her prison room by Clennam; at the end of part 2, Clennam is taken from his prison cell by Amy. Following each other like parallel melodies, the life histories of tender hearts merge in the harmony of the final chord. Never mind that "the noisy and the eager, and the arrogant and the forward and the vain, fretted and chafed" continue making "their usual uproar" (895). The logic of the story of tender hearts ensures that the unchangeable cruel world will be no more than the background for the happiness of their "inseparable and blessed" union.

3. Milan Kundera: Erotics and Politics Erotics and politics are the most popular activities of our time. In one essential aspect they are direct opposites: politics is the most public, erotics the most private, activity. But this opposition is overshadowed by the many similarities and analogies displayed by the political and the erotic culture of the twentieth century. Milan Kundera's stories and novels are a series of variations on the theme of politics and erotics. 24 In a key passage from The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Kundera poses the questions of why the mature Beethoven "committed his most beautiful meditations" to the form of variations. At first sight, variations might appear as "the most superficial of forms ... a work suited for a lacemaker rather than a 88

Multiperson Worlds Beethoven." But when the son-writer deciphers the unfinished gesture of his dying father-musicologist, he begins to understand that the form of variations is a voyage "into the infinite internal variety which is hidden in every thing." Now Kundera is able to defend his "novel in the form of variations" and, by implication, his entire oeuvre: the particular narratives "follow each other like individual stretches of a journey that leads into the interior of a theme, a thought, a single situation whose comprehension is out of my sight" (175, 165). 25 3.1. The order of power. Kundera's fictional world, in which the variations of his story are generated, is characterized by three features: a. The cement of Kundera's fictional universe is power. Both the social activity of politics and the personal interaction of erotics are power games. In the asymmetry of the rulers (power holders) and the ruled (subordinates), grand historical, as well as trite private, tragedies, are played out. It seems, however, that power in Kunderian politics is exercised differently than in erotics: the basic power technique of politics is repression, that of erotics, coercion. Political repression paralyzes social activity and, ultimately, makes it irrelevant. But, paradoxically, coercion stimulates erotic activity; when managed by a powerful erotic master, Kundera's fictional world, like that of de Sade, becomes "erotic paradise." b. To acquire and preserve power, Kundera's agents mobilize all motivational factors of acting. Kundera's politician is impelled by the drive for absolute social control, his "erotician" by the drive for complete possession. Intense emotions-love, hatred, enthusiasm, jealousy, envy-are involved in both activities, giving the political struggles and erotic conquests the aura of fatal passions. And, finally, Kundera's power players are masters of practical reasoning: the politician gains, and holds onto, power by following "scientific" plans and methods of governing; the erotician expands his dominion by cunning strategies of seduction. The motivational cluster of politics and erotics monopolizes the mental life of Kundera's fictional persons. c. Kundera constructs both the political and the erotic activity as

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

a series of highly dramatic events-revolutions, military occupations, erotic triumphs and humiliations. These orgasmic events follow a sort of "volcanic" script: the brief, violent eruptions occur in a longlasting situation of banality. Since every orgasmic event erases all traces of the preceding one, politics and erotics are activities without continuity. They have no past, they also have no future or, better yet, their future is self-destruction. The teleology of politics proceeds toward a silly utopia where history will end. Erotics struggles against the inevitable process of aging, only to succumb to the ultimate disabler-death. Cut off from the past by forgetting and from the future by lack of purpose, Kunderian politics and erotics are no more than repetitive "stereotyped gestures" [stereotypni'. posunciny] with no evolution, no transcendent sense, no redemption. The social base of Kundera's fictional universe is the postwar history of Bohemia or, more precisely, of the Czechs inside and outside Bohemia. Yet to claim that Kundera's short stories and novels are reports on the public and private lives of the Czechs in the postwar era is to be guilty of the same mimetic naYvete as when claiming that Prague is a kafkaesque city. Kundera's universe is a set of possible worlds in which the creator experiments with his theme and explores its plasticity. The prime modulator of the therrie is the fluctuating intensity of social (political) control. In this sense, but only in this sense, Kundera's erotics is a product of politics. The variations themselves arise from the dynamic potential of the motivational cluster, from hierarchical rearrangements of its factors. Three "notebooks" of short stories, Laughable Loves (1965, 1967, 1968), and a novel, The Book ofLaughter and Forgetting (1978), together provide an anthology of the variations on the Kunderian theme. 26 3.2. Laughable Loves. The fictional worlds of the collection (with the exception of the last story, which I later treat separately) are shaped by a confrontation between politics and erotics. The confrontation is necessary because of the totalizing claims of politics: nothing is exempt from its governance, personal acting is fully subordinated to social activity. A person is just a patient in the workings

90

Multiperson Worlds of the collective machinery. Edward (in "Edward and God") classifies his vocation of teacher as "non-serious," not because of its character but because it was chosen for him: "It was chosen by social demand, political evaluations, the high school certificate, the entrance examination. The interlocking machinery of all these forces eventually dumped him (as a crane dumps a sack onto a truck) from high school into teachers' college" (IJ8; 206). In these conditions, the only "serious" personal pursuits are those that are "non-obligatory," first among them, erotics. To be sure, an erotic activist (Klima in "Nobody Will Laugh") finds himself under constant public scrutiny and "official" criticism-by doorkeepers, neighborhood committees, superiors. Nevertheless, within the world of rigid social control Kundera constructs a small space of privacy where hectic erotic activity is practiced. It seems paradoxical at first sight that in the world of absolute collectivization a renaissance oflibertinism occurs.27 In fact, the order of Kundera's fictional universe leads with perfect logic to the coexistence of political collectivism and erotic anarchism. First, erotics is pursued with maximal intensity and vigor because it is the only expression of the individual's freedom of action in the world of "iron" social laws. So much has been recognized by the philosophizing libertine Doctor Havel and repeated after him by Kundera's interpreters. I propose, however, that a more powerful, hidden logic creates this seemingly paradoxical confluence: despite their confrontation, totalitarian politics and libertine erotics have the same motivational and actional structure. Libertinage is erotics conducted by means of totalitarian politics; it is a drive for sexual conquest, but it follows chillingly rational scripts and methods. The powerless of the public sphere becomes the ruler in the private domain. Martin ("The Golden Apple of Eternal Desire") adopts for erotics not only the rules but even the terminology of totalitarian operations. Like a secret agent following an instruction book, he dutifully performs "registration," "contacting," "arresting," except that his targets are not political opponents but women. Doctor Havel's erotic activity is conducted quite differently, with sophisticated philosophical arguments and impeccable elegance, but, essentially, it is the same rational power game as Mar91

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

tin's. This preacher of individual freedom builds his erotic kingdom on dictatorial powers, arbitrarily selecting or rejecting prospective "subjects." No sophistry is spared to ensure success in seduction. Edward (in "Edward and God") seduces Alice by pretending religious fervor and then terminates the relationship by turning her own ideology against her. The chief physician's mistress convinces Doctor Havel to make love to her by an argument that could serve as a school example of demagoguery: "You are the only person with whom I can afford to be unfaithful to the chief physician. You really do like him and could never hurt him" (133; 159). Kundera's fictional world of massive victimization is an ideal place for the power holders. For political rulers, it is a realm over which they exercise unchecked, arbitrary governance; for the libertines, it is a hunting ground full of attractive deer and with no seasonal restrictions. In the world ruled by the conspiracy of oppressive politics and coercive erotics there is no place for private emotions. In this variant of Kundera's theme, private emotion is erased from the motivational cluster of political and erotic acting. Political passions substitute for private emotions to the point that even the victims perceive the emptiness of their supervisors' life ("Edward and God"). For libertine erotics, love is a hindrance. In the story "The Hitchhiking Game," the nameless girl accepts complete submission, gets rid of her deeply ingrained prudery, and thus becomes a perfect sexual object. The payoff of the game is the loss of unity of body and soul: the lovers crossed a boundary behind which is lovemaking with a most intense sexual pleasure but "without emotion and without love" (88; 25). Erotics without love becomes erotics of"loves," of repetitious copulations. Doctor Havel, the cynical and, therefore, sincere philosopher of erotics, discovers nothing but banality at the core of contemporary libertinism: "The era of Don Juans has come to an end. Today's descendant of Don Juan no longer conquers, but only collects. . . . Erotics which used to be the lime-twig of catastrophes became similar, thanks to him, to breakfasts and dinners, to philately and ping-pong, or even to a street-care ride and shopping" (120-21; 140-141). Erotics without emotion turned the most intense private 92

Multiperson Worlds experience into banal bodily exercises, just as totalitarian politics turned social life into empty public rituals. The atmosphere of this erotic paradise is polluted by futility, frustration, cynicism. Its highest ruler is death, literally and figuratively, death that randomly takes anybody. Kundera's masterstroke in Laughable Loves is that he not only constructs but also deconstructs his erotic paradise. In the last story of the collection, "Dr. Havel after Ten Years," erotics is fully liberated from politics and emerges from its modest niche into the grand world. But, paradoxically, this liberation creates a parodistic variation of the theme: the story of erotics without politics is just a rewriting of trite romance. We are in a cliche world of international spas, glamorous movie stars, aging playboys, diligent disciples, rejected maidens, tall women who look like horses. The place could be Karlovy Vary or Kislovodsk, Baden Baden or Vichy; the time could be the belle epoque or late capitalism or goulash socialism. Deprived of its basic semantic tension, it is an impotent fictional world incapable of generating a story. Just as the collector of women becomes "a collector of words," so the authenticity of experience is replaced by the arbitrariness of signs. When politics is deleted from the theme, Kundera's narrative becomes just a token of a perennially circulating schema. 3.3. The Book ofLaughter and Forgetting. In The Book ofLaughter and Forgetting, politics and erotics are structurally more balanced than in Laughable Loves. There, politics is a background for the praxis of erotics; here, politics is a domain of the fictional world structure, its story told in short, dry narratives of the orgasmic events in the modern history of Bohemia. The more balanced semantic structure of the novel is an auspicious space for the theme-and-variations method. The variations, generated by different political conditions, historical periods, and geographies, create a chain of sharp reversals and troubling juxtapositions . In the "political age" of the 1950s, erotics is fully controlled by politics; it becomes a slot in a paratactic chain of political actions: "[Mirek] tells her [Zdena], how he rebelled against his reactionary fa93

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

ther, she rails against intellectuals, they have calluses on their backsides and hold hands. They go to meetings, denounce their fellow citizens, lie and make love" (27; 21). All this hectic "revolutionary" activity is, however, no more than the enactment of a script written by the supremely ruling kitsch. Following this script is fatal for acting: both public and private acts become pretensions. Zdena sheds prescribed tears at the news that some Russian statesman has died. When she accuses Mirek of "copulating like an intellectual," he puts on a show of "unbridled passion": "He moved on her with feigned frenzy, making a long snarling noise like a dog makes when he struggles with his master's slippers" (19; 13). No wonder the feigned enthusiasm could not last. With the dawning of the "criti~ age'' of the 1960s, the Kunderian theme produces a new variation: the revolutionary script is replaced by its opposite, called "the stalking of the lost deed." The revolution is betrayed by its original makers, just as in the political age it had betrayed its devoted servants. Only Zdena, in a perverse and ineffectual revenge on the traitor Mirek, remains faithful during the age of criticism and beyond. She welcomes the Russian tanks that "have come to punish all the infidels" (22; 16). But the presence of a foreign power creates radically new conditions for public and private acting in Kunderas fictional world. Zdena, in staying faithful, becomes a traitor, Mirek's infidelity proves to be faithfulness. The fictional world of part 2 ("Mother") is a recurrence of the world without politics, which we already know from the last story of Laughable Loves. It is also a more complex variation of the game of libertinism: a woman joins a man to turn the game into "little orgies." The recasting only confirms the death of emotion in this kind of erotic activity; the libertines calculate coolly plans and tricks of seduction and turn lovemaking into anonymous sexual athletics: "It was a masquerade party. Karel had put a Nora mask on Eva and a little-boy mask on himself; Marketa took his head off his body. It was a headless male body'' (rn 48). Pushed out of the fictional world of part 2, politics returns with a vengeance in parts 4 and 6, devoted to Tamina, the central figure of 94

Multiperson Worlds the novel. In the fictional world of brutal oppression resting on foreign power (we glimpsed it already in part 1 of The Book), politics becomes a purely destructive, alien force. It can no longer serve as a catalyst of Kundera's theme. Necessarily, the variation that gels in the conditions of this world (the first segment ofTamina's story) is a narrative of absolute loss: loss of a brief political freedom, of the home country, oflove, and, finally, of the last traces of the happy past-private letters and diaries. Erotics returns in the second segment ofTamina's story, but in an entirely novel fictional world: a fairy-tale land of children, an island outside history and geography. It seems that, at last, paradise has been regained in the natural spontaneity of children's erotic games. Tamina, having forgotten the past, finds momentary freedom in the "simple joy" of spontaneous sexuality. But the existence of primordial paradise is fragile. The tape recorder and the "idiocy of guitars" invade the island, and the children begin imitating the lewd dance of the adults. At that moment, when "sensuality loses its meaning, innocence loses its meaning" (198; 188), Tamina flees into her final exile. In the concluding part of The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, Kundera composes the last variation, putting his theme to test in a fictional world located in the advanced civilization and political freedom of the West. This space has been a prohibited paradise for the Czech, but now, exiled, he finds a world similar to the spa of the last story of Laughable Loves. In a world with no tension between the public and the private domains; politics and erotics become banal activities. The alien listens with amusement to discussions about such "political" issues as "with or without brassiere?" He witnesses the insipid erotic activity of mass libertinism in the "real" orgies, staged and firmly managed by a gracious hostess. The seasoned libertine reacts to the regimented erotics with derisive laughter and is rightfully evicted.

95

I

CHAPTER IV

(T)

Interaction and Power

If a person exists in the solitude of the one-person world, either his or her acting is a response to events in the natural environment or it originates in his or her own mind. While the "story of the mind" is fascinating, the elemental dynamic (as I have called the exchange between the person and the nature force) has a restricted narrative potential. The vast majority of stories, even if they incorporate the elemental dynamic, are generated in multiperson worlds.

r. Interaction The conditions of acting in the multiperson world are radically different. Each person is integrated in a network of interpersonal relationships, so that "the Self exists only in dynamic relation with the Other" (Macmurray 1961, 17). The person preserves the ability to form subjective intentions, activate idiosyncratic motivations, aim at his or her own goals, and pursue acting in a characteristic mode. But in the interpersonal network, an individual's intentions and actions necessarily meet, clash with, the coagents' intentionality. Acting turns into interacting. Social groups impose additional restrictions on the person's intentionality, since they "appear to acquire goals and pur-

Interaction and Power poses of 'their own,' independent of those of the individuals comprising them" (Rapoport 1974, 133). As a result, the inhabitant of the multiperson world has to pursue acting in conditions that from his or her perspective are complex, indeterminate, and ultimately uncontrollable.1 However, the world that looks chaotic to the acting person is the most fertile narrative world. Content analysis has calculated that "on a single page of the text of a short story or novel there will typically appear from two to six personal interactions" (Lasswell, Lerner, and de Sola Pool 1952, 79). The semantics of narrative is, at its core, the semantics of interaction. It is difficult enough to understand theoretically the concept of action (chap. II above). The difficulty increases enormously as we proceed to the theory of interaction. To make matters worse, analytic philosophy, which was so helpful for understanding acting, offers little guidance in conceptualizing interaction. With a few exceptions (Porn 1977; von Wright 1983), it has given hardly any thought to it. Even when reflecting on freedom of acting, Davidson manages to push out of sight the social constraints imposed on agents (1980, 64). 2 In order to build a theory of interacting in fictional worlds, narrative semantics has to tap other sources of inspiration-social psychology, sociology, cultural semiotics, and so on. 1.1. Agential constellation. Not all persons coexisting in a multiperson world establish interactional contact. Those who do form the agential constellation; it ranges in size from two to dozens of persons. But it is the structural factors that are decisive in the forma,tion of the fictional agents' constellation. First, the group is arranged hierarchically: protagonists (principal agents), secondary characters, and background characters are distinguished by the different degrees of their participation in the story. The theoretical significance of this concept is not diminished by the fact that some narratives, both ancient and modern, comprise two or more agential constellations in various kinds of linking.3 Second, the group is arranged in compositional patterns, such as symmetry, parallelism, contrast, and so on (Ill.I: the double triangle of the protagonists of The Idiot; 111.2.4: the (a)symmetry of the Amy-Clennam relationship). 4 As the interaction pro~ 97

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

ceeds, the group is subject to modifications and transformations both in size and in structure. The agential constellation is not only a precondition of interacting but also its scope (space). 1.2. Interaction and communication. The elementary form of interacting is direct physical contact. If two persons, alternating in the roles of agent and patient, affect each other with the same transitive act (shaking hands, punching), the interaction is symmetrical. Asymmetrical interaction occurs if the persons perform different acts (slapping/turning the other cheek) or if one of them responds with an omission (extending hand/withholding hand). There is no direct contact in the mental domain; exchange of mental acts is mediated by signs in communication. Communication is an exchange of semiotic acts and, like physical interaction, is reciprocal and can be either symmetrical or asymmetrical. Indeed, communication can be used as a general model of interaction; significant insights into interaction have been gained by studying the conditions, functions, and varieties of communication. Thus, for example, Eco's table representing "all possible understandings and misunderstandings" in communication (1976, 18-19) stimulates a typology of "successful" and "failed" interactions. But for the purposes of fictional semantics, it is advisable to advance from analogy to integration, to view communication as part and parcel of interaction (Dold.el 1977; see also Rehbein 1977, 314-15; Genot 1984, 45; Levelt 1989, 29). The persons communicate in interacting; their speech acts are determined or, at least, influenced, by their actional engagement. The integration of communication into interaction has been most clearly recognized in sociolinguistic studies of conversation (see van Dijk 1985, vol. 3; Grimshaw 1990) and in Wierzbicka's "cross-cultural pragmatics" (1991, 453). Fictional semantics follows this path by recognizing that the fictional world is the space of a twin exchange-of physical actions and of semiotic acts. In other words, the stories in multiperson worlds are propelled as much by communication between fictional persons as by their physical interaction. 5 Communication is usually understood as a rational activity: the speakers respect the rules of conversation, such as tum-taking or

Interaction and Power

Gricean maxims, plan on the micro- and macrolevels, monitor their performance, correct errors, and so on (see Levelt 1989). But this is a highly idealized view of communication, to say the least. Just as persons do not always act rationally, so they do not always communicate rationally. Communication can be impulsive, irrational, akratic, or mixed, corresponding to the action modes the persons carry out in their interaction (III.1.4: insults, threats, curses in the Dostoevskian scandal). Communication makes use of all available semiotic systems (media). Language is, no doubt, its principal medium, and the dialogue (a face-to-face exchange of oral speech acts) its most rudimentary form (see Bachtin [1929] 1984, 251-66; Mukafovsky 1948, 1:129-53). But today we know that the significance of nonverbal communication cannot be underestimated. A minor gesture or posture is often the sign of a strong mental agitation (II.5.3). Similarly, silence and negative semiotic acts are communicative omissions (II-4-2) expressive of hidden mental events, especially emotions (Todorov 1971, 101; see also Portch 1985, 14-15; van den Heuvel 1985, 79-80). The most intimate connection, indeed, fusion, between action and communication is achieved in performative speech acts. In these acts "words do things," to paraphrase the title of Austin's classic book on the' subject (1962). We tackle performatives in more detail later, when investigating their role in fictional-world construction (VI.1). Here, let me point to their role within the fictional world, in the constructed interaction. Performatives are significant factors of the world's dynamic. When an appropriate source pronounces a performative, the state of the addressee is altered: he or she becomes appointed, promoted, dismissed, married, arrested, sentenced, declared insane, and so on. Needless to say, these changes affect in many ways and to different degrees the life histories of fictional persons (see Vll.2; Ep.3.2). 1.3. lnteractional accidents. Due to the diversity of the interacting persons' intentions, the potential for actional failures grows proportionately with the size of the agential constellation. More significantly, if the intentions of the interacting persons are contrary, one 99

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

agent's success is another's failure. We have already alluded to these phenomena when we spoke about the essential indeterminacy of interaction (IV.I.I). In these conditions, definition and recognition of accidents is difficult. We adopt the concept of accident from the oneperson world (ll.3.2), where it was defined as intentional acting leading to an unintended end state. In the multiperson world an accident happens when interaction leads to a state that none of the agents involved had anticipated as his or her intended state (III.2.3: Cavaletto meeting Rigaud in Chalons-sur Saone). We should bear in mind that the valuation of the accident accords with the general relativity of interactional effects: what is a lucky accident for one person may be unlucky for another. The characteristics of the multiperson world are responsible for a significant difference between actional and interactional accidents. Accidents in the one-person world affect only the acting person and no one else. Accidents in multiperson worlds happen to persons engaged in interacting (X injures his knee playing tennis with Y), but, quite often, they affect "outsiders," persons not participating in the accident-causing action (X driving a car hits pedestrian Y) or interaction (Z is injured in cross fire between X and Y). In this case, the accident creates a link between the outsider and the acting persons and usually expands the agential constellation. Not all persons involved in the accident need be aware that it happened. A popular device of fictional narratives exemplifies this category: X and Y are engaged in a conversation that is overheard by outsider Z; the accidentally acquired information is of fundamental import for Z's acting, but X and Y are unaware of their interference in Z's life history-one more proof of the weakening of intentionality brought into the world by accidents.

2.

Motivating Interaction

Interaction is motivated by all the mental factors that were specified in II. 5-drives, emotions, cognition. However, in the multiper-

IOO

Interaction and Power son world, motivational systems are enhanced by two additional components, absent in the one-person world: interpersonal relations and social representations. 2.1. Interpersonal relations. Cognitive relations-the knowledge and beliefs of each person about the other members of the agential constellation-play a major role in the agents' decision making, plans, and strategies. 6 Emotional relations, the diverse and changing reciprocal or nonreciprocal emotional links between persons, claim their place in the set of basic emotions (II.5-3): love/hatred, antipathy/empathy, spite/beneficence, envy/magnanimity, and so on. Their motivational force is potent to the point that "certain types of actions are characteristic of certain emotional relations" (Nissenbaum 1985, 126). Coupled often with drives, a few interpersonal passions, such as love, hatred, and envy, dominate interaction in many fictional worlds (III.I: The Idiot; IIl.3: Kundera's fictional world). 2.2. Social representations. The existence of groups and social organization gives rise to collective consciousness. Its cognitive form is socially based knowledge, variously labeled as collective representations (Durkheim), cultural codes (Barthes), semantic or semiotic environment (Rapoport), symbolic universes (Berger and Luckmann), ontological systems (Pavel). Here, we adopt from social psychology the term social representations (see Farr and Moscovici 1984) and gather under this rubric such cognitive systems as language, cultural archetypes, racial and ethnic beliefs, religious creeds, ideologies, and scientific knowledge. The supraindividual cognitive environment is "the most important determinant of the human condition" (Rapoport 1974, 51) and prime social mover of interaction (III.2.2: three systems of social representations in the fictional world of Little Dorrit). Its effect is strengthened by attendant collective emotions, such as national, political, or religious fervor, racial and ethnic hatred, and so on (III.3-1: political passions in Kundera's fictional world; see also Ep.3.2). Social representations and collective emotions are essential for group cohesion, splitting the world into "us" and "them" and, consequently, motivating interacting between groups (see Hamilton

IOI

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

· 1976, 83-84). They are transmitted from generation to generation in socialization and thus ensure the existence and distinctiveness of the group over time. Social psychologists have studied the historical fate of social representations? and emphasized the cognitive "pluralism" of advance societies (see Berger and Luckmann 1969, u5-17). That means that at least in principle a person has a selection of several versions of Weltanschauung. Empirical studies provide evidence of a dialectic of social representations and personal belief and uphold neither social determinism nor extreme individualism. For instance, Jodelet comes to the conclusion that mental imaging of the body stems from both private sources (a person's bodily experience and his or her relationship to the environment) and social representations (knowledge gathered from social interaction and communal approaches to the body). She proposes the terms "private body'' and "social body'' to designate these two kinds of imaging (1984, 217-18). Milgram, in his study of representations of the city, has come to the conclusion that personal ''mental maps" of a city are based on a "collective representation"; however, "through selection, emphasis and distortion the maps became projections of life styles, and express the emotional feelings of the participants" (1984, 301, 299). The formation of a person's "cognitive picture of the world ... takes place in a social context; and, in particular, the acquisition of language, without which developed thinking is inconceivable, depends on interpersonal contact and communication'' (Strawson 1992, 81). The dialectic of social consciousness and private mind provides a flexible model for understanding motivation in the multiperson world: the pressure of the group enforces social factors, but they have to be "internalized," appropriated by the individual mind, in order to motivate the person's acting (see von Wright 1983). Moreover, the pressure of social representations does not have an equal impact on all persons; the effect depends on the character of the appropriating mind (see Hirst and Woolley 1982, 24-28), typically descr~bed in such dichotomies as "acquiescent" versus "independent" ("resistant") (Ver-

102

Interaction and Power non 1969, 103), dogmatic (or manipulated) versus critical. 8 The individual's motivations are negotiated in a tension between the force of collective factors and the intensity of his or her striving for motivational self-assertion. 2.3. Power. Interpersonal relations and social representations correspond to the motivational systems of the one-person world. In contrast, power has no such correlate; it is a motivational factor emerging only in the multiperson world. 9 Even if we do not derive all personal and social inequalities from power, we cannot fail to notice its profound impact on the structuring of multiperson worlds and on the conditions of interacting.

Power is a means whereby one person-the power holder-controls the intentions and acting of another-the subordinate. The introduction of power brings about a rearrangement of the agential constellation, transforming it into an asymmetrical hierarchy. Depending on the source, three kinds of power can be distinguished. Physical power, the elemental means of domination, derives from bodily prowess and from weapons and imposes control by physical acts. Mental power, originating in superior mental capacities (knowledge, skills, expertise, etc.) is applied through semiotic acts of information and persuasion. Social power is generated in organized groups, especially in institutional forms of organization; it is associated with commanding positions in the political, military, or corporate hierarchy, with class privilege, wealth, and so on (VI.4). The power relationship is a general motivational factor applicable to person-person, person-group, and group-group interaction. The exercise of power is the praxis of the power holder in imposing and sustaining his or her domination over the subordinate person. Porn discerned two principal modes of power imposition, influencing and norm giving (1970, 68). The norm-giving power transforms the narrative world into a modal world and is dealt with in chapter V. In influencing, the power is exercised in and through acting and communicating. If it emanates from a social group or institution, its impact on persons is similar to that of social representa-

103

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

tions, and so are their potential reactions. The pressure of social power is universal, but different persons accept or reject the pressure in different ways. Power is exercised either by repression-the subordinate person is prevented from performing intended actions-or by coercion-he or she is forced to perform actions that are against his or her intentions (see von Wright 1963b, 54; Porn 1977, 72-73). Coercion brings about involuntary acting, repression involuntary nonacting. If repression leads to the annihilation of the subordinate's actional capacity, we call it disabling, following von Wright (1963b, 55). The opposite pressure, coercion, might result in the formation or acquisition of a capacity for acting (111.3: repressive and coercive power in Kundera's fictional world). 2.4. Erotics. In the general survey of motivation, we took notice of composite movers of acting, motivational clusters (Il.5.4). In the multiperson world, the most representative motivational complex is the erotic cluster. All the motivational factors of the multiperson world-drives, emotional and cognitive relationships, social representations, power-are involved in erotic acting (for a similar view, see Izard 1977, 175). The factor of sexual drive gives erotic activity the character of a need, similar to hunger and thirst (see Bolles 1975, 175). The emotional constituent-love-unites eros with the grand passions of the mind. The power factor in its "assertion of mastery'' over the partner (Millett 1970, 249) links erotics to the activities of domination, especially politics. The cognitive constituent of the cluster introduces into erotic acting practical reasoning, plans, designs, and strategies, often articulated in social scripts of courtship, bonding, and so forth.IO Social representations restrict or stimulate erotic activity by rejecting or justifying it and by offering culturally based ideologies or philosophies of love. 11 Because of all these motivational factors and links, erotics is the crux of interaction. This feature could be sufficient to explain the popularity of erotic stories in narrative fiction, but an additional circumstance should not pass unnoticed: hierarchic shifts within the cluster make erotic acting highly diversified and changeable. Love (in the sense of eros rather

Interaction and Power

than agape) "becomes so universal a theme because of the remarkable variety of its worlds" (Bayley 1960, 5) (111.3: the variations of Kundera's theme). The shifts can be so radical as to make one of the cluster's factors the sole mover. If erotic activity is motivated exclusively by the drive factor, it becomes sexual praxis. A special narrative genre, sexual fiction, is devoted to constructing this more or less stereotyped activity. 12 In contrast, the predominance of emotion (passion) in the cluster leads to radical reversals in acting, for example, from impulsive outbursts to despairing passivity (see Ep.3.1). When power takes over erotic activity, the tensions that characterize the relationship between the power holder and the subordinate come to the fore; 13 in some fictional worlds, these tensions provide a strong stimulus for erotic activity (111.3), while in others they cause serious disruptions. Under the dominance of the cognitive factor, erotics is pursued with cool calculation: choosing the optimal partner by a rationally determined preference, plotting strategies of seduction (Ill.3: Kundera's Don Juans), and so on. Fictional narratives often foreground the factor of social representations, the implicit or explicit ideologies of eros. This ideology profoundly influences the overall structure of the fictional world of love stories, creating the world of romantic love versus the world of perversion, the world of happiness and joy versus the world of destructive "fatal attraction," the world of sacrifice versus the world of egoism, and so on. Just as erotic activity is the representative form of interaction, so the fictional worlds of erotic stories are the foci of the tensions characteristic of the multiperson world. 3. Modes oflnteraction

In the multiperson world the agents pursue their acting in the same modes as they do in a one-person world, as rational, impulsive, akratic, and irrational (II.6). If the interacting agents adopt one and the same mode of acting, a homogeneous interactional mode ensues. Thus, for example, chess players, models of rational acting, complement each other in the control of the game by adhering to the principles of practical reasoning; impulsive agents are locked in a feed105

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

back circuit of emotional escalation, gradually losing control over their interaction (IIl.1.3: the mobile of the Dostoevskian scandal). If the agents represent different actional modes, their interaction will be of a mixed mode. A general typology of the mixed modes can easily be set up in various permutations-a rational and an impulsive agent, a rational and an irrational agent, and so on-but the specific character of the ensuing mode depends on many subjective and intersubjective variables. There is a rich source of narrative dynamic here, fully exploited in fiction. Power is, perhaps, the strongest motivational factor in the multiperson world. Let us observe the interaction modes generated by its impact by focusing on the simplest, two-agent constellation (person X and person Y). 3-1. When neither X nor Y tries to bring the other under his or her power, the persons act as independent agents; both are free to pursue their respective intentions. Positive emotional ties, particularly love, friendship, comradeship, and partnership, lead free agents to form a shared intention and pursue a common goal. The interaction is conducted in the mode of cooperation: pulling a bow saw, singing a duet, writing a book together. The cooperating agents "are so linked that any participant can attain his goal if, and only if, the others with whom he is linked can attain their goals" (Deutsch 1973, 20). Cooperation plays a significant role in communication (Grice 1975) and is required in complex activities, where it encourages division oflabor and role specialization. It is the cradle of social acting (see Rehbein 1977, 102-26; Ewin 1981, 5-18). 3.2. Person Y is under the power of person X; the subordinate agent has to follow the power holder's intentions. In this asymmetrical constellation the mode of peremptory interaction is generated. Whatever the specific arrangements, the subordinate agent is in the service of the power holder. In rigid power structures, such as the military, the subordinates are depersonalized (V.3.2); soldiers executing a person on the orders of a commander are his instruments. In less rigid power structure, the subordinate agent preserves the status of person, despite the restrictions imposed on his or her intentional106

Interaction and Power ity. The "bitterness of dependence" 14 may develop into hostility toward the power holder, creating emotional tension in the constellation. The power holder is threatened by the subordinate agent's potential rebellion, and even when seemingly in full control, he or she is not safe from revolutionary reversals of the hierarchy (III.2.2: the rebellion of Mistress Affery). 3.3. Person X tries to bring person Y under his or her power by interfering with X's intentions: a constellation of influencer-influencee obtains. If the influencee accepts the imposition of power, he or she becomes a subordinate agent; the constellation and the mode of action then follow the pattern outlined in IV.3.2. If, however, the influencee reacts by protecting the status of independence and the influencing agent persists in his or her attempts at domination, conflict is inevitable. 15 Influencing is the necessary precondition of conflict, yet emotional relations (disgust, repulsion, hatred) can be strongly involved in its rise and sustenance. Conflict is the most common mode of interacting, a fact recognized in the very first sentence of a classic book on the subject: "Conflict is an activity that is found almost everywhere" (Boulding 1962, 1). Boulding proceeds to enumerate the fields of enquiry that have to deal with this mode of interaction: biology, economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, psychology, history, and even geography. He did not mention narratology, but we cannot fail to notice that conflict is the most popular source of narrative dynamic. Narrative semantics studies the structures and varieties of conflict for its own purposes; but since it has under its purview an immense number of fictional conflicts, it has a good change to enrich the general theory. The frequency of conflict-between persons, groups, states-has led some psychologists to derive it from the aggression drive and thus make it fatally inevitable (Vernon 1969, 59, 73). More realistically, Deutsch recognized the positive functions of conflict in the formation and change of interpersonal relations and social structures (1973, 8-10; 1991, 27). The two faces of conflict have been reasserted, at least in the sphere of personal relationships: "Conflict can be constructive, 107

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

helping to resolve differences and bring partners closer together, or conflict can be destructive, ending in emotional abuse and/or physical violence" (Loyd and Emery 1994, 29). "Conflict encounters seem capable of lowering people to their most base instincts, and, yet, out of conflict we often derive our most productive achievements" (Spitzberg, Canary, and Cupach 1994, 183). Various taxonomies of conflict have been suggested. Deutsch's is a sociopsychological typology derived from the divergence between an "objective state of affairs" and the perceptions of conflicting parties (1973, u-15). Rapoport has suggested other possible classification criteria: the nature of the participants (individuals, small groups, large groups), the issues (rights or privileges, control over resources, political power), the means employed (from persuasive argument to physical annihilation). He himself develops a three-dimensional systemsbased typology: (r) endogenous/exogenous conflicts: presence or absence of a higher system that might control or resolve the conflict of the subsystems; (2) symmetric/asymmetric conflicts: in the first case, "roughly similar," in the second case, "disparate" systems are involved; and (3) issue-oriented/structure-oriented conflicts: evolving around a particular issue or around the existence of an entire system (1974, 174-76). All these concepts should ultimately find their place in narrative semantics. However, another taxonomy proposed by Rapoport (1960; 1974, 180-82) and elaborated by Ogley (r99r)-the differentiation of fights, games, and debates-seems to me especially pertinent, since it is based on a criterion central to action theory. According to Rapoport, "the fight is dominated by affective components of conflict, the game, by rational ones, and the debate, by ideological ones" (1974, 182). Translated into our terminology, the three kinds of conflict are due to diverse motivational factors. In fights, the emotional motivation dominates, and the antagonists feel mutual animosity or hatred. Games and debates (verbal conflicts) are dominated by cognitive motivation and are often governed by specific rules; their participants act as rational opponents. The purpose of the game is to win, the purpose of the debate is to convince the opponent. ro8

Interaction and Power Two additional kinds of conflict have to be incorporated into our semantics because of their significant role in narrative worlds. Feud, the dramatic mobile of many myths and epics (see Lord 1960, 190), is a prolonged, "culturally transmitted" antagonism between families, social and religious groups, or nationalities (Rapoport 1974, 1980). Inner conflict is located in the mental domain of the acting person; it arises from contradictory intentions, desires, goals, strategies, and so forth. It manifests itself in the form of interior dialogue, a basic verbal expression of mental tension (see Cohn 1978, 90-92). Conflict is a sequence of actions with three distinct stages: a. Outbreak consists mainly of specific speech acts: demand, promise, order, threat, and ultimatum (on the side of the influencer), rejection, defiance, and counterthreat (on the part of the influencee). In traditional narratives, the speech acts of the outbreak are ritualized and often reinforced by boasting-a display of the opponent's prowess. b. At the peak stage, conflict is pursued in three different ways. Verbal conflict is an escalation of the outbreak stage, adding insult and invective to the repertoire of the hostile speech acts. 16 Combat is an exchange of transitive physical actions aimed at causing bodily harm to the antagonist, usually by the use of special instrumentsweapons_l7 A model case of combat is the duel, a rule-governed and supervised exchange of harm-causing acts. Contest, the third variety of conflict, proceeds along parallel but interlocked strains of intransitive actions. The actions ofX do not directly affect Y (and the reverse is also true), but the agents perform alternately a sequence of competitive actions and reactions with the aim of winning the contest. Athletic competitions (Rapoport 1974, 179) provide the model case of the contest structure. c. The last stage of conflict, its resolution, offers two possibilities: In accommodation, which results from power balance or negotiations, the influencer gives up his or her attempts, and the preconflict constellation of two independent agents is reestablished. In victory/ defeat, one of the opponents succeeds in overpowering the antagonist and imposing his or her will. The victor might prove his or

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

her domination by punishing the conquered, up to and including his or her annihilation. Despite its often chaotic course, conflict is a structured interaction arising in a set agential constellation, under specific motivational pressures and following distinct stages. It is this feature that invites its representation by logical models, especially those of the theory of games (see Rapoport 1960; 1970; 1974, 131-50; 1995; Billing 1992). On the other hand, conflict is an extremely diversified interaction, depending as it does on the personalities of the antagonists, their particular goals and relationships, and varying exterior circumstances. 18

It is the plasticity of the conflict that makes it a perennial feature of fictional stories.

4. Social Acting We stated at the outset of this chapter that in the multiperson world, individuals are integrated not only into interpersonal relationships but also into social groups. The multiperson world is thus transformed into a social world. Social scientists generally distinguish small groups-family, kin, neighborhood, pub fellowship-and large groups-professions, enterprises, tribes, nations. 19 It is commonly assumed that the conditions of acting in small groups are different from those in large groups. According to Olson, in small groups the "common good" can be pursued by voluntary contributions, whereas in large groups some coercion or compulsion is necessary. Small groups act by "informal coordination," whereas the acting of large groups requires "formal organization'' (1971, 15-16, 33-34, 46). The dichotomy of "informal coordination" and "formal organization'' is of great theoretical import but need not be tied to group size. We should bear in mind that small groups, such as the family or clan, can be rigidly organized in some cultures. On the other hand, large groups can be unorganized and act in an "uncontrolled manner"-as mobs or crowds (see Vernon 1969, 94). In our semantics, the dichotomy informal coordination/formal organization serves as a mo-

110

Interaction and Power tivational factor of social acting. Informal coordination prevails in communities, groups whose collective acting is "a function of individual actions" (Porn 1970, 79);20 its structure and modes correspond to those defined for interaction between persons (IY.1-3). In contrast, formal organization motivates social acting in institutions, which impose a number of supraindividual constraints: explicitly formulated regulations, well-defined power hierarchy, charted division of labor, specific role distribution, and, last but not least, reinforcing social representations (legitimizing ideologies, identifying emblems, and so on). 21 It is quite common to assign to institutions their own intentionality and label them "legal persons." Greimas suggested treating institutions as "collective actants" or "moral persons" ([1974] 1990 , 151). Under the impact of institutional constraints the intentionality of the individual participants of social acting is seriously impaired. However, we should resist the popular tendency of social science to eliminate the person from social acting. For this reason, the "actorsystem" model of Crozier and Friedberg attracts our attention.22 These students of corporate structure do not deny that institutions impose constraints by yielding power: "Organization as a human con~truct deals basically with power. It is organizing, regularizing, tammg power that makes it possible for men to cooperate" (1980, 9). At the same time, however, they emphasize that "human behavior is always the expression and consequence of freedom, no matter how minimal that freedom may be. It reflects choices made by the actor in order to take advantage of available opportunities within the framewo~k of co~straints imposed upon him'' (1980, 19).23 The concept of social r_ole 1~ reev~uated by discerning "the possibilities for experi~ent~tlo~, mv~~non, and discovery available to individuals occupymg gr~ren roles (60). Crozier and Friedberg assert the importance of soC1al representations in the formation and preservation of institutions. A church is based on shared religious beliefs and thus differentiated from other churches; a state's power is reinforced by the ideology of patriotism condensed in unifying and mobilizing emblems. The sociologists have recognized that the "cultural element" is "of the III

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

first importance" in all social institutions; for example, there exist different "styles" of bureaucracy-French, American, Japanese. 24 However, true to their antideterministic spirit, Crozier and Friedberg emphasize that cultural values, norms, and attitudes "structure individual and group capacities in a way which conditions but never determine their strategies" (1980, 103-4). The dialectic of social representations and individual minds, postulated in IV.2.2, is thus transferred into the domain of social acting. While accepting the actor-system polarity as the principle of organized social acting, we cannot hide that its balance is precarious. In institutions with a rigid power structure (the military, the totalitarian state, institutions of confinement), social control is so strong that the person effectively loses his or her intentional and actional autonomy (III.2.1: the prison in Little Dorrit; III.3: totalitarian state in Kundera's fictional world). From the person's perspective, the social institution appears as an impersonal force and its functioning as intentionless social process. 25 The course of the process seems to be beyond any person's control, and its end state is no one's intended state. Social process is a paradoxical phenomenon. Although all the participating individuals are intention-endowed persons, their group enterprise is devoid of intentionality. The highest form of social organization produces uncontrollable events. The social process is thus analogous to the nature process and joins the mental process (I.8) in a triad of spontaneous, intentionless, random event-generation. In all these processes, the individual is manipulated by suprapersonal forces that he or she is unable to stand up to, because they cannot be identified. In exploring the fate of the individual subject to anonymous, intentionless social processes, fiction has constructed a new mythology, which ranks among the most powerful achievements of modern literature (see chap. VIII).

112

I

CHAPTER V

(TE)

Narrative Modalities

The categories of person, nature force, state, event, action, interaction, mental life, and so on, introduced in chapters I-IV, are the elementary building blocks of narrative worlds. But world, let us repeat, is a macrostructure, and its "order" is determined by global restrictions. Fictional worlds of narrative are organized by two kinds of macro-operations. The first, selection, determines which constituent categories will be admitted into the world under construction. The world's categorJal type is thus fixed: one-person or multiperson world, a world of physical or mental events, a world of intentional acting or intentionless processes, a world with nature or without nature, and so on. These types are ideal structures; they combine in many and different ways to create the categorial order of particular fictional narrative worlds (as observed in chapters I and III). The second, formative operation, shapes narrative worlds into orders that have the potential to produce (generate) stories. Modalities are the main formative factors of this kind. They play this role because they have a direct impact on acting; they are rudimentary and inescapable constraints, which each person acting in the world faces. I I£ for example, in a certain world a norm prohibits a certain kind of action, then the acting of all inhabitants of that world is affected. In action 113

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

theory, the crucial role of modalities was posited by von Wright (1968); in narratology, their global formative power was recognized implicitly by Vladimir Propp and explicitly by A. J. Greimas. 2

r. Modal Systems The modern phase of the logicosemantic analysis of modalities began with two moves: (1) From the classical (Aristotelian) alethic modality a new, deontic (normative) system was separated: ''A man can break ('sin against') a normative order, but he cannot break ('sin against') the laws of nature"; therefore, "from a formal point of view it is much more convenient to regard the two kinds of modalities, the deontic and the logical, as independent of one another" (von Wright 1968, 65, 61). (2) It was recognized that the operators of deontic and alethic modalities have the same formal structure and that this structure corresponds to the triplet oflogical quantifiers (von Wright 1968; see Follesdal and Hilpinen 1971, 8; Hintikka 1971, 62; Kalinowski 1972, 80; Aquist 1987, 8-11). Other logicians have shown that axiological operators (Rescher 1969; lvin 1970) and epistemic operators (Hintikka 1962; Hintikka and Hintikka 1989, 17-35) can be similarly arranged in triplets. Table 2-an expansion of von Wright's table (1968, 14)-represents, in an analogy with quantifiers, the set of modal systems appropriated for our fictional semantics. 3 Agents of the actual world have to deal with a tangled bundle of modal restrictions. But in the formation of fictional worlds modal systems can be manipulated in many different ways. The elementary but most productive manipulation puts one of the modal systems TABLE 2

Operators Quantifiers

Alethic

Deontic

E some -E none -E-all

M possible -M impossible - M- necessary

P permitted - P prohibited - P- obligatory

114

Axiological

Epistemic

G good -G bad -G-indifferent

K known -K unknown Ko believed

Narrative Modalities into a dominant position, blocking the impact of all the others. Modally homogeneous fictional worlds are thus created. In these worlds, the basic ("atomic") stories, the core of narrativity, are produced. Let us present this narrative potency by surveying the world structuring affected by modalities.

2.

Alethic Constraints

The alethic modalities of possibility, impossibility, and necessity determine the fundamental conditions of fictional worlds, especially causality, time-space parameters, and the action capacity of persons. 2.1. Natural and supernatural worlds. If the modalities of the actual world determine what is possible, impossible, and necessary in the fictional world, then a natural fictional world is formed. Natural fictional worlds are a special case of the vast collection of "physically possible" worlds (Bradley and Swartz 1979, 6; see also Rescher 1975, 144-49; and Pr.2.2 above), worlds where nothing exists and nothing happens that would violate the laws of the actual world. Using a different term, Kirkham defines the same set of worlds: "Of particular interest is the subset of naturally possible worlds, which is the subset of worlds having all and only the same laws of nature as the actual world" (1992, 15). The alethic conditions of the natural world determine the character of all the world's entities, particularly of its persons. Fictional persons of the natural world are possible counterparts of humans, their properties and action capacities are fictional projections of actual persons' attributes. 4 An action like walking is possible for such a fictional person, while becoming invisible is not. Fictional worlds that violate the laws of the actual world are physically impossible, supernatural worlds. Their main formative principle is a redistribution of the M-operator: what is impossible in the natural world becomes possible in its supernatural counterpart. I hasten to forestall a serious misunderstanding, one that arises when physical and logical (im)possibility are confused. Possible-worlds logicians give a lucid explanation of the difference: "By a 'possible

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

world' ... we do not mean only a physical/,y possible world. Countless worlds which are physically impossible are numbered among the possible worlds .... Physically possible worlds form a proper subset of all possible worlds; or, to make the contrast somewhat sharper, we might say that the set of physically possible worlds forms a proper subset of all logical/,y possible worlds" (Bradley and Swartz 1979, 6, and figure 1.c; see also Rescher 1975, 155-61; Nolt 1984, 55). In other words, physically impossible worlds are logically possible. Only worlds containing or implying contradictions are logically impossible or impossible simpliciter (Pr.2.2., VI.4.2). By using a modal criterion to distinguish natural and supernatural worlds, we avoid ontological commitment and subjective beliefs and skirt changes in scientific knowledge and interpretation of laws of nature. The redistribution of the M-operator determines the structure of the supernatural worlds in several important aspects: a. Physically impossible beings-gods, spirits, monsters, and so on-inhabit the supernatural world. They are endowed with properties and action capacities that are denied to persons of the natural world. Supernatural beings often embody the nature force, so that intentionless causation of events in the natural world becomes intentional acting in its supernatural counterpart. b. Selected natural-world persons are granted properties and action capacities that are not available to ordinary persons of that world: becoming invisible, flying on a carpet, and so on. This procedure creates hybrid persons, heroes of myth, fairy tales, and legends, who are capable of performing supernatural acts while remaining natural in their basic properties (especially mortality). c. Inanimate objects are personified, that is, give,n mental life and intentionality: a statue becomes an agent-the legend of Don Juan, Aleksandr Puskin's narratives, Prosper Merimee's short story, "La Venus d'Ille" Qakobson 1987; Todorov 1970, 84-85, 92-93), a mirror talks in a fairy-tale world, and so on. Animals, as an intermediate category of fictional semantics (II.2), are especially pliable in this respect. In the fictional world of animal stories (the fable being the

116

Narrative Modalities most obvious example), they are easily transformed into full-fledged persons with characteristic human properties and action capacities, including speech. The natural world generates stories of the human condition. These stories are many and varied, but from the very beginning of storytelling they tend to be tragic.5 Their most common pattern is degradation-from culture to savagery Goseph Conrad's ''An Outpost of Progress"), from civilization to its destruction Qevgenij Zamjatin's ''A Story About the Most Important Thing"), from life to death Q. W Goethe's The Sufferings ofYoung Werther, Herman Broch's The Death of Virgil), from riches to poverty (the second part of Little Dorrit; see III.3 above), from privilege to humiliation (William Shakespeare's King Lear), from love to betrayal (Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary), from family to solitude (Elsa Morante's Aracoeli). Moreover, because of the well-known "law'' of interacting, the amelioration of one person usually brings about another person's degradation (see Bremond 1973, 64; here IY.1 above). The precariousness or wretchedness of the human condition becomes especially striking in contrast with the Edenic condition of the divinities. In ancient myths, gods "live an easy life apart from us, and they live forever; they are in continual conflict but experience no real sorrow or permanent disasters" (Redfield 1975, 31). Yet, paradoxically, the personalities of the mythological gods, their mental life, motivations, actions, and interactions, are exactly like humans' (see Barnes 1974, 121). The anthropomorphism of divine beings is a telling vestige of the supernatural world's origin: it is a world transcending the human world but constructed by the human imagination. The alethic contrast between the natural and the supernatural is bridged by intermediate worlds. Dreams, hallucination, madness, drug-induced altered states are physically possible, natural human experiences; at the same time, physically impossible persons, objects, and events appear in these frames. Fictional stories have exploited the remarkable potential of intermediate worlds in many forms and functions. Let me just mention the proleptic and "disauthenticating" use

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

of dreams (Traill 1996, 16-17) and the ambiguating function of madness (Dostoevsky's The Double). 2.2. Alethic endowment. Worlds are constructed as natural or supernatural by codexal alethic modalities, restrictions imposed on the world as a whole. But modalities are also subjective, person specific; they differ in scope from one person to another. 6 A subjective M-operator determines which actions it is possible for a person to perform. The operator regulates not the opportunities for doing but a person's "knowing-how-to-do competence" (Greimas [1979] 1989, n). If for a certain person seeing or swimming is possible, then this person has the capacity to see or to swim, whether there is or is not an occasion to put this capacity to use. Supernatural persons (except for the omnipotent deities) also have their circumscribed alethic endowment, determined by their position in the pantheon, their realm of governance, and so on. For fictional semantics the alethic potential of natural (human) persons is of prime interest, and my discussion is restricted to this case. The semantics of person and action presented in chapters II and IV implies that the subjective M-operator regulates three kinds of capacity: physical-the bodily dispositions for performing actions; instrumental-the potency for producing and using instruments; and mental-the sensory range and the scope of mental operations. The sum of a person's physical, instrumental, and mental capacities constitutes his or her alethic endowment. This concept is a generalization of Danto's "schedule or repertoire" of actional powers (1973, 120). Following the philosopher, we say that a fictional person's alethic endowment is normal when it corresponds to the human standard and hyponormal if the person suffers some deprivation (having no sense of smell or being blind, for example). Alethic deprivation, Danto notes, has serious consequences for the person's existence, since it "affects the entire vocabulary ofexperience" (1973, 130). Fictional semantics complements Danto by introducing the opposite kind of "deviation," alethic enhancement: a person's endowment, while not transcending the alethic conditions of the natural world, is above the standard, is hypernormal. Modal deprivation and enhancement set n8

Narrative Modalities the limits of subjective capacity: from total disabling to amazing physical prowess, from primitive instruments to utopian technology, from idiocy and insensibility to creativity and "paranormal" powers. The person's alethic endowment is not fixed once and for all. It is affected by two kinds of change, the development of new capacities and the loss of existing ones. Capacities are acquired primarily through learning (teaching) and lost due to forgetting or disabling. The overall alethic structure of the fictional world is determined jointly by codexal and subjective M-operators, the former shaping the entire world, the latter circumscribing the domains of individual persons. The tension between fixed macroconditions and unruly subjective potentialities is the source of a large family of alethic stories. Let me present its most dramatic examplar, the story of the alethic alien. 2.3. The seeing among the blind. The alethic alien is a fictional person whose alethic endowment in some fundamental way deviates from the standard of the world. In H. G. Wells's narrative "The Country of the Blind" (1904) the alethic standard is such that all the world's inhabitants are sightless. Otherwise, "they were strong and able" (105), and the powers of their other senses were enhanced. The sovereignty of this world is ensured by its complete geographical and historical isolation. A natural catastrophe has separated the valley from the outside world and made it all but inaccessible. Historical isolation was accomplished when the age of the seeing turned into legend. Wells anticipates Danto in projecting the specific alethic deprivation into a general existential condition: linguistic impoverishment ("the names for all the things of sight had faded and changed"), psychological displacement ("they had made for themselves new imaginations with their ever more sensitive ears and finger-tips"), and mythological peculiarity ("the world ... had been first an empty hollow in the rocks, and then had come, first, inanimate things without the gift of touch, and llamas and a few other creatures that had little sense, and then men, and at last angels") (n3). When Nunez, a person endowed with sight, by accident tumbles into the valley, he finds himself in the role of the alethic alien. The world's inhabitants, judgn9

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

ing him by their alethic standard, consider him hyponormal: his senses are "imperfect" and he utters "unmeaning words" (111). But Nunez feels superior to the handicapped populace and tries to enact the stereotypical script of the normal world: "In the country of the blind the one-eyed man is king." the easy defeat of his coup d'etat proves the inferiority of his alethic endowment, and he has to accept the position of "servitude." He will not become a rightful citizen of the world unless he undergoes an operation depriving him of sight. Nunez, although strongly attracted to a woman of the tribe, rejects this ultimate adaptation. He realizes that only a world seen is beautiful, vast, and free. The narrative breaks off when Nunez, escaping from the valley, is suspended between the world of the blind and that of the seeing. Wells's story confirms the crucial role of alethic modalities in world construction: they create the foundations, both global and personal, on which fictional worlds are erected and their stories enacted. The intertwining of codexal and subjective possibilities, impossibilities, and necessities means that the existence and acting of fictional persons is doubly restricted: by the world's global alethic makeup and by their individual alethic endowment.7 Perhaps the tragic nature of the human condition has its roots in the fact that despite all scientific and technological progress it is beyond a person's capacity to escape from the alethic restrictions of the natural world.

3. Deontic Constraints The modalities of the deontic system (the P-operators) affect the design of fictional worlds primarily as proscriptive or prescriptive norms; the norms determine which actions are prohibited, obligatory, or permitted (see von Wright 19636). The P-operators differjust as the other modalities do-in their scope (domain of validity): codexal norms are valid for an entire world, subjective norms spell out prohibitions or duties for individual persons. Deontic norms are binding either as tacitly accepted conventions (such are customs of a culture) or as explicitly promulgated rules, regulations, and laws. 8 120

Narrative Modalities

The promulgation of norms is a privilege of certain persons or social institutions that have the power of enforcement. 3.1. Store of stories. Once P-norms are introduced into a world, all actions performed in it are subject to deontic assessment. Under different deontic conditions, one and the same action can have a completely different status and consequences. Suppose a person travels to Siberia. By itself, the action is deontically neutral. But when its P-conditions are specified, the action acquires a deontic marker: it might be a pleasure trip, if permitted (a tourist's travel), a transgression, if prohibited (a prisoner fleeing from a camp), or a duty, if obligatory (a businessman going to sign a trade deal). The deontic marking of actions is the richest source of narrativity; it generates the famous triad of the fall (violation of a norm-punishment), the test (obligation fulfilled-reward), and the predicament (conflict of obligations), stories retold again and again, from myths and fairy tales to contemporary fiction. "Violation" and "test" figure prominently in Propp's narrative grammar (1928). Predicament has been defined by von Wright as a condition where the acting person finds it impossible to satisfy contradictory but equally valid norms. His example of predicament is the biblical story of Jephthah. 9 The popularity of these deontic stories justifies the suspicion that in fictional worlds, prohibitions are often imposed only to be violated, and obligations only for the purpose of not being kept. The deontic structure of a fictional world changes when new norms are imposed and existing norms modified or lifted. When a prohibition or obligation is lifted, the actions under its scope become permitted. Since this change expands the domain of the permitted and thereby the freedom of the persons acting in the world, it underlies the story of deontic acquisition. Narratives of social, national, racial, and personal liberation exemplify prominently this structure. In contrast, the imposition of new prohibitions or obligations narrows the scope of the permissible and thus generates the story of deontic loss. Narratives of enslavement, oppression, and confinement implement this pattern. The presence of a deontic codex in the fictional world brings 121

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

about inevitable tensions between subjective moral postures and socially imposed norms; the persons' attitudes toward the codex range from conformity to innovation to rebellion (see Merton 1957, 139-57). The most popular story of moral tension is that of forbidden passion. As long as Mme. de Renal, in Stendahl's Le Rouge et le Noir (1830), cultivates her relationship with Julien as if she were free of obligation, she experiences only the delights of erotic play. However, when she is forcefully made aware that she loves a man "who is not her husband" [qui n'est point son mari], her pleasure turns into pain. Accepting the deontic codex of her world, she marks her actions as adultery (see Tanner 1979, 15-16) and submits to the iron logic of the story of the fall. 3.2. Raskolnikov and Svejk. The story of the deontic alien is the most telling instance of the conflict between the deontic codex and personal desires. The deontic alien is a person who exempts himself from the world's codex and follows his own principles. Raskolnikov, the hero of F. M. Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment (1866), elaborates an explicit ideological justification of the alien's privilege: "extraordinary" men are permitted, or even have the duty to do, what the codex prohibits because their mission "might involve the salvation of all mankind" (pt. 3., chap. 5). Under this exemption, murdering an old woman pawnbroker is no more than killing a louse. Raskolnikov remains true to his ideology to the very end: in a conversation with sister Dunja (pt. 6, chap. 7) he insists that he did not commit any crime, and even in Siberia (the epilogue) he feels no remorse. But no rational justification can save him from the emotional consequences of the transgression, from a strange, uncontrollable malaise. Having killed a human being, Raskolnikov "killed himsel£" In subjecting Raskolnikov to the logic of the story of the fall, Dostoevsky builds a case against the Ubermensch, who, by fiat, emancipates himself from absolute (theonomous) norms. Not all norms have such authority; indeed, many are backed by institutions of dubious legitimacy. The person who challenges a codex imposed by such an institution acts, in fact, on a higher moral authority, and, therefore, the fall is not necessarily his or her story. The remarkable 122

Narrative Modalities hero ofJaroslav Hasek's The Good Soldier Svejk (1921-23) is a deontic alien with a captivating mission and a peculiar means of achieving it. The good soldier lives in a fictional world ruled exclusively by obligations and prohibitions. The modality of obligation governs social acting, that of prohibition, personal acting. The norms of Svejk's fictional world are backed by the quintessential institution of arrogant authority, the military. The inhabitants of a fictional world where everything is either obligatory or prohibited and where nothing is permitted have two basic strategies at their disposal: either they discharge the obligations and as loyal subordinates give up personal intentions, or they act against the prohibitions and become transgressors (outlaws). Svejk's originality is in devising and successfully pursuing a new strategy for coping with the conditions of this world, the strategy of homo ludens. 10 Svejk's playacting takes many verbal and physical forms. It achieves true mastery in adventurous expeditions, such as the "Budejovice anabasis" (vol. 2, chap. 2), where Svejk, strictly following orders, creates a space ofludic freedom. To be sure, his escapades are short-lived; he is taken for a transgressor and stopped by the powers that be. In the end, however, his professions of innocence are accepted, and the good soldier returns nonchalantly to the obligatory road. Svejk's ludic strategy is plainly inadequate for changing the deontic conditions of his fictional world, but it has serious consequences for the authority of the norm-giving institution. Svejk's playful challenge strips the military machine of its imperial clothes and shows it for what it is: absurd and ridiculous.

4. Axiological Constraints There are many "varieties" of goodness and badness (see von Wright 1963c), but the general effect of the G-operators is to transform the world's entities (objects, states of affairs, events, actions, persons) into values and disvalues. Axiological codex is a valorization of the world by a social group, a culture, a historical period. But valorization is strongly dependent on personality structure, and so the 123

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

axiological modalities are eminently prone to subjectivization: what is a value for one person might be a disvalue for another one. 11 The overall axiological structuring of fictional worlds is a product of diverse combinations and hierarchies of codexal and subjective G-operators. 4.1. The quest. The valorization of the world is, perhaps, the strongest stimulus of acting: the presence of values and disvalues evokes desires and repulsions (II.5.2). For an ordinary person, values are desirable, attractive, and disvalues undesirable, repugnant. 12 If a person lacks a desired value, he or she is likely to initiate actions that would bring that value into his or her possession. Value acquisition is the basic axiological story, usually enveloped in the quest narrative. A host of fictions, ranging from the expedition of the Argonauts to love stories, are manifestations of this structure (for the tradition of the quest in English and American literature, see Schulz 1981). The personal axiological relationships substantially complicate the structure of the quest. If the quester desires and tries to acquire a value that a holder strives to hold onto, conflict is inevitable, unless the holder surrenders the value in a gesture of sacrifice or gift. It can readily be seen that similar intentional and actional consequences arise if two questers compete for one and the same value. In contrast, the quester and his or her helper(s) (allies) engage in cooperative acting to acquire the desired value (IV.3-1, 3.3). 4.2. Pecorin and Babbitt. Subjective abnegation of the world's axiological order generates the story of the axiological alien. This role, typical of, but not restricted to, the "romantic hero," assumes many forms, "ranging in a spectrum from imperfect assimilation to an apparently thorough rejection" (Garber 1982, 153). Two of these aliens, the nihilist and the axiological rebel, deserve special mention. The nihilist is a person who negates the axiological order of the world and replaces it with a subjective axiology that has a single operator: indifference. Rejecting the very procedure of valorization, the nihilist constructs a world without values and disvalues. His credo is expressed in no uncertain terms by Peforin, the protagonist of Michail Lermontov'sA Hero of Our Time (1840): "We are, to tell the 124

Narrative Modalities truth, rather indifferent to everything except our own selves" (262; 93). "I laugh at everything in the world, especially at feelings" (283; 121). Since the nihilist's devalorization affects especially the basic human values, such as love, friendship, and charity, his or her actions are consistently destructive. Peforin destroys his friendship with Grusnickij (and then Grusnickij himself), his relationship with Mary, and even his love for Vera, the only true feeling he ever experienced.13 The axiological rebel negates the G-codex by setting up a contrary subjective axiology. What is a value in the codex is disvalue in the rebel's subjective system, and the converse is also true. Sinclair Lewis's novel Babbitt (1922) constructs a fictional world where American middle-class values reign supreme. The codex valorizes material objects into signs of social status and imposes standardization and conformism. The bedroom in Babbitt's house was decorated "after one of the best standard designs, with a standard electric bedside lamp ... and a standard bedside book. . . . Every second house in Floral Heights had a bedroom precisely like this" (18-19). Babbitt is an axiologically well-adjusted person, "loyal and important" (15); the "bohemian" Doppelbraus are treated with suspicion and even derision. But suddenly, having counted all his values, Babbitt discovers a gap in the stock: "I don't know that I am entirely satisfied." The vague feeling of the lack of "true" value motivates Babbitt's rejection of suburbia's codex and his return to the ideals of youth. His rebellion is a liberating act, which gives him satisfaction, even happiness. But it is short-lived. Babbitt is quickly brought back into the pack, returning to his family, community, business: "He swore faith to his wife ... to Zenith ... to business efficiency ... to the Boosters' Club ... to every faith of the Clan of Good Fellows" (352). Yet the last act of Babbitt's fictional existence is a gesture of defiance: he gives his blessing and encouragement to his son, an axiological rebel of the new generation (365).

125

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

5. Epistemic Constraints The modal system of knowledge, ignorance, and belief imposes epistemic order on the fictional world. Codexal epistemic modalities are expressed in social representations, such as scientific knowledge, ideologies, religions, cultural myths. Subjective K-operators define a personal epistemic set, an individual's knowledge of and beliefs about self and the world. The subjective epistemic set includes selected and synthesized pieces of "internalized" social knowledge and beliefs (IV.2.2). The person of the fictional world is an epistemic "monad," perceiving himself or herself, other persons, and the entire world from a definite and distinct vantage point. The person's practical reasoning and, consequently, his or her acting and interacting are to a high degree determined by this epistemic perspective, by what the agent knows, is ignorant of, and believes to be the case in the world. 5-1. Epistemic quest. Epistemic modalities release their storygenerating energy because of uneven distribution of knowledge among the fictional persons. The epistemic imbalance produces the basic epistemic narrative, the story with a secret (mystery story): something that happened in the fictional world remains unknown to (some of) its inhabitants, or they have false beliefs about it. The structure of the mystery story was described by Sklovskij (1929), who perceived it not only in detective stories but also in Dickens' Little Dorrit (Ill.3.2). 14 Rutherford distinguishes three stages of the enigma: its posing, its intensification through a series of partial, delayed, and suspect answers, and its solution. He points out that some genres (such as the detective story) provide "simple, definitive and absolute" solutions, while others (such as the psychological novel) might suggest a "plurality'' of solutions (1975, 208). Barthes, who includes epistemic modalities in his system of "codes" under the label "hermeneutic code," expands on Sklovskij's notion of "retardation"-specifying snare, equivocation, partial answer, suspended answer, and jamming-all aimed at heightening suspense and the reader's curiosity (1970, 82). The suspense-surprise pattern accounts for the perennial allure of the mystery story.

126

Narrative Modalities

:he

story with a secret is a particular case of epistemic quest, a narrative whose modal base is the transformation of ignorance or false belief into knowledge. The wide range of the epistemic quest has been indicated by Todorov (1971, 1975): La Quete du Graal some sh~rt st~ries of Henry James, and Joseph Conrad's Heart ofDarkness. Ep1stem1c quest can also be perceived at the core of the Bildungsroman.15 To be sure, Bildungsroman has a broader thematic scope: it is a narrative of "the Werden of an individual hero," of his or her "mat~~ing pro~ess" (Swales 1978, 28, 30; V.7 above). However, the acquismon of skills and the growth of knowledge is the thread in this process. The epistemic base is perceived by Suleiman, who defines the Bildungsroman's story as "two parallel transformations undergone by the protagonist: first, a transformation from ignorance (of self) to knowledge (of self); second, a transformation from passivity to action" (1983, 65). In the model of the German Bildungsroman, J. W. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister's Apprenticeship [Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre] (1795-96), the hero's epistemic growth includes the unraveling of seve:al mysteries (unknown or unclear kinship relationships). Goethe s novel constructs the process of maturation not as a linear knowledge accumulation but as a series of trials and errors. Social institutions-artistic (the theater) and political (the Society of the Tower)-:-provide passageways through which Wilhelm progresses toward wisdom. In Goethe's construction, the Bildung of a person is no~ ~o much the achievement of certain goals as a continual cognitive stnvmg (see Selbmann 1984, 74). What Wilhelm learns is not certainties but the "coexisting possibilities within human existence" (Swales 1978, 70). 5.2. Deception. Communication between fictional persons (IY. 1.2) has an epistemic aspect of its own: it is subject to truth-valuation with respect to the fictional world's state of affairs (VI.2). Persons utter true or fals_e state~ents, lies, rumors, and so on. Lying, insinuating, spreadmg gossip contrary to fictional facts are the deceiver's tools for influen~ing a person or persons who either do not know or disregard the fict10nal facts. The deceiver's goal is to induce the ignorant person to act on false information. The most famous of all deceivers,

127

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

Shakespeare's Iago, convinces Othello of Desdemona's infidelity and leads him, with the help of self-deception and the Moor's blind passion, to murder her. Although racial prejudice lingers in the background, the story of deception in Othello is played out primarily by interpersonal emotional motivations: Iago's envy, Othello's jealously, Desdemona's faithfulness. What is personal in Othello is social in E. M. Forster's A Passage to India (1924). Here, the self-deception that feeds false information is the social and racial prejudice of the colonialists. Major Callendar, the undiplomatic spokesman of these social representations and emotions, puts it bluntly: "They [the Indians] give me the creeps" (44). In this semiotic environment, Miss Quested's report grows into a sort of communal folktale that constructs Dr. Aziz's conspiratorial and premeditated "crime" (176). While a formal legal procedure is followed, Dr. Aziz is found guilty before his trial by "herd emotion" (159). 16 When Miss Quested, in a decisive moment, refuses to sustain the lie, she is proclaimed a traitor who "had renounced her own people" (212). In rejecting the social representations of her social group, she has become an epistemic alien and has to leave the scene.

6. Dyadic Worlds So far, I have been dealing with modally homogeneous fictional worlds. These atomic structures, limited in number, combine, alternate, intersect, and overlap in diverse ways to form an unlimited number of composite, molecular fictional worlds (see Chan 1991). The simplest, but very prominent, case is a unification in one fictional world of two domains in which contrary modal conditions reign. A modally heterogeneous, dyadic world is thus produced. The structure of the dyadic world could also be explained as a split within the fictional world effected by the redistribution of codexal modalities of one and the same modal system. All modal systems have the potential for constructing dyadic worlds. The prime dyadic structure of the alethic modality is the mythological world, constituted by a combination of the natural and 128

Narrative Modalities the supernatural domains. The representative dyadic world of the deontic type is formed by redistributing the operators of prohibition and permission: what is prohibited in one domain is permitted in the other one, or what is permitted in one is prohibited in the other. In the fundamental dyadic world of the axiological type, the opposite domains are established by contrary axiological codexes: what is value in one domain (for one group or culture) turns into disvalue in the other domain (for a different group or culture). Finally, the rudimentary dyadic structure in the epistemic type arises if the world consists of a known and an unknown domain. Dyadic worlds, due to their inner semantic tension, are fecund sources of stories. 17 I demonstrate this narrative potential by focusing on the mythological world. 6.r. The mythological world. The two conjoined domains of the mythological world are not only clearly differentiated alethically but also strictly demarcated. 18 The inhabitants of the supernatural domain have access into the natural domain, but for the humans the supernatural domain is, as a rule, off limits. Being physically inaccessible, the supernatural domain is beyond human cognition; it appears as a mysterious, hidden, transcendent "black hole." The minds of the inhabitants of the natural domain are obsessively attracted to this mystery; their thirst for knowledge feeds on any account, even the most dubious, offered by self-appointed informers. Because these accounts are not independently verifiable, they gain credence only thanks to a special authority or exceptional status of the informer (prophet, god-inspired scribe, and so on). These reports are often contradictory, but they are eagerly passed on. The myth reinforces itself by reasserting its structure in narrative transmission. The asymmetry of the accessibility relationship is complemented by the asymmetry of power. The mythological cosmology is a strictly hierarchical system, and this hierarchy determines the character of interaction between the humans and the supernatural beings. Any attempt to interfere in the gods' affairs invariably ends in disaster for the human (the story of Sisyphus). A conflict with gods has no chance of success, as the mighty fighter Diomedes learns: the gods 129

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

can be wounded but never defeated, because they are immortal (Iliad, bk. 5). In contrast, there is no warranty against gods intervening in human affairs. The deities might scorn "the creatures of the day," but they "were irresistibly drawn to med.dle in mortal affairs, sometimes directly, but more often by pulling strings behind the scenes" (Barnes 1974, 97). Even when their dominion over the natural realm is circumscribed by some rules or conventions, the interventions of divinities are capricious, often arrogant, and, therefore, unpredictable. In the mythological world, humans are never and nowhere safe from supernatural beings. A common venue for gods and spirits to intervene indirectly is mental influencing-implanting in a person's mind an intention or desire (through a dream, e.g.). As the "personification of Chance," the supernatural interveners often use the means of accident to achieve their intention (weapons break, a warrior is overcome by dizziness, etc.) (Barnes 1974, no). When they intrude by direct action, they do not hesitate to use guises or disguises, adopting the physical appearance of a natural-world being. The story of Amphytrion proves that this cunning device enables the divinity to deceive even the most faithful of humans. Divine interventions often cause events of a supernatural character to happen in the natural domain. Such violations of the modal codex are perceived by the human inhabitants as radical disruptions of the natural order, as miracles. Again, miraculous interventions confirm and reinforce the myth, since it is only within the world of this structure that they can occur. The history of the mythological world begins with the story of creation: the natural world is brought into existence as the offspring of the primordial supernatural world. Different cultures produced different versions of the creation myth. In the Biblical version, it is God's performative speech act that accomplishes the alethic transformation of nothing into the existing universe. 19 The second step in the dyadic structure formation is the divorce of the human world from the divine world-the story of the fall or paradise lost. Cohabitation with the divinity ends when the humans are expelled from their supernatural Edenic habitat into the toils of the natural world. 130

Narrative Modalities In this story, which prefigures the narratives of degradation characteristic of the human condition (Y.2.1), the alethic division within the mythological world is finalized. 6.2. Cross-world journeys. In the divided world with rigid boundaries, the story of the cross-world journey is of perennial fascination. Special permits are needed to visit the supernatural domain, and they are granted only to selected humans for a definite purpose and under strict conditions. The story of the cross-world journey exists in two variants. In the first, the visitor is, basically, an observer. Odysseus's visit to Hades (bk. II of the Odyssey) is the classic of this kind. Odysseus was advised by Kirke to dig a ditch to separate himself from the dead. He cannot interact physically with the beings of the netherworld but engages in communication across the world divide. The problem of language does not exist: the dead understand and use the language of the living visitor. In the second version, exemplified by the myth of Orpheus, the human visitor is allowed into the netherworld to carry out a mission. Orpheus is partially and temporarily released from his alethic bondage but, in return, is bound by a strict deontic condition. The mission is initially successful, but when Orpheus violates the prohibition he is severely punished and has to return to the human world without his beloved wife. Modern versions of the cross-world journey draw on the traditional pattern of the story to achieve new effects. The devil of Le Sage's Le Diable boiteux (1707) travels in the opposite direction, to observe, and to comment on, the natural world. But in several episodes he succumbs to the temptation to intervene in the human world by physical acts. He thus follows a time-honored tradition that gives supernatural beings the capacity to act in the natural world. Alice, in Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865), appropriates the device of disguise in her repeated changes of physical appearance (getting smaller or taller). 20 The changes are not necessary for Alice's acting in the visited realm, since her physical interventions are minimal. They are purposeless, playful metamorphoses, mimicking the ludic conditions of Wonderland. Alice's avid participation in communication compensates for the frugality of her physical interac131

NARRATIVE

WORLDS

tion. In this respect, again, she adapts perfectly to Wonderland's mode of existence. Its inhabitants do little more than talk, exploring the creative, ludic, and performative potentialities of speech acts. There is no need for Alice to acquire these verbal capacities: a child is at home in the world of word play. And no linguistic adaptation is necessary, either; thanks to the ancient narrative convention of the dyadic world, the natives ofWonderland are masters of Alice's human language.

132

PART TWO

Intensional Functions

-

STARTER TERMS

I.

II

Extension and Intension

Frege suggested that the meaning of verbal expressions is constituted by two interlaced constituents, reference and sense. In this book reference is named extension and sense, intension. 1 There are some precedents for this usage. For example, a textbook of logic for linguists maintains that the distinction extension/intension "now has roughly the same import as Frege's 'Sinn' and 'Bedeutung'" (Allwood, Andersson, and Dahl 1977, 126 n. 1). Lyons states that intension and extension are terms "used for the same, or at least a similar, contrast" as sense and reference (1977, 1:174). A French linguist, expressly recalling Frege, locates "extensional identity'' on the level of reference and "intensional identity'' on the level of sense (Fuchs 1982, 16). But the terminological pair will only create confusion in literary semantics if we do not keep in mind two caveats. First, intension is in spelling very dose to, and in pronunciation indistinguishable from intention, a term designating a completely different notion (Linsky 1983, xxixxiii; II.2 above). Second, in logical semantics the term intension or 135

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

intensional context denotes compound syntactic structure, where standard rules of the propositional calculus do not apply, such as, "John believes that Paul is a traitor'' (see Guenthner 1978, 46-47, for a partial list). What logicians call intensional semantics is, usually, the logic of such contexts (Pelc 1977; Kutschera 1979; van Benthem 1988). There seems to be widespread agreement about what extensions are; most definitions, like the following one, are just rewordings of the traditional notion: "The extension of an expression is the object or set of objects referred to, pointed to, or indicated by, the expression" (Kirkham 1992, 4). In other words, extension is the meaning constituent of a linguistic sign that directs the sign toward the world.2 Extension directs the linguistic sign toward the world, but the world's objects cannot describe or represent extensions. Extensional meaning has to be expressed in a metalanguage, in a normalized representational system. The struggle of modern semantics with the problem of extension is the struggle to design languages that denote extensions and extensions only. An ideal extensional language would be characterized by one-to-one correspondence between world entities and their designations. Natural language, obviously, does not possess this property. Artificial (or semiartificial) taxonomical systems (vitamins designated by letters of the alphabet, botanical and zoological terminology, the formulas of chemistry) and logical, mathematical, and programming formalisms come dose to the ideal of extensional language. These representations, however, are useful only for special, restricted purposes.3 In order to represent extensional meaning in "ordinary" language and in literature, we need a universal extensional metalanguage. Every student and reader of literature is familiar with informal extensional representations produced by paraphrasing: themes, content abstracts, story and plot summaries, interpretations. We know also of sporadic attempts to design a more rigorous, although necessarily partial, extensional metalanguage for narrative (Tomasevskij's motifs, Propp's functions, Greimas's actants). Proceeding in this direction, I have proposed a two-level extensional representation of motifs (in STI.2.1-2.2). Yet, as we know, the first

Starter Terms JI part of this book is concerned not with elementary narrative units but with narrative macrostructures. It is an extensional semantics of fictional worlds. While major problems remain in the project of extensional semantics, the concept of intension, being still more complex, is understood in radically different ways. Leaving aside the previously mentioned intensional contexts, we can record two recent conceptions. First, according to Montague's "grammar," intensions are functions from extensions to possible worlds (Montague 1974; see also Tichy 1971, 278). Yet, as Barbara Partee has pointed out, this conception is not sufficiently fine to be accepted as a theory of intensional meaning: Montague's functions "are still functions in an extensional sense," because possible worlds are, after all, extensional sets (1989, 119). In an earlier comment, another feature of Montague's "grammar" was noted: "This analysis of intension has made the concept essentially language-independent. An intension has extralinguistic entities both as its domain (possible worlds) and as its range (objects and truth-value)" (Allwood, Andersson, and Dahl 1977, 129). A "languageindependent" intensional semantics is of no use in the study of literary meaning, a meaning necessarily expressed in a particular language. In the second conception, intension of an expression is thought of as "the informational content of the expression (Kirkham 1992, 8). Here, intension corresponds to "dictionary meaning" and can be expressed by means of "interpretants." Intensional meaning becomes "language-dependent,"4 but the conception still does not satisfy the needs ofliterary semantics, primarily for one reason: expressions with one and the same informational content are treated as "intensionally equivalent" and, therefore, mutually substitutable: bachelor/unmarried man, heart/blood-pumping organ, Walter Scott/the author of Waverley. Literary texts thrive precisely on exploiting the semantic differences of expressions with the same informational content, revealing the vacuity of the notion of intensional equivalence (synonymy). They demonstrate that intension is necessarily linked to texture, to the form (structuring) of its expression; it is constituted by those 137

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

meanings, which the verbal sign acquires through and in texture (STI.2.3).5 Speaking formally, intensions are functions from extensions to textures. Intensional fictional semantics links the possibleworlds framework to text theory. The crucial role of intensional meaning in literature is explained by aesthetic factors: extensional meaning is aesthetically neutral; only on the level of intension is aesthetically effective meaning achieved. In its semantics, literature (poetry) aims in the direction opposite to science: it is a communicative system for activating and putting to maximal use the resources of intensionality in language;6 Literary scholars have cultivated the study of intensional meaning without being aware of it. Poetic figures and devices, the meaning of rhymes and sound patterns, anagrams and other covert meanings, the "poetry of grammar," the "semantic gesture," narrative modes, represented discourse, and so on-all are intensional phenomena (see Dolezel 1990, esp. chaps. 4, 5 7). But these efforts hit again and again one seemingly insurmountable heuristic obstacle: how to represent intensional meaning. Being fully determined by its texture, intensional meaning is affected by any textural change; it is nonparaphrasable, it slips through the net of "interpretants," it is lost in retelling. Any paraphrasing, any interpretation destroys the intensional meaning in the process of destroying the original texture. We are reminded of Brooks's "heresy of paraphrase" (Brooks 1947) and left with a rather uninspiring prospect: intensional meaning of a literary text cannot be conveyed otherwise than by repeating that text. 7 Yet the claim that intensional meaning is texture dependent condemns us neither to the "heresy of paraphrase" (to reducing intensions to extensions) nor to the heuristic cul-de-sac. On the contrary, it opens the way for us to study intensions indirectly, through the observable, analyzable structuring of texture. Telling examples are "descriptive" words and phrases that reveal their intensional meaning by the constituents involved in their composition: baker, bedroom, Dartmouth, morning star, evening star, and so on. The intensions of morecomplex linguistic forms, particularly sentences, are derived by accumulation, that is, by building up the intensions of higher-order units 138

Starter Terms II from intensions of lower-order constituents (see Dummett 1973, 152-53). The importance of semantic accumulation for intensional semantics cannot be overemphasized. But it has to be emphasized equally strongly that semantic accumulation is not simple additivity; as already recognized by Husserl and Mukafovsky (see Steiner and Steiner 1979, 60-65), it generates "emergent" meaning by a totalizing projection of linear constituents (Dolezel 1990, 156, 158). Ultimately, the formation of the text's intensional meaning is a global, macrostructural happening, just as the organization of its fictional world is. 2.

Intensional Function

The fictional worlds presented in part I of this book are extensional entities. Their constituents, shapes, and structures are not tied to the wording of the constructing fictional text but are fixed by paraphrasing, by a translation of the original texture into extensional representations. But, obviously, fictional worlds are constructed by the author and reconstructed by the reader in and through the fictional text's original wording (texture), that is, as intensional formations. The intensional world structuring is formally represented by the concept of intensional function. In accordance with the general definition of intension, it is a function from the fictional text's texture to the fictional world. The method of indirect analysis, proposed in STII.1, identifies intensional functions by uncovering the global "morphology'' of texture, its formative principles, its stylistic regularities. 8 Intensional function is redefined as a global regularity of texture that affects the structuring of the fictional world. Textural regularities generate intensional structuring of fictional worlds, complementary to, and no less important than, their extensional structuring. Let us explain this generative power by examining the simplest case, the two-value intensional function.

If a writer wants to name a fictional person, language offers him or her .a choice between two basic modes of singular reference: proper name, "Odysseus," and definite description, "the king oflthaca," "the 139

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

hero of the Odyssey." The proper name designates the person rigidly (Pr.2.1; Ep.4) and, therefore, independently of the name's form, the definite description nonrigidly and in dependence on its verbal form. We can say that in standard use proper names have zero intension, while definite descriptions carry intensions expressed by their variable verbal form. The intension of "the king of Ithaca'' is different from that of "the hero of the Odyssey. "9 If the writer assigns the two kinds of singular reference to his fictional persons in a consistent way, then his texture displays a regularity of naming. Such is the case in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe: three persons of its world are given proper names"Robinson," "Xury," and "Friday''-while all the other inhabitants are named by definite descriptions only-"my father," "the Portuguese captain," "the English captain's widow," "Friday's father," and so on. This regularity operates as intensional function in the following way: As extensional entities, the persons of a fictional world can be individualized and distinguished from each other by some extensional, identifying labels-say, by the lowercase letters of the alphabet. If each fictional person is assigned consistently one of the two available forms of naming, the textural regularity splits the agential constellation into two subsets: one comprising persons named rigidly (by proper names), the other composed of persons designated nonrigidly (by definite descriptions). The function thus provides a mapping of the extensional set onto an intensionally structured set. The intensional function "transfers" the global regularity of naming from the fictional text into the fictional world, imposing on the world a particular intensional structuring. Schema 2 is a representation of the intensional function of naming and of its structuring effect on the fictional world of Robinson Crusoe. In the intensional world structure a trio of acting persons, the hero and his two slaves, forms a domain different from that of the other acting persons. This splitting of the world into two domains reminds us of the division of the mythological world into a natural and a supernatural domain (V.6.1). There is, however, a fundamental difference between the two cases: the dyadic character of the mythological world results form a redistribution of alethic modalities and, therefore, is an ex-

Starter Terms II

Schema2 W(E)

-----

T

-- --

.-.--

•

+

a

6

W(I)

Robinson Crusoe

-- -

•

+

Friday

•

X

C

d

my father

-

X

.

the Portuguese

captain

W(E) Extensional structure W(I) Intensional structure T Texture

Proper name x Definite description

+

tensional, paraphrasable structuring; the structuring represented in schema I is intensional. There are two logically related reasons for claiming that through the intensional function we have reached the domain of sense: a. This structuring is fully determined by the fictional text's texture. If the naming of fictional persons followed a different regularity, the intensional structuring of the world would be different. If there is no regularity of this sort, no intensional function of naming operates in the fictional text, and the fictional world lacks this structuring. This dependence of the world structure on the form of texture is the essence of our notion of intensionality. b. One and the same fictional world can be structured intensionally in many different ways by different intensional functions. In this thesis a feature of Frege's "sense" is reflected: a variety of senses can be associated with one and the same referent, the various senses "illuminating" the referent's different aspects (Frege [1892] 1969, n9-20). Intensional functions thus provide what we have expected from them: they give us an indirect but operational access to the empire of sense in its most complex and subtle manifestation, in the structuring of fictional worlds.

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

Schema 3 the Director (Bank)

A two-value function is the simplest form of singular term assignment. Generally, languages offer more than two intensionally differentiated modes of naming, such as first names, surnames, nicknames, artificial names, stable and changing definite descriptions, and so on. In Franz Kafka's The Trial a complex regularity of naming can be observed: its fictional persons are named consistently and solely by surname ("Block," "Fraulein Bilrstner"), first name ("Leni "), artificial abbreviation ("K."), and fixed definite description ("the Director," "the judge"). Consequently, the regularity of naming in The Trial is a multivalue intensional function that arranges the set of its inhabitants into concentric circles with the protagonist-the only one named by abbreviation-at the center (see Dolezel 1983 for details of this intensional structuring). Schema 3 is a telling representation of this intensional structuring. Although extensions and intensions can and must be differentiated in semantic theory, they are by definition complementary in the production ofliterary meaning. Extensions are available only through intensions and, conversely, intensions are fixed by extensions. We can 142

Starter Terms II speculate that the authors conceive the fictional world first as an extensional structure, inventing the story, individuating the acting persons in their properties and relationships, setting them in landscapes and cityscapes; then, by writing a text of a particular texture, they give an intensional shape to the world. Conversely, the readers are presented first with the intensional structuring, since they access the fictional world through the text's texture; by information or formalized paraphrasing they translate the texture into extensional representations and thus reconstruct the extensional world structure and its parts-story, character portraits, landscapes, and cityscapes. Following the readers' reconstruction, fictional macrosemantics involves three successive analytic procedures: it apprehends the regularities of texture; from these regularities it derives the intentional structuring of the fictional world; by applying an extensional metalanguage (e.g., paraphrase) it reconstructs the extensional world structuring. The fictional world structure is not a set of separated levels but a set of transformations converting one level into another. The project of the intensional macrosemantics of fiction is ambitious. We do not know how many and what kinds of intensional functions can be discovered. To start the project off, I investigate two functions: the authentication function (chap. VI) and the saturation function (chap. VII). There are reasons to claim that these functions are essential for the intensional world structuring: the first determines what exists in the fictional world, the second, how densely the fictional world is populated.

143

I

CHAPTER VI

(TE)

Authentication

Our semantics rests on one basic ontological assumption: to exist actually is to exist independently of semiotic representation; to exist fictionally means to exist as a possible constructed by semiotic means. In other words, fictional worlds are a special kind of possibles, possibles brought into fictional existence. Any of the semiotic systems (media) has the ability to call possibles into fictional existence, and each has its own procedures or mechanisms for accomplishing the task. In the semiotic system called literature, fictional entities owe their existence to a special kind of world-constructing text, the fictional text (Pq). The text's power to grant fictional existence is explained by the procedure of authentication and formally expressed in the intensional function of authentication. Two questions have to be answered to justify this claim: first, which global features of the texture regulate the authentication function, and, second, how do they affect fictional existence? The answers to these questions lead us into the center of the literary fiction-making enterprise.

145

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

r. World Construction as Performative Force We start our search by excluding one possible direction: fictional existence does not depend on the "truth" of fictional sentences, because these sentence lack truth-value (Pr.2.1). The world-constructing act cannot be identified with, or compared to, imaging speech acts, such as stating truth or falsehood, lying, imitating, or pretending. All these speech acts presuppose the independent existence of a world to which the corresponding sentences refer, fail to refer, or pretend to refer. Basing fictional semantics on any of the imaging speech acts means missing the very nature of world making (Pr. 3). Fictional texts can carry out the function of authentication precisely because they are exempt from truth-valuation; they are performative speech acts. According to J. L. Austin, the "discoverer'' of the performative speech act, this act carries a special illocutionary force: if uttered under appropriate felicity conditions, "it is or is a part of, the doing ~fan_ action" (Austin 1962, 5). Or, as Austin puts it in another contnbunon, it "has its own special job, it is used to perform an action'' (Austin 1 1971, 13; see also Austin 1970, 235; Searle 1979, 16-17; Urmson 1979). The changes in the world that performatives can bring about are less or more substantial, up to and including the most radical ones-the world's creation or destruction. The authentication force of the fictional text, its capacity to create fictional worlds, is a special kind of performative force.2 If uttered felicitously, the literary perform~tive changes a possible entity into a fictional fact. In other words, fictional fact is a possible entity authenticated by a felicitous literary speec~ act.3 The term fact is very apposite here, if we take it, as some philosophers have, as a "quasi-linguistic" entity. "There is no way," states Warnock, "of identifying a fact except as that which so1;11e true statement states, or as that which some person states in making a true statement" (1963, 13).4 If 'fictional fact' is understood in this way, then literary theory and aesthetics have at their disposal a much needed general term for the constituents of fictional worlds. It remains to specify the felicity conditions of the world-constructing performative. Austin, let us be reminded, maintained that a

Authentication necessary (although not the only) felicity condition of the performative is the speaker's authority. To take one of Austin's examples: a ship can be named only by "the person properly authorized to name it" (Austin 1962, 14). Who are the speakers "properly authorized" to authenticate literary performatives? There can be no uniform answer to this question. The illocutionary diversity of literary texts means a diversity of authentication "authorities." This holds especially true about narrative texts, which are the instruments of the narrativeworld construction. The plurality of discourses in the narrative text is well known to narratology. The basic factor of this plurality is the dual source of the narrative texture-the narrator and the fictional person(s). To be sure, the actual producer of the entire text is its author; yet its texture, its formal, semantic, and illocutionary features, are determined by the opposition of the narrator's and the characters' discourse. 5 The opposition creates a tension within the narrative text that ultimately gave rise to a gamut of narrative discourse types, ranging from a strictly objective to a purely subjective. The diversity of the narrative texture has been studied in detail, and various typologies of narrative discourses have been suggested. 6 But narrative discourses are not mere playing with pronouns or focalization. The illocutionary diversity of the narrative text becomes semantically relevant when we recognize that its main purpose is to construct fictional existence as an intensional phenomenon. Authentication functionlinks the diversity of narrative discourses and the modes of fictional existence. The claim that fictional existence is an intensional phenomenon has radical consequences for fictional semantics. It means that fictional existence is not confined to the polarity of actual existence ("to be or not to be"). To exist fictionally means to exist in different modes, ranks, and degrees. This is one of the main principles of our semantics of fictionality and finalizes its divorce from the mimetic doctrine. _We are now able to account not only for fictional entities whose mode of existence is analogous to that of actual entities but also for the many and diverse fictional existents that are pecwiarly different from them. 147

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

This book does not investigate the intensional function of authentication and the corresponding modes of fictional existence in all their diversity. But a look at the basic cases gives us a sufficient understanding of this remarkable mechanism of fiction making.

2.

Dyadic Authentication

The basic and most common narrative texture combines two kinds of discourse: the narrative of an anonymous, impersonal narrator and the direct speech of the fictional person(s). The resulting texture has an easily observable global regularity: passages of third-person (Er-form) narrative alternate with the persons' dialogues and monologues. The segments are clearly distinguished and sharply demarcated by formal, semantic, and pragmatic (indexical) distinctive features (for details, see Dolezel 1973, 8-9, 16, 20-40). An instructive example of the dyadic texture is the narrative of Don Quixote's famous encounter with the windmills (in chap. 8 of Don Quixote): At that moment, they made out thirty or forty windmills, such as they have in that part of the country, and as soon as Don Quixote saw them, he said to his squire: "Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we could have desired; for you see there, friend Sancho Panza, thirty or more lawless giants rise up with whom I mean to do battle.... " "What giants?" said Sancho Panza. "Those you see there," replied his master, "with the long arms, some of them nearly two leagues long." "But look, Your Grace," replied Sancho, "those things that appear there are not giants, but windmills, and what seem to be arms are their vanes which, turned by the wind, make the millstone go." (170; 58-59)

The passage forces upon us the question: What exists in the fictional world of Don Quixote--windmills or giants? Our answer is the same as that of any ordinary reader of the novel: windmills. Clearly, the decision is not based on truth-valuation, because there are neither

Authentication windmills nor giants in the world until the text tells us about them.7 The decision is based on the character of the constructing texture: the windmills are introduced in the narrator's discourse, the giants in that of a fictional person. A general rule defines the character of the dyadic authentication function: entities introduced in the discourse of the anonymous third-person narrator are eo ipso authenticated as fictional facts, while those introduced in the discourse of the fictional persons are not. From now on, we use the term authoritative narrative to designate this primary source of fictional facts. 8 Where does the narrative's authentication authority originate? It has the same grounding as any other performative authority-convention. In the actual world, this authority is given by social, mostly institutional, systems; in fiction, it is inscribed in the norms of the narrative genre. Let us note that all discourse features of the authoritative narrative are negative: it lacks truth-value, identifiable subjective source (it is "anonymous"), and spatiotemporal situation (the speech act is contextless). This anulling of all the typical features of natural discourse is a precondition for the performative force to work automatically. If this negativity reminds the reader of "God's word," so be it. It is precisely the divine world-creating word that provides the model for the authoritative narrative and its performative force. Paradoxically, authoritative narrative is a prisoner of its authentication force: it cannot lie or err. Telling examples are authorial errors, haphazard, usually trivial, often concerning the dating of fictional events. Thus, for example, in Trollope's Phineas Redux (1874) we read: "Early in August he [Finn] went over to England ... and made his first visit to Tankerville" (n). But a few pages later: "In September Finn was back in Ireland, and about the end of that month he made his first visit to Tankerville" (14). Prince's acute observation supports this understanding of inconsistencies in the authoritative narrative. The incompatible dating of events in the authoritative-cum-dramatic narrative of Roger Martin du Gard's jean Baro is are "authorial oversights." But in the !ch-form "cahiers" ofJean-Paul Sartre's La Nausee, they "underline his [the protagonist's] utter detachment from the past and his sense ofloss in a shapeless present" (Prince 1983, 60-61).9 149

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

Fictional facts constructed by authoritative narrative constitute the factual domain, the nonauthenticated possibles introduced in the characters' discourse-the virtual domain of the fictional world. The virtuals pose a double challenge to the theory of authentication. The second, less important, is easier to explain and, therefore, I shall face it first. As we know from the passage quoted from Don Quixote, the two fictional persons on the scene, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, express contradictory opinions about the objects in the fields. We ask, quite naturally; who is right and who is wrong? Because the fictional fact had been established, the answer is at hand: Sancho is right, his master wrong. In justifying this answer, Mardnez-Bonati formulates a rule for valuating statements of fictional persons: "The statements of novelistic personages, which agree with those of the narrator, are necessarily true, while those which deviate from them are necessarily false" (1973, 186). I concur with Martfnez-Bonati that statements of fictional persons can be assigned truth-values. However, possible-worlds semantics enables us to formulate more precisely their truth-condition: it is not agreement with the narrator's statements but rather correspondence to fictional facts. Needless to say, fictional persons can be right or wrong only about the facts of their fictional world. The first, more difficult problem with the virtuals introduced in the fictional persons' discourse is this: can they become fictional facts, and if so, how? The question is tantamount to asking whether in the dyadic function fictional persons possess some degree of authentication authority. The answer is positive in principle, but we must add immediately that this authority depends on strict conditions, three of which seem to be necessary: first, the speaker has to be trustworthy ("reliable"); second, there has to be consensus among the persons of the world with respect to the entity in question; third, the virtual must never be disauthenticated in the authoritative narrative. If these conditions are met, the virtual becomes a fictional fact. We conclude then, that the speech acts of fictional persons in the binary type have, potentially, a performative force, but its origin is different from that of the authoritative narrative. The narrator's au-

Authentication thority, let us repeat, is given by genre convention and is analogous to Austin's performative authority; the fictional persons' authority rests on consensus and coherence and is analogous to the pragmatic conditions of natural discourse. 10 It is incorrect to deny the existence of authoritative narrative by claiming that such a discourse is not natural. But it is equally incorrect to lead the campaign against anthropomorphizing fiction so far as to deny analogies in the pragmatic conditions between fictional and actual persons' discourse. Fictional witnesses are no less convincing than actual witnesses if their accounts cohere and are accepted by other inhabitants of their worlds. The two different origins of fictional facts in the dyadic authentication leave an intensional trace, which splits the factual domain of the fictional world into two subdomains: fully authenticated, by authoritative narrative, and collectively authenticated, by consensual fictional persons' accounts.1 1 As to the virtual domain, the domain of possibles that remain nonauthentic, it divides into private domains, the beliefs, visions, illusions, and errors of individual fictional persons (Don Quixote's giants, Emma Bovary's Paris). The private domains are the main but not the sole constituents of the virtual in fictional worlds. Two recent studies have pointed out narrative strategies that enhance the virtual domain. The first strategy, identified by Prince, is the disnarrated, defined as "all the events that do not happen though they could have and are nonetheless referred to (in a negative or hypothetical mode) by the narrative text." In other words, a possible event or state is posited (either in the narrative or in a fictional person's speech act) but then negated: "This bed could have been covered with roses, but it was not" (1992, 30, 33). Another narrative strategy of this kind, hypothetical focalization, has been described by David Herman. It assigns the construction of virtuals-possible or counterfactual alternatives to fictional facts-to a hypothetical, fictionally nonexistent observer (witness): "Mweta was smaller and more animated than Bray, and seen from the distance of the house, as they got further away their progress would have been a sort of dance" (1994a, 242). The seemingly simple intensional distinction of factual and virtual

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

domains gives the fictional world a remarkable ontological depth. Ryan was the first to notice this feature: "The private worlds of characters generate mutually incompatible courses of events," among which the actualized plot charts its path. She suggested that the world's ontological depth is "the basic condition of tellability.... The aesthetic appeal of a plot is a function of the richness and variety of the domain of the virtual" (1991, 156). Exploring the world's ontological depth, we advance from semantics to aesthetics of fictional worlds.

3. Graded Authentication The authoritative narrative has been with us since the beginnings of fiction making. But equally ancient is a subjective mode that adopts the fictional person's discourse for world construction. This narrative mode is commonly known as personal Ich-form. More recently, the Ich-form has been joined by subjectivized Er-form, a narrative mode formed when features of subjectivity penetrate in a lesser or higher degree into the third-person texture. In modern literature, both of these subjective modes of narrative have been cultivated with unprecedented intensity and diversity. 12 A theory of authentication has to explain their authentication authority and force. The authentication force of subjective narrative modes cannot be explained by a two-value function. We have to introduce a generalized, graded authentication function that can express formally the world-constructing force of all available narrative modes. The function assigns different grades (degrees) of authenticity to fictional entities, distributed along a scale between "fully authentic" and "nonauthentic." Consequently, it provides world constituents with different ranks or modes of fictional existence. 13 The graded authentication function is truly the key to understanding the intensional nature of fictional existence. Let us describe its operation in the two subjective narrative modes presented above. J.I. Subjectivized Er-form. This narrative mode can be roughly characterized as a mixed texture, blending formal features of the

Authentication third-person narrative with semantic and indexical features of fictional persons' discourse (Dolezel 1973, 50-55); the markers of subjectivity accumulate in a higher or lesser "dosage." The conventional authentication force is weakened but not voided: it is sustained by the texture's grammatical features, shared with the authoritative narrative. Subjectivized Er-form constructs fictional facts relativized to a certain person (or group of persons), facts commingled with subjective attitudes, beliefs, assumptions, emotions, and so on. Domains emerge in the fictional world, which are "tinted" by a subjective bias but are semantically different from the private virtual domains. Narrative texts that incorporate subjectivized Er-form support a threevalue authentication function where a new value-"relatively authentic"-joins the values "authentic" and "nonauthentic." This kind of authentication creates a transitional zone of relative fictional facts between the factual and the virtual domains. 14 The fictional world of Madame Bovary, constructed by the fluctuating Flaubertian texture, 15 is shaped in this pattern. Its core is constituted by a fully authenticated, factual domain constructed by authoritative narrative: "When they leftTostes, in the month of March, Madame Bovary was pregnant" (90; 81). However, if we read, for example, the portrayal of Charges Bovary, we perceive clearly the presence of a subjective attitude (Emma's) in the narrative texture: "Charles's conversation was as flat as a sidewalk, where everyone's ideas filed past, in their ordinary dress, arousing neither emotions nor laughter, nor reverie .... He couldn't swim, or fence, or fire a pistol, and once he couldn't even explain to her a term about horseback riding she had come across in a novel" (59; 54). This is Emma's Charles, his properties and deficiencies perceived by her critical eye. At the same time, however, this porrrayal cannot be taken as a purely subjective, nonauthentic construct; it is given a degree of authenticity by being introduced within the Er-form narrative. Charles's character is part of the relatively factual domain of the fictional world. We are not surprised to find a confirmation of this character in his acting. The existential status of relative fictional facts can best be judged in contrast with virtuals projected by a fictional person. Here is what

153

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

Rodolphe has to say about his existence:. "Yes! I missed out on so many things! Always alone! If only I had had a goal in my life, if I'd met with some affection, found someone-Oh, how I would have applied all the energy, I am capable 0£ I would have overcome everything, smashed down every obstacle!" (171; 152). This is Rodolphe "par lui-meme," sentimental claptrap intended to seduce Emma, an outright lie. How do we know? Because the authoritative narrative has constructed the fictional facts about Rodolphe: "M. Rodolphe Boulanger was thirty-four years old. He was coarse in nature and sharp in intelligence, with much experience and understanding of women. This one [Emma] seemed pretty to him .... But the encumbrances of the pleasure, looked at in perspective, made him think, by contrast, of his mistress. She was an actress from Rouen, whom he was keeping" (r6r; 143). 3.2. Personal Ich-form. First-person (Ich-form) narrative, in all its variants, 16 is identical with fictional persons' direct discourse in the formal, semantic, and indexical features. If we treated it in terms of the two-value function, we would have to conclude that the Ich-form narrator has no conventional authentication authority and, consequently, no force to construct a fictional world. Yet it is easy to see that the Ich-narrator has a privileged position within the set of fictional persons: he or she alone is given a double speech activity, participating in dialogues with other fictional persons and producing a monologic narrative. The first kind of speech activity is part of the agential participation in the fictional world, the second serves the world-constructing function. In order to be accepted as a source of fictional facts, the /ch-narrator has to prove his or her competence. We can say, somewhat metaphorically, that while the authoritative narrator received the authentication authority by fiat, the Ich-narrator must earn it. Yet whatever the narrator's effort, the fictional world of the Ich-form narrative will never lose the intentional trace of its subjective origin. To exist in this world is to exist as a more-or-less confirmed virtual. Necessarily, this narrative challenges the reader to a more participatory role in the reconstruction of the fictional world. 154

Authentication The main ingredient of the Ich-narrator's competence is privileged knowledge. To assert and maintain this privilege, the narrator resorts to two main devices: delimiting the scope of this knowledge and identifying its sources. The limits of the Ich-narrator's cognitive range can be set negatively, by an explicit refusal to introduce fictional entities that are unknown to him or her. This device is employed by the protagonist-narrator of Benjamin Constant's Adolphe: "I never knew how this liaison came about. When I first saw Ellenore, it had existed for a long time and had been, as it were, sanctioned" (23; 59). The quote refers to the beginning of the liaison between Ellenore and the count, an event that lies outside the narrator's direct experience. Of course, the narrator could remain silent about this event, as he remains silent about many others. By explicitly stating his ignorance, he displays his scrupulousness and thus stakes out the domain of his authentication authority. The majority of fictional facts constructed by the first-person narrator of Adolphe are personal experiences: "On leaving Gottingen, I went to the little town D***" (18; 51). If the fictional fact is outside the narrator's experience, its source is meticulously specified. One of the basic problems facing the Ich-form narrator is the inaccessibility of mental states of other fictional persons. Constant employs frequently the well-known device of reading off the hidden states of the other mind from observable physical symptoms-facial traits, eye expressions, tone of voice: "I discerned in Ellenore's features a feeling of discontent and sadness" (34; 76). When the narrator was absent from the scene of a fictional event, the accounts of witnesses are used. Ellenore's servants report on the events of the fateful night when she falls sick after Baron T. passed on to her Adolphe's private letter. All these devices-direct experience, reading-off, reports of witnessesserve the same function: to make the narrative act reliable and thus warrant within a delimited scope of knowledge the authentication authority of the Ich-narrator. In the type of Ich-form represented by Adolphe the narrator controls the introduction of fictional entities so tightly that the virtual domains of other fictional persons cannot develop. No interior 155

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

monologues other than the narrator's are possible. The only source of introducing virtual entities are the utterances of fictional persons themselves, expressed in dialogues with the narrator or in those that the narrator attends or overhears. The fictional world ofAdolphe is an egocentric structure; its core is the factual domain of the narrator's experience, while the virtual domains of other characters are minimized. Many traditional Ich-forms, including Adolphe, reinforce the narrator's authority by adopting a genre of natural (nonliterary) discourse: letter, journal, diary, memoir, manuscript, often published posthumously by a serendipitous "editor." I refer to this type as natural Ich-form. In modern literature, purely literary (nonnatural) Ichform appears, which proves that the mode has become conventionalized. The narrative remains formally in the first person but is lifted from the semantic and pragmatic restrictions of subjective discourse.17 Consequently, the narrative usurps the convention-based authentication authority. The author writes a most unnatural text: a first-person discourse with the semantic features and the performative force of the authoritative Er-form. Genette observed the rise of this species of Ich-form in Marcel Proust's A la Recherche du temps perdu. Indeed, that novel is an important stage in this remarkable process. The initial step away from the model of natural discourse is the abandonment of the space-time anchoring of the narrative act: the writing of a multivolume work is "instantaneous, without temporal dimension" (Genette 1972, 234). Almost imperceptibly, the conventionalized Ich-form emerges in the 'TAmour de Swann'' section of Du Cote de chez Swann. The presence of the Ich-narrator is affirmed by occasional phrases and utterances, such as "my grandfather" [mon grandpere] and "such as I had at Combray in my childhood" [comme j'eus a Combray dans mon enfance] (see Genette 1972, 250). However, the introduction of fictional facts is not at all restricted to the narrator's cognitive scope. The Ichnarrator appropriates the "omniscient" posture of authoritative narrative, constructing all details of Swann's actions, motivations, and feelings. Proust's "I.;Amour de Swann'' creates authoritative narrative

Authentication

in the guise of Ich-form and thus redefines the authentication principles of narrative modes. 18 No longer restricted by the subjectivity of its source, the nonnatural Ich-form is a victory of convention over imitation. The clash within the Ich-form between the conditions of natural discourse and the conventional authentication force is radically exposed in Nigel Williams' novel Star Turn (1985). The novel has been given as an example of a story told by "a self-confessed liar" (Hutcheon 1988, n8). This is certainly correct, but it does not give a full account of the narrator's performance. We should notice that the narrator tells two different kinds of lies. First, as a fictional person he tells the natural-discourse lies throughout his life and, particularly, as a propagandist for the Ministry oflnformation during World War II. But this discourse is merely a contrastive background for the unreliable discourse praxis of the narrator, the writing of an autobiography. At the very beginning of his narrative the narrator admits, ''I am aware that my imagination supplements my memory to an unhealthy extent. Which is why, to some ungenerous-minded people, I might seem a little less than reliable when talking about the past. And yet I wish to do so" (n). He continues to reflect on the genre, purpose, and truth-conditions of his autobiographical writing and on truth, untruth, and fiction in general. His comments are complemented by his friend and first reader, Alan, who reminds him early in the game that he cannot tell "the difference between fact and fiction'' (60). But is the narrator's unreliability relevant for his authentication authority? Let us first emphasize that the reader cannot accept the narrator's offer to treat the text as either an autobiography or a novel. Star Turn is a fictional text governed by the conventions of fictionalworld construction rather than by the truth-conditions of autobiographical writing. It makes sense to ask whether an autobiographer tells the truth or lies, but the question is out of place with respect to a fictionalist's narrative act (Pf.3). In fictional writing there is no life before the life story. Whatever the realemes behind the author's text, the narrator of Star Turn transforms actual events, persons, words, places, and so on into entities of a fictional world. The fiction is only 157

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

presented as autobiography, in the same way as epistolary novels are presented as letters. The narrator's credentials as autobiographer (or lack thereof) have ultimately no relevance for the authentication force of his narrative. Star Turn should be judged not by the criteria of autobiography but by the conventions of fictional writing. To be sure, the peculiar writing praxis of the narrator determines the character and shape of the novel's fictional world. Star Turn constructs a history (the first and second world wars, the general strike of 1926) and historical personalities (Proust, Virginia Woolf, Freud, Churchill, Goebbels, Oswald Mosely, and others) strikingly different from commonly known historical facts. These free, imaginative transformations create an absurd, carnivalesque, and politically aggressive fictional history, of the same kind as that of Hasek's The Good Soldier Svejk (V.3.2) or, to take a truly parallel example, of Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow (1973). Yet the carnivalization of history can be written and read only against the background of historical facts. Ultimately, Williams' narrator knows the difference between lies and truth and the price to be paid for confusing them: "Things happen. Whether they happened or not can be tested and discovered. To abandon that hope is to abandon hope in any kind of justice or decency'' (307). Williams' narrative strategy throws light on a significant aspect of Ich-form narratives. All Ich-form narrators are self-constructed as fictional persons. But their properties, attitudes, habits-that is, their personal credentials-are just one factor in their narrative competence. The other is the force of authentication that is given to the Ichform narrators thanks to their function. Martinez-Bonati, speaking about "wrong-minded narrators," maintains: "Their unreliability as persons ... does not compromise their structural reliability as basic narrators" (1981, n5). Furthermore, as Rimmon-Kenan has observed, "many texts make it difficult to decide whether the narrator is reliable or unreliable, and if reliable-to what extent." She quotes the paradigm example of Henry James's The Turn ofthe Screw: the governess "can be seen as a reliable narrator telling the story of two haunted chil-

Authentication dren, but she can also be considered an unreliable, neurotic narrator, unwittingly reporting her own hallucinations" (1983, 103). We can now see that the Ich-form demonstrates the victory of convention over imitation in many different ways. The most radical demonstration is provided by "text after death." I suggest this term for such narratives where the lch-narrator narrates his or her own death. The short novel of the Czech writer Bohumil Hrabal, Closely Watched Trains (popularized by a film of the same tide), is such a text. 19 I quote from its conclusion: And then there was a detonation. And I ... lying next to the German soldier, stretched out my hand and opened his stiffening palm and put in it the green four-leaf clover that brings good luck. ... I heard the air pressure rush through the landscape and hiss and whistle on the bare branches of trees and bushes ... but I was choking and blood was gushing out of me. Until the last moment, before I began to lose sight of myself, I was clasping the dead man's hand. (85) Here we have reached the limits of narrating. Text after death is more than nonnatural, it is the product of a physically impossible act-of posthumous writing. Yet the text is accepted by readers as a medium of world construction. It reconfirms emphatically the fact that literary acts are not restricted to the acts of actual speaking and writing. The circle of narrative modes is thus closed. It begins at the nonnatural authoritative Er-form, passes through the simulation of the natural discourse genres, and ends with the nonnatural authoritative Ich-form. The two basic and most popular narrative modes, which despite their formal difference share the same conventional authentication authority, are purely literary, nonnatural discourses. I have posited that fictional texts do not submit to the truth-conditions of the imaging text (Pq). Nor are they bound by the pragmatic conditions of natural texts, as has just been demonstrated.

159

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

4. Subverting Authentication Reaching the limits of narrating (of the narrative act) does not mean that we have reached the limits of the narratable. The narratable transcends the realm of the possible and encompasses the logically impossible. The concept of (logically) impossible worlds has cropped up here and there in this book (Pr.2.2, V.2.1). Now is the time to look at it more closely, because the construction of impossible worlds is part and parcel of a more general anomaly of fiction making, the misuse of authentication. 4.1. Self-voiding narratives. Every narrative mode discussed in the preceding sections possesses a certain degree of authentication force, in some cases conferred purely by convention, in others by a combination of convention and the narrator's credentials. Each of these narrative modes has the capacity to affirm fictional facts, although the character of fictional existence is different for the different modes. Fictional existence, let us recall, is an intensional phenomenon. But if fictional existence depends on the authenticating force of texture, then it is at the mercy of this force. If the texture's authenticating force is null and void, then possibles cannot become fictional facts. It is well known that literature will miss no opportunity to subvert its own foundations. Authentication force has been challenged and ultimately, in modernist and postmodernist fiction, repealed. This "erasure" is one of the most fascinating events in the evolution of literary narrative. It confirms that in the "language game" called literature, violation of norms and conventions is not a destructive but a productive process, a discovery of new ways of meaning production. Let us explain the voiding of the authentication force and its consequences by returning to its performative nature. We know that the performative is valid only if its felicity conditions are met. If a breach of any of these conditions occurs, the act is null and void: no change in the world will be brought about. If I tell you, "You are sentenced to death," you will just laugh, because I have no authority to pass this (or any other) sentence. There is yet another, more subtle, "unhappi-

160

Authentication

ness" of the performative-when it is issued "insincerely." "If I say 'I promise to ... ' without in the least intending to carry out the promised action, perhaps even not believing that it is in my power to carry it out, the promise is hollow" (Austin 1971, 14). Let us call this second "abuse" self-voiding. Self-voiding deprives the performative of its illocutionary force, just as the breach of felicity conditions does. Self-voiding is at the core of fictional experiments that cultivate failure of authentication. Let me single out two narrative modes where the authenticating act is abused by not being performed "seriously'': a. In skaz-narrative the authentication force is undermined by irony. Skaz is a ludic narrative act, a noncommittal, nonbinding play with world construction. 20 In the well-known examples of the Russian skaz, N. V. Gogol's stories "The Overcoat" and "The Nose," the narrative texture moves freely and arbitrarily from the Er-form to the !ch-form, from a lofty, bookish style to colloquial language, from the "omniscient" to the "limited knowledge" posture. The last feature is especially important for the authentication force of skaz. There is an "omniscient" authoritative source in "The Overcoat," which freely constructs states and events of the hero's mental life. So, for example, when Akakij Akakijevic ascends the staircase leading to his tailor's workshop, he "was already speculating how much Petrovic would ask and in his mind [myslenno] resolved to pay no more than two rubles"(542; 232). Akakij's interior monologues are constructed in detail, in a laconic, fragmented style typical of this person: "This is a business, this is," he said to himself, "and to think it should turn out this way." Then, after a short silence, he added: "So that's how it is! ... " This was followed by another silence, a long one, after which he pronounced: "Well there! Who would have now ... what a ... sort of ... that is ... what a turn of events!" (545; 235). Yet suddenly we are faced with a twist: when Akakij sees in a shop window a (French) picture of a seductive woman, the narrator suggests three possible mental reactions but authenticates none of them because: "it is impossible to creep into a man's soul [zalezt' v dusu celoveka] and find out everything he is thinking" (552, 241). Such a

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

statement is in contradiction to the narrator's previous practice and raises fundamental doubts about his seriousness and, consequently, about his authentication authority. Ironic voiding of the conventional procedures of authentication is especially palpable in the conclusion of "The Nose." Commenting on the fictional world that he constructed, the narrator declares his lack of understanding, not only of its fantastic elements but also of the reasons why any author would write such a story. "No, I do not understand it at all [resitel'no ne ponimaju]! But stranger still, and the most incomprehensible of all is, how authors can take up such plots. I confess it's altogether unfathomable, it's like ... no, no, I just do not understand [sovsem ne ponimaju]" (483, 171). The final paragraphs of "The Nose" give away the secret of the Gogolian skaz: it is a pleasurable game of pure storytelling that leaves a fictional world whose existence is, literally, a question. b. In self-disclosing narrative-commonly known as metafiction-the authenticating act is voided by being "laid bare." Fictionmaking procedures are overtly exposed. Self-disclosing narrative is the most telling instance of literature's power to generate new sense by flaunting its hidden, conventional foundations. In the paradigmatic case of metafiction the text simultaneously constructs a fictional world and the story of this construction: "Metafictional novels tend to be constructed on the principle of a fundamental and sustained opposition: the construction of a fictional illusion (as in traditional realism) and the laying bare of that illusion. In other words, the lowest common denominator of metafiction is simultaneously to create a fiction and to make a statement about the creation of that fiction" (Waugh 1984, 6). Postmodernist metafiction (the "nouveau roman," Vladimir Nabokov, Witold Gombrowicz, John Barth, John Fowles, and many others) lays bare not only the world-creating act but all acts and activities of literary communication-reading, interpreting, commenting, criticism, intertextuality (see Hutcheon 1980; Christensen 1981; Brooke-Rose 1981, 464-89; McHale 1987, 112-30, 197-215; Krysinski 1988; Pier 1992; Paterson 1994, 26-39). The performative act of skaz and metafiction has no authentica-

Authentication

tion force; fictional worlds projected by self-voiding and self-disclosing narratives lack authenticity. On the one hand, possibles seem to be brought into fictional existence, since a standard narrative text is written; on the other hand, fictional existence is not achieved, because the text's authentication force is nullified. We have no satisfactory metalanguage for describing the semantic status of narrative worlds lacking authenticity: our thinking and our language are dominated by binary oppositions. Literary narratives proposing worlds without authenticity reveal the limitations of this binarism; they use and abuse the world-constructing force to question the universality and validity of our metalinguistic dichotomies. 21 Self-voiding narratives simulate narrative texture but cannot bestow fictional existence, cannot affirm fictional facts. They subvert the very foundations of fiction making and create constructs suspended between fictional existence and nonexistence. 4.2. Impossible worlds. The voiding of the authentication force of the narrative texture is the result of violations of the pragmatic (felicity) conditions of the performative speech act. However, the collapse of authentication can also be brought about by a semantic strategy, by introducing contradictions into the fictional world. An impossible world in the strict logical sense emerges (Pr.2.2; see also VII.3; Ep.4). How is this feat of imagination achieved, and what is the price paid for it? Let me start with a brief consideration of 0. Henry's story "Roads of Destiny." The text's authoritative narrative constructs a world in which the protagonist dies three times in three different ways. Obviously, according to our theory of authentication, all three conflicting versions of his demise are fully authentic. Juxtaposed, unreconciled, unexplained, they form an impossible world. Since they cannot coexist, none of them exists. The logical structure of the impossible world denies fictional existence to possible entities. Literature has the means for constructing impossible worlds, but at the price of frustrating the whole enterprise: an impossible world cannot be called into fictional existence. The Leibnizian restriction is circumvented but not lifted.

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

In twentieth-century fiction the technique of alternative developments of the story was popularized by Jorge Borges in "The Garden of Forking Paths" (1941), a description of an imaginary "classical" Chinese novel that constructs all the possible branchings of a story line. 22 Borges' text is a model of an infinite generation of fictional worlds. Paradoxically, this hubris of fiction making leads into the trap of a vast impossible world, where mutually contradictory stories cancel out each other. In Robbe-Grillet's La Maison de rendez-vous the authoritative narrative constructs contradictions of several different orders: (1) one arid the same event is introduced in several conflicting versions; (2) a place (Hong-Kong) is and is not the setting of the novel; (3) the same events are ordered in reversed temporal sequence (A precedes B, B precedes A); and (4) one and the same world entity recurs in several modes of existence-as a literary fictional fact, as a theater performance, as a sculpture, as a painting. 23 This last kind of contradiction is especially important for understanding the structuring of impossible fictional worlds. The entities are of different ontological orders; they are brought together by metalepsis, by erasing ontological boundaries (Genette 1972, 245; 1983, 58; see also Brooke-Rose 1981, 333-35; McHale 1987, 120). Robbe-Grillet's construct is a collection of fictional-world fragments that cannot coexist. Robbe-Grillet's narrative puts the structure of the impossible fictional world on display: it is a superimposition of contradictory, irreconcilable alternatives, all of them fully authenticated but none of them a fictional existent. A similar observation has been made by philosophers: the situation in "inconsistent worlds" is "something like a over-printing of discordant pictures or a text designed to equivocate between divergent claims. (It is as though there were superimposed realities, as with the conflation or superposition of distinct action-patterns on a television screen.) ... This can be thought of as taking a number of individually and separately altogether self-consistent worlds, and ramming them together into a composite superimposition" (Rescher and Brandom 1980, 6). The philosophers use this analogy as an argument against the term impossible worlds: "One should avoid speaking of inconsistent worlds as impossible worlds.

Authentication ... Inconsistent object and worlds ... are feasible targets of rational consideration and scrutiny. They too can be meaningfully assumed, supposed, hypothesized, etc. And the supposition of such worlds is emphatically not an invitation to logical chaos. One can reason perfectly cogently and coherently about them" (1980, 4). Indeed, one can, and therefore the distinction between "impossible" and "inconsistent" worlds is spurious. I agree with Lycan, who perceived that semantics "needs" the concept of impossible world, once it accepts the concept of possible world (1994, 39-41). Fictional narrative confirms that impossible worlds can be "supposed" and reasoned about, just as "round square" can be uttered (written) and cogitated. Eco expresses this potential of language by stating that impossible worlds can be "mentioned": "We cannot conceive of worlds furnished with square circles that can be bought for an amount of dollars corresponding to the highest even number. However ... such a world can be mentioned" because "language can name nonexistent and inconceivable entities" (1990, 76; 1994, 81-83). The fact that we can "mention" such worlds does not change their logical structure: they are outside the realm of the possible. If we inspect more closely the status of entities in impossible worlds, we find that they strongly resemble nonexistents. Let us recall that nonexistent entities, such as the present king of France, have no properties; but nonexistents can be mentioned; we can make statements about them even though all these statements are false (Pr.I.I). The writing of impossible worlds is, semantically, a step backward in fiction making; it voids the transformation of nonexistent possibles into fictional entities and thus cancels the entire world-making project. However, literature turns the ruin of its own enterprise into a new achievement: in designing impossible worlds, it poses a challenge to the imagination no less intriguing than squaring the circle. But we have to return once more to La Maison de rendez-vous. We notice that its impossible logicosemantic structure is brought about by an act that flouts the pragmatic conditions of fictional-world construction. The narrative act is tentative, unfinished, crumbling into a series of frustrated attempts. The resulting texture of the novel is a se-

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

quence of drafts, with cuts, new beginnings, corrections, deletions, and additions. 24 La Maison de rendez-vous is a self-disclosing narrative of a most radical type: an overt demonstration of fiction writing as a trial-and-error activity. It thus reveals the close association between the logicosemantic and the pragmatic transgressions of the conventions of fiction making: self-disclosing narrative creates an impossible fictional world. Is this a universal principle in the ruin of fiction making? Should we conclude that the fictional worlds of metafiction are necessarily impossible? Surely, the project of metafiction is to create impossible worlds, to bring about the impossible coexistence of ontologically heterogeneous persons-the actual participants of fictional communication and the fictional artifacts constructed and reconstructed in this communication. In other words, metafiction is a case of metalepsis. 25 Yet how does the metafictional project fare in practice? I tackle this question by investigating one of the most radical instances of metafiction, Italo Calvino's Ifon a W'inters Night a Traveller (1979). There are two main reasons to call this text a radical experiment in metafiction. First, as Nella Cotrupi has pointed out, Calvino's novel, in addition to the standard double-layered structure of metafiction, constructs a third layer, "the fictionalization of the theories and discourse of metafiction itself.. Calvino's text may be seen, therefore, to raise the novel not just to the second degree, that of metafiction, but to a third degree, to what we may call the degree of hypermetafiction'' (1991, 281). 26 Second, Calvino's test is a series of discontinuous narrative fragments. The individual fragments posit po~sible alternatives but leave them unreconciled, nonauthenticated in a gesture of bifurcation typical of impossible-world construction: "My hand might not hold a briefcase, swollen and a bit worn, but might be pushing a square suitcase of plastic material supplied with little wheels, guided by a chrome stick that can be folded up" (12). In the microstructure of this scene the "forking-paths" macrostructure of the novel is reflected: the opening of several incompatible alternatives, the launching of many different stories leading nowhere. All the incompatible

166

Authentication fragments are equally authentic, which means that all of them are nonauthentic. In a typical metafictional turn, Calvino constructs the story of the author and the reader(s). Yet this experiment leads to a paradoxical result: it demonstrates quite clearly that the coexistence of the actual author and readers with fictional characters is impossible. The demonstration is especially telling in the case of the reader. The beginning of the novel is a traditional allocution of a universal actual reader, a discourse akin to an essay on how and what to read, except that the book just read by this reader is Calvino's Ifon a W'inters Night a Traveller. The text preserves its essayistic character when the allocution shifts to an actual reader-type, "the sort of person who, on principle, no longer expects anything of anything" (4). In the next step, but still within the same discourse genre, Calvino descends from the level of reader-type to possible individual readers, those reading on a bus, in a car, at the office desk, at home. These individuals are still posited as actual readers existing outside the fictional world.27 Yet when the process of individuation reaches its last stage, picking from the set of possible readers a particular reader, the reader crosses from the actual into the fictional world, becomes a fullfledged fictional person. Now the text turns from the essayistic to the fictional type (note the reader's conversations and interactions with the fictional bookseller and "the Other Reader") and constructs a new "possible story" (32), located fully in the fictional world. 28 As the reader joins the agential constellation of the fictional persons, so his story joins the set of the ten story fragments the actual reader reads. The fictionalization of the author is no less important for Calvino's deconstruction of the metafictional technique (see Segre 1979) but is achieved in a different, though no less ingenious, way. Three fictional authors appear in the novel's fictional world. The first one is a fictional counterpart of the actual ltalo Calvino, the transworld identity being ensured by the rigid designator of the proper name. Second, the actual ltalo Calvino has another counterpart in the fictional world, the fictional writer Silas Flannery. We can claim

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

that "Silas Flannery" is an alias of "Italo Calvino" (see Pr.2.1; see also Ep.4), because the transworld identity of the actual and the fictional writer is established by the identity of roles. Flannery had "the idea of writing a novel composed only of beginnings of novels. The protagonist could be a Reader who is continually interrupted" (197). Finally, the fictional Calvino and Flannery are joined by a fictional "anti-author," the translator and counterfeiter Marana, whose machinations and adventures frustrate the enterprise of writing and complicate the story of reading the novel Ifon a W'inters Night a Traveller. 29 The impossible blending of actual persons (author, reader) and fictional persons, which seemed to be the constitutive feature of metafiction, cannot be sustained in world-constructing practice: the author and the reader are absorbed into the fictional world, are reconstructed as fictional counterparts, and the ontological contradiction disappears (see also Segre 1979; McHale 1987, 197-98, 215). The stories of the authors and the readers become strains in the "forkingpaths" structure. But this is, literally, just one part of the story. The other is that the denied metalepsis leaves a divide within the fictional world. The basic characteristic of metafiction, the two-layered structure of its fictional world, remains intact. The fictional auth.or is assigned a particular, exclusive activity, different from the actions of other fictional persons-writing the novel If on a W'inters Night a Traveller. Similarly, the erotic story of the fictional readers does not erase the story of reading. Calvino's reader is a picaro, except that his or her role is to string together not stories of adventure but adventures of reading. Today's picaro does not have to leave the armchair or the bed to visit many exotic places and times and to experience many exciting adventures. To be transported literally into a fictional world, the reader has to send there a counterpart; but to be transported there figuratively, he or she just has to find the right book to read.

168

I

CHAPTER VII

(TE)

Saturation

A necessary consequence of the fact that fictional worlds are human constructs is their incompleteness (Pr.2.4). It would take a text of infinite length to construct a complete fictional world. Finite texts, the only texts that humans are capable of producing, are bound to create incomplete worlds. For this reason, incompleteness is a universal extensional property of the fictional-world structuring. 1 But we should recognize that the fictional text's texture manipulates incompleteness in many different ways and degrees, determining the world's saturation. We arrive at an important distinction, up to now unnoticed in fictional semantics, between the extensional property of world incompleteness and the intensional property of world saturation.

r. Facts and Gaps The texture of a fictional text is the result of the choices the author makes when writing the text. When the author produces an explicit texture, he or she constructs a fictional fact (provided that the felicity conditions of authentication are satisfied). If no texture is written (zero texture), a gap arises in the fictional-world structure. Gaps, let us repeat, are a necessary and universal feature of fictional worlds. Yet

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

particular fictional texts vary the number, the extent, and the functions of the gaps by varying the distribution of zero texture. This variability has been noted in literary semantics. Thus, for instance, I have indicated (Dolezel 1980) how the radically incomplete physique of the romantic hero serves the stylistic aims of romantic narrative: a physical detail surrounded by emptiness is brought into sharp focus and thus offered for symbolic reading. Pavel has observed that "authors and cultures have the choice to minimize or maximize" the "unavoidable incompleteness" of fictional worlds; he has suggested that cultures and periods of a "stable world view" tend to minimize incompleteness, whereas periods of "transition and conflict" tend to maximize it (1986, 108, 109). Ryan uses the degrees of incompleteness as a criterion for a triadic typology of fictional worlds. She has demonstrated how the types are generated by a gradual emptying of the "ideal" complete world model. Realistic fiction strives for the highest degree of completeness, without ever being able to reach the ideal (Ryan 1984, 131-34). Dallenbach has come independently to a similar conclusion: the reality-like completeness of realistic narratives is no more than an illusion "destined precisely to camouflage [their] blanks" (1984, 201). The variable saturation of fictional worlds is a challenge to the reader, a challenge that increases as the saturation decreases. When the reader reads and processes the fictional text, he or she reconstructs the fictional world constructed by the author. But what does the reader do with the zero texture and with the world's gaps? Wolfgang Iser has given an answer to this question in a series of well-known contributions (1971, 1974, 1978). Let it be recorded that Iser's model is interactive; it asserts the control of the literary text over the act of reading: "The process of assembling the meaning of the text is not a private one, for although it does mobilize the subjective disposition of the reader, it does not lead to daydreaming but to the fulfillment of conditions that have already been structured in the text" (1978, 49-50).

Surprisingly, however, zero texture is not among the "structured" textual conditions the reader has to "fulfill." Instead of positing gaps 170

Saturation as immutable projections of the world-constructing texture, Iser (both following and criticizing Ingarden) sees them as stimuli or propellants for the reader's imagination: "Without the elements of indeterminacy, the gaps in the text, we should not be able to use our imagination" (1974, 283, see also 1978, 194). In recreating the world, the reader's imagination "fills in the gaps left by the text itsel£" Necessarily, "each individual reader will fill in the gaps in his own way. As he reads, he will make his own decision as to how the gap is to be filled" (1974, 280; see also 1971). With respect to gaps, Iser's reader does not submit to the text's control but makes his or her own decisions. The filling in of gaps is a subjective act and results in "realizations" that cannot be mutually compared or assessed; they are "simply different" (Iser 1974, 281). Having escaped from the suprasubjective control of the text through the gaps, the Iserian reader reconstructs the fictional world guided by his or her life experience, that is, by his or her communion with complete objects and worlds. 2 The filling in, which was claimed to be an exercise of imagination, is in fact an act of Gleichschaltung: the diversity of fictional worlds is reduced to the uniform structure of the complete, Carnapian world. Mimesis, which was jettisoned by modernist and postmodernist world makers, returns with a vengeance to normalize the reader's world reconstruction. 3

2.

Implicitness

The opposition gaps/facts is only a crude representation of the structuring of fictional worlds that is due to the presence/absence of texture. Both the constructing texture and the constructed fictional world are more finely modulated. We start our study of this intriguing phenomenon by looking at a simple case-the local setting of fictional stories. The texture of Franz Kafka's ''A Hunger Artist" [Ein Hungerkiinstler] (1924) states explicitly that the artist was taken by his impressario to many cities and countries in Europe, but it is silent about any specific place and especially about the place of his final feat. The locale of the protagonist's death is an irrecoverable gap in 171

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

the fictional world. 4 Kafkas gapping of local setting is especially telling when contrasted with James Joyce's Dubliners (1914). Beginning with the title, the geography of Joyce's fictional world is explicitly and unambiguously determined by the name of various locales in the Irish city. It is a fictional fact that the setting of Joyce's world is Dublin. The third case, the constructional technique employed by Ernest Hemingway in ''A Clean Well-Lighted Place" (1930), is the most interesting. There is no mention of the country where the story takes place, until we arrive at the following sentence: "The old man ... paid for the drinks, leaving half a pesata tip" (381). Obviously, this sentence constructs an action, not a place. But it identifies the country implicitly, gives it away as a semantic "bonus" in the phrase "half a peseta tip." It is legitimate to claim that Spain is the locale of the short story's fictional world. 5 6 Today we know that implicitness is a universal feature of texts. In everything we say or write-in conversation, journalistic prose, oratory, legal documents, religious texts, and so on-unsaid meanings are implied. The meaning of all texts is a composite of overt and covert semantic constituents. Although Prince writes specifically about the narrative text, his statement applies to texts in general: "Much of the information imparted is explicitly asserted, that is, presented in such a way that it can be naturally questioned or denied.... Much information may also be communicated implicitly: rather than being asserted, it is more or less strongly suggested through contextual, rhetorical, connotative or other means" (1982, 36). Not surprisingly, implicit meaning has become one of the central issues of the general theory of text and text processing (see especially Ducrot 1972; Eco 1979; Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1982, 1986; van Dijk and Kintsch 1983; van den Heuvel 1985, 65-85; Graesser and Clark 1985; Magliano and Graesser 1991). While implicitness is omnipresent in verbal communication, different text types tolerate it differently. It seems to be common in oratory, in some journalistic genres, and in religious texts. It is detrimental to scientific texts, since it hinders their cognitive effectiveness. But in literary texts, implicitness is cultivated, it is

172

Saturation a factor of their aesthetic effectiveness: "Literary discourse is a locus of semantic indirection" (Riffaterre 1983, 112). The popularity of the implicit in literature explains why literary interpretation is primarily, or maybe exclusively, recovery of implicit meaning.7 In literary criticism, two interpretive methods are commonly practiced. The first one is intuitive and subjectivistic. A meaning is suggested that the critic feels or believes to be "hidden" in the text; the text is made to mean what the interpreter wants it to mean. The second interpretive method is ideological: implicit meaning of a text is obtained from an ideological system the critic has adopted. The procedure is reductionist: all texts are semantically interpreted by recourse to one and the same source; the meaning of a particular text is a derivative of a universal ideology. Clearly, these popular interpretive methods impose rather than recover implicit meaning. Literary semantics based on text theory parts company with them by insisting that (1) there are markers of implicit meaning in the explicit texture; and (2) implicit meaning is recovered by specifiable procedures. These claims express what Ducrot has called "unilateral dependence" between explicit and implicit meaning: an understanding of the explicit meaning is necessary for grasping the implicit, while the explicit can be understood without recognizing the implicit (1972, u; see also Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1986, 6). 8 How is implicit meaning marked, grounded, in the explicit texture? According to Ducrot, a lacuna, that is, some felt absence, is the most suggestive marker of implicitness: "The implicit sentence is marked, and marked only, by a gap in the sequence of explicit sentences" (1972, 8). Syntactical ellipsis is the most potent marker of this kind, since "every text ... is in some way making the addressee expect (and foresee) the fulfillment of every unaccomplished sentence" (Eco 1979, 214). Kerbrat-Orecchioni, while recognizing the role oflacunae, highlights the opposite kind of marking: the presence in the texture of some signals or indexes, particularly hints, insinuations, and allusions, most of them found in co-text or context (1986, 43-47).9 We are far from knowing all the markers of implicit mean-

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

ing, but it is reasonable to assume that they are both negative (lacunae) and positive (hints). If we accept that explicit texture marks implicit meaning, how do we go about recovering it? Since antiquity, the recovery of implicit meaning has been closely associated with the logic of inference. Inference is conceived narrowly when defined as implication (entailment), that is, as "an act or a series of acts of reasoning which persons perform when, from a proposition or set of propositions, P, they conclude a proposition or set of propositions, Q" (Bradley and Swartz 1979, 194). In contemporary logic, implication has been joined by a second procedure of inference, baptized presupposition (in Strawson 1952, 175). Presupposition has been the topic oflively exchange between logicians, philosophers, and (text) linguists (see, for instance, van Fraassen 1968, 1971; Bellert 1970; Lyons 1977, 2:592-606; Gazdar 1979, 89-128). But it seems to be one of those notions that become more obfuscated as the literature devoted to them grows. Quite early, Keenan recognized that the term has been stretched to cover both a logical ("Strawsonian'') and a pragmatic notion. The logical presupposition is defined on truth-conditional grounds: ''A sentence S logically presupposes a sentence S' just in case S logically implies S' and the negation of S, ~S, also logically implies S' ." One of Keenan's examples: "Fred went back/did not go back to Boston'' presupposes "Fred has been in Boston'' (1971, 45, 47). The pragmatic notion refers to "certain culturally defined conditions or contexts" that have to be satisfied "in order for an utterance of that sentence to be understood (in its literal, intended meaning)"; in other words, "an utterance of a sentence pragmatically presupposes that its context is appropriate." In some languages, for example, the sex of the speaker is presupposed by the grammatical form of the verb (1971, 49-50). These two notions of presupposition are clearly different, indeed, incompatible, but the semanticians continue to stretch the concept to subsume all the conditions that must be satisfied for a sentence (utterance) to be understood. lo In a radical reaction to this inflation, Lycan has called for a removal of the concept from semantics (1984, 78-108). But we cannot deny the role of presuppositions in the recovery of 174

Saturation

implicit meaning just because there is confusion around the notion. To demonstrate this role, let me return to our example from Hemingway. It is the unexpressed presupposition, "Peseta is the currency of Spain," that makes it possible to infer that the action of the story, ''A Clean Well-Lighted Place," takes place in Spain. Interestingly, presupposition is one of the few concepts of modern logic that has been welcomed into the study of literature-by Prince (1973), Chatman (1978), and Culler (1981). Prince has rephrased the truth-conditional definition of presupposition in informal terms: presupposition of a statement is "the semantic element common to that statement, its negation, and its corresponding yes-no question" (1982, 41; for Culler's formulation, see 1981, n1). 11 Indeed, implicitness based on presupposition is a major source of fictional-world construction and reconstruction. Prince drew our attention to existential presuppositions "which indicate 'what there is"' (1982, 43). In. other words, an entity is often introduced into the fictional world by way of existential presuppositions. They figure especially prominently in the "opening sentences in novels" (Culler 1981, rr4-15). Let us recall the first sentence of Dostoevsky's The Idiot: ''.At about nine o'clock in the morning at the end of November, during a thaw, the Warsaw train was approaching Petersburg at full speed" (27). One of the existential presuppositions of this sentence-"there are trains" -inserts this means of transportation into Dostoevsky's fictional world, constructs it as a piece of its "furniture," and thus makes it available for the fictional persons' travel. For the semantics of fictional narrative, inferences regarding aspects and constituents of acting are of special significance. We know already (II.1) that in action descriptions any of the factors of acting can be deleted (see Davidson 1980, 54; van Dijk 1977, 108-rr). If, for example, the agent is not expressed in the constructing texture of an action (say, by the use of a passive construction), we infer his or her existence. Two sentences from the first chapter of Franz Kafka's The Trial provide an instructive example: "You are under arrest.... Proceedings have now been instituted against you" [Sie sind ja verhaftet. ... Das Verfahren ist nun einmal eingeleitet] (8). Knowing that ar175

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

rests are made on somebody's orders, the reader infers that an anonymous person or institution is behind Joseph K's arrest. The most popular inferring in the domain of acting concerns the mental traits and the overall character of fictional persons. Explicit information about exterior fictional facts, such as the environment in which the person lives, his or her relationships with other persons, and so on, can be tapped for inferring his or her internal characteristics. But certainly the main source of inference is the persons' acting-verbal, mental, and physical (Margolin 1986, 208; 1987, 113). In other words, from what a fictional person does, we infer who he or she is. Yet many precautions have to be taken when inferring the mental traits of fictional persons from their actions. Corrections might be necessary, especially if it is discovered that the acts that served as the source of the inference were pretended, insincere, or deceiving (Margolin 1986, 215-16). And we have to reckon with persons who act inconsistently or even irrationally-Nastasja Filipovna and Rogozin in Dostoevsky's The Idiot (III.1.3). The reconstruction by inference of the overall personality structure is especially treacherous, and we can hardly expect more than tentative results-one of the most telling testimonies to the openness of literary interpretation. Readers will always disagree and critics argue about whether Constant's Adolphe was irresponsible, immoral, and, therefore, guilty of Ellenore's death (see Charles 1977, 241-42). While in these and similar examples the logical procedure of presupposition has been applied, it is obvious that by itself it provides us only with trivial implied meanings, reformulations of the explicit texture. "When they left Tostes Madame Bovary was pregnant" implies "When they left Tostes Madame Bovary expected a child." The same utterance presupposes "Madame Bovary no longer lives in Tostes." Logical inference is necessary but not sufficient for the processing of implicit meaning. Cognitive operations have to be activated in order to recover more than trivial or self-evident implied meanings. A return to our initial example shows that in order to formulate the presupposition "The peseta is the currency of Spain," we have to search in our store of knowledge, in our encyclopedia, for the term "peseta." The same

Saturation holds true about the inference of an agency behind Joseph K.'s arrest, which inference rests on our knowledge of the structure of action. In most cases, inference by presupposition requires knowledge about the world; a logical procedure has a cognitive base. 12 The introduction of cognitive factors into inferring necessarily relativizes the procedure and makes the implied meaning indeterminate. The origin of the indeterminancy can be demonstrated in the case of the enthymeme, 13 the oldest known device of implicitness. Let us again proceed from an example, this time borrowed from Kerbrat-Orecchioni: "The bell rang twice, it must be the postman." The implicit major premise is 'The postman usually rings twice"' (1986, 166). But, clearly, this enthymeme cannot be construed by purely logical means; we have to know about the postman's habitual signal in order to posit the unexpressed premise. If the interpreter had no knowledge of this habit, he or she would not be able to make the inference. Or, if in some other culture it is the milkman who rings twice, a different enthymeme would obtain: "The bell rang twice, it must be the milkman." Encyclopedia as shared communal knowledge varies with cultures, social groups, historical epochs, and for this reasons relativizes the recovery of implicit meaning.

3. Fictional Encyclopedia This much has been stated by Eco. I propose to substantially expand the range of encyclopedic knowledge: the actual-world encyclopedia is just one among numerous encyclopedias of possible worlds. Knowledge about a possible world constructed by a fictional text constitutes a fictional encyclopedia. Fictional encyclopedias are many and diverse, but all of them to a greater or lesser degree digress from the actual-world encyclopedia. Modernist and postmodernist fiction offers striking examples of this divergence. The geography of Gabriel Garcia Marquez' novel Love in the Time of Cholera (1985) illustrates a minimal but nevertheless significant departure. The fictional text provides many names of actual locations-Ricohacha, Rionegro, the Magdalena River, the Caribbean, the Andes, and so 177

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

on-for the reader to infer with the aid of the actual-world encyclopedia that the story takes place in Colombia. But the main locale of the action, the town of La Manga, cannot be found on any map of Colombia (just as we could not find the Macondo of Garcia Marquez's previous novels). 14 Garcia Marquez does not describe the actual Colombia but constructs a possible Colombia. His fictional characters possess, as part of their encyclopedia, the mental map of this possible country. 15 They invoke it in their deictic references, in the presuppositions, and in their inferring from the beginning of the story. When examining, in the opening chapter, the body ofJeremiah de Saint-Amour, Dr. Juvenal Urbino "realized that he could not get to the Cathedral before the Gospel reading" (7). Dr. Urbino can draw this conclusion only from the internalized fictional encyclopedia where the information about the distance between his dead friend's house and the cathedral is recorded. Now a significant cognitive difference between actual readers and fictional persons comes into sight. The mental map of Colombia stored by Garcia Marquez's readers shows Cartegena, Aracarata (Garcia Marquez' birthplace), Bogota, Medellin, and Cali (because of their notoriety), and possibly other actual places. The fictional inhabitants of Garcia Marquez' world do not know any of these places. Their mental map centers around La Manga, a place that does not at all figure on the actual readers' map. The fictional encyclopedia is the only store of knowledge of the fictional persons; they have no access to the actual-world encyclopedia. The actual readers have a wider cognitive range: they store.the actual-world encyclopedia, and they can acquire the fictional one by reading Garcia Marquez' text. In fact, to orient themselves in the fictional world, to make valid inferences and to recover implicit meaning, the readers must include in their cognitive store the corresponding fictional encyclopedia. I spoke about a minimal departure in Garcia Marquez' case, because the fictional and the actual-world encyclopedia overlap to a large degree. Fantastic fiction provides us with numerous examples of fictional encyclopedias that contradict the actual-world counterpart, as any visitor to the nonnatural or supernatural worlds quickly dis178

Saturation

covers. As he or she crosses from the natural into the nonnatural world, his or her encyclopedia has to be modified. The visitor has to learn the encyclopedia of the alien world. The narrator-protagonist of Bruno Schulz's story "Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass" (1937)-from the collection of the same title-goes through this experience. Visiting his father, who is dead in the natural world but alive in the surrealist world of the sanatorium, he comes equipped with the actual-world encyclopedia. He soon discovers that he has to relearn everything that in his encyclopedia pertains to time. The world of the sanatorium operates on a time pattern different from that of the actual world. The visitor's principal informer, Dr. Gotard, explains to him the principle of fictional-world time: "We have put back the dock. Here we are always late by a certain interval of time of which we cannot define the length" (117). At this point the narrator makes an inference about his father: "In that case ... my father must be on his deathbed or about to die" (117). But the inference is incorrect, because the narrator proceeds from a limited knowledge; he does not yet know the most important feature of the time shift: "Here we reactivate the past with all its possibilities, therefore also including the possibility of recovery'' (117). As the protagonist-narrator becomes fluent in the encyclopedia of the sanatorium world, his reasoning leads to correct conclusions. Now he can explain even the most bizarre events, such as his father's simultaneous appearance at two place. The natural-world encyclopedia leads to a logical dilemma, whereas there is none when the sanatorium world's encyclopedia is applied: "How do I reconcile all this? Has Father been sitting in the restaurant, driven there by an unhealthy greed, or has he been lying in bed feeling very ill? Are there two fathers? Nothing of the kind. The problem is the quick decomposition of time no longer watched with incessant vigilance" (127). The peak of understanding is reached when the visitor is able to comment on and evaluate the fictional-world's time pattern: "Time put back-it sounded good, but what does it come to in reality? Does anyone here get time at its full value, a true time, time cut off from a fresh bolt of doth, smelling of newness and dye? Quite the

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

contrary. It is used-up time, worn out by other people, a shabby time full of holes, like a sieve" (131). This valuation reveals how deeply the narrator's natural-world origin is inscribed in his encyclopedia. He passes judgment by comparing the remembered temporal order of his native world and that experienced in the world visited. Recognizing the vacuity of time in the world of the sanatorium, he decides to flee, although he will never again find a real home in his native world. Schulz's story constructs two parallel worlds, one natural, the other nonnatural, with two fictional encyclopedias, one corresponding to the actual-world encyclopedia, the other one deviating from it. The most radical departure from the actual world encyclopedia is the encyclopedia of impossible worlds (Pr.2.2, Vl-4-2, Ep.4). In the last section of his novel 98. 6 (1975), Ronald Sukenick constructs what appears as a counterfactual, but not impossible, Israel: "In Israel there are places where the jungle comes down to the sea.... Despite the jungle and the deserts inland Israel has perfect weather year round. ... Automobiles have long been exiled from the cities and towns where transportation depends on various beasts of burden camels burros oxen" (168, 171). The inhabitants of the fictional Israel include these facts in their encyclopedia and act and reason accordingly. Thus, when the Ich-narrator wants to visit his friend Yizak Fawzi, he catches "a caravan across to Jordan" and enjoys the camel ride (168). At first reading, the conditions in this land (including intensive sexual activity) suggest that it is a utopia, succeeding and replacing the failed utopia of the California settlement (narrated in section 2 of the novel). But then we learn about the logical principles by which Sukenick's Israel is constructed: "Here in Israel the extraordinary is run-of-the-mill. We are capable of living in a state in which certain things that have happened have not. At the same time that they have. . . . The way you enter The State of Israel is through Psychosynthesis. In the processes of Psychosynthesis as in the subconscious as in the laws of physics there is no negation" (179). Now we see that the compossibility of jungles and deserts in Israel is merely a geographical counterfactual. A much more radical project is implemented in the last section of Sukenick's novel: a radical logical rupture, the replace180

Saturation ment of standard (classical) logic by nonstandard logic. Inspired by a popular version of quantum mechanics, Sukenick experiments with an impossible fictional world constructed according to a Schrodingerian encyclopedia, an encyclopedia where "there is no negation." For a mind storing a Schrodingerian encyclopedia, logical principles of impossible worlds become comprehensible. The immensely varied fictional encyclopedias guide the recovery of implicit meaning in fictional texts. In order to reconstruct and interpret a fictional world, the reader has to reorient his cognitive stance to agree with the world's encyclopedia. In other words, knowledge of the fictional encyclopedia is absolutely necessary for the reader to comprehend a fictional world. The actual-world encyclopedia might be useful, but it is by no means universally sufficient; for many fictional worlds it is misleading, it provides not comprehension but misreading. The readers have to be ready to modify, supplement, or even discard the actual-world encyclopedia. Like Schulz's hero, they must background the knowledge of their actual domicile and become cognitive residents of the fictional world they visit through the act of reading. As long as the reader reads, his or her knowledge expands by incorporating further and further fictional encyclopedias. The reader's encyclopedia is one of those "dynamic" knowledge structures that "must be able to change as a result of new experiences" (Schank 1986, 7). A final point about the fictional-world encyclopedia: the explicit markers of implicitness, such as lacunae, hints, innuendoes, and so on, are local triggers, but the fictional encyclopedia is a global condition of the recovery of implicit meaning. Our interpretive decisions and the reconstruction of the fictional world are guided by a cognitive macroresource .

4. Saturation Function Throughout this chapter, we have observed the dependence of the fictional world's facts and gaps on the explicit, implicit, and zero texture of the constructing text. Now we express this dependence in 181

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

Schema4 W(I)

T

Implicit

Zero---- ---------------------

I

Determinate

•

Indeterminate

Q

Gap

terms of a special intensional function, the function of saturation. Let us start by calling the distribution of explicit, implicit, and zero texture the text's density. In many texts, and particularly literary texts, density shows certain regularities. 16 If we perceive a regularity of density, we can say that a three-value intensional function is supported by the texture. It projects the text's density onto the fictional world structuring its saturation: the explicit texture constructs the determinate domain, the implicit texture the indeterminate domain, and zero texture the domain of gaps. Schema 4 is a representation of the intentional function of saturation. The determinate domain represents the solid core of the fictional world, its determinate facts. Thanks to their mode of constructionexplicit texture-all fictional facts are of the same semantic status. The core is supplemented by the fuzzy domain of indeterminate 182

Saturation facts. Because the indeterminate fictional facts are constructed by implicit texture and have to be recovered by a relativized procedure of inference, their semantic status cannot be uniform .. Some fictional facts constructed implicitly are quite definite, such as Hemingway's Spain; others resemble suggestions or hypotheses, such as the character of Constant's Adolphe. Yet even the fictional fact "This is Spain" (in Hemingway's story) remains somewhat indeterminate, because of the vicissitudes of implicit meaning recovery. If a reader does not know that the peseta is the currency of Spain, the fictional fact will not be included in the reconstructed fictional world. If the reader is a pedant, he might claim that the story takes place in Mexico or somewhere in South America. Searching diligently through dictionaries and encyclopedias, the pedant will namely discover that the word peseta is used in colloquial Mexican Spanish to designate twenty-five centavos. He or she will also find the expression peseta columnaria, which in some South American countries applied to a coin with a royal coat of arms between columns. In any case, inference always leads to fictional facts less determinate than those constructed by explicit statements. Kerbrat-Orecchioni speaks about "a scale" of implicitness, noting that its markers "can be more or less strongly coded, some insistently inviting such and such interpretation, while others, more timid, are content to be only vague, capricious and chancy indications of a value that the structure bears only by accident" (1986, 48). In plain English, implicit meaning is suggestive rather than definite. Because of this property of implicit texture, indeterminate fictional facts are plastic, and the fictional-world maker can use them for different purposes-to construct a background for determinate facts, to style a domain in an "impressionistic" manner, to create a zone of ambiguity, and so on. The opposition of foreground/background has been invoked by Martinez-Bonati to demonstrate the fundamental difference between the actual-world and the fictional-world structuring. Using as contrastive framework Nicolai Hartmann's hierarchical model of the actual world-constituted by the material, organic, mental, and spiritual levels-Martinez-Bonati has pointed out that in fictional worlds

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

any of these levels can be backgrounded and thus the world's hierarchy redefined. For example, Wolfgang Goethe, in his novel Die Wahlverwandtschaften, suppresses the material and organic levels and constructs explicitly only the mental and spiritual levels. A telling instance of this manipulation is the absence of the material setting, but its main manifestation is the structuring of Goethe's fictional person: "Here, the highest possible definiteness is achieved not in the physical side of the characters, that is perceptible to the senses, but in their moral traits" (Martinez-Bonati 1976, 179). Fictional-world structuring has a stratification of its own-a determinate foreground and a vague background. This stratification is a variable, as indicated by the fact that in Goethe's novel the mental and spiritual ("das SeelischGeistige") constitutes the foreground, whereas the behavioristic method puts the sensual ("das Sinnliche") into the foreground (1976, 182). The saturation function is perfectly compatible with MartinezBonati's fictional-world stratification. Both reaffirm the structural specificity of fictional worlds vis-a-vis the actual world. The intensional function of saturation confirms that the laws of the fictionalworlds sovereignty are inscribed in the fictional text. But these laws are not protected and enforced by any extratextual authority. Therefore, they can be and are ignored by many readers and interpreters. This is especially true about the law of the world's saturation. No semantics of gaps and implicit meaning, no rules ofinference will influence a reader who wants to read "suspiciously," that is, who sees in every expression a clue to a secret, hidden meaning (Eco 1992, 48-49). Although there is no punishment for violating the sovereignty of fictional worlds, there is a reward for respecting it. When the reader avoids prejudicial reading, his or her reconstruction of the fictional world becomes a creative act.

I

CHAPTER VIII

(A)

Modern Myth

The concepts of authentication and saturation, explained in chapters VI and VII, are theoretical tools indispensable for understanding the fundamental features of fictional worlds, their coming into existence, and their structuring. They are especially indispensable in analyses and interpretations of the experiments in modernist and postmodernist fiction of the twentieth century, such as self-voiding narratives, conventionalized Ich-form, metafiction, impossible fictional worlds, and so on. In this, the last chapter of this book, I direct the basic theoretical concepts of the possible-worlds semantics of fictionality toward a particularly fascinating creation of twentieth-century fiction making: the modern myth.

1.

The Classical and the Modern Myth

From the very beginning of culture, humans have sought to understand the world in which they live and toil. Both intellect and imagination have been engaged in the service of that search. The most ancient, mythological imagination provided an understanding of the human world by surrounding it with vast alien spaces, seats of nonhuman or superhuman powers and individuals. The alethic struc-

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

Schema 5 W(E)

9 0

Natural Supernatural

. ···r·

..•., ..,.,••\..., .,.. ., ... .., . ..... ......

Mythological World

w; (!)-Hybrid

W

.-• ••-

W

W

W2 (!)-Visible/Invisible

Kafka's Worlds

W(I)

At-- -

---- ~

\::)

Q Q Q

Belyj's World

0 Government

Visible Invisible Shadows Phantoms

Party

ture of the mythological world is dyadic, 1 and the natural and the supernatural domains are separated by a sharp boundary (V.6.1). The relationships of power and accessibility are asymmetrical: the natural domain is under the governance of supernatural beings who have ac186

Modern Myth cess into their fiefdom, although often in material bodies or special guises. The human inhabitants of the natural domain are powerless vis-a-vis their supernatural lords and are denied access into their Edenic habitat. Human fate is governed by nonhuman forces or beings, which neither individuals nor humanity as a whole can control or mollify. The denial of physical access has crippling consequences for the human knowledge of the supernatural. Since knowledge cannot be gained by direct observation, humans have to rely on self-appointed informers and their subjective, unverifiable reports. This restatement of the semantic structure of the mythological world is necessary for understanding its transformation into the modern myth of the twentieth century. Two kinds of semantic transformations are involved, and, therefore, two variants of the modern myth emerge: (1) The boundary between the natural and supernatural domains is removed and their modal opposition neutralized. The dyadic mythological world is transformed into a unified hybrid world. (2) The boundary between the two domains is preserved, as well as their asymmetrical relationships, but the modal (extensional) opposition is replaced by an intensional contrast of saturation (VIl.4). Both domains of the world are natural, but one of them, constructed explicitly, is determinate, "visible," the other one, constructed implicitly, indeterminate, "invisible." Schema 5 is a representation of the transformation of the classical mythological world into the modern-myth structures.

2.

The Hybrid World

The hybrid world, created by Franz Kafka, has had a tremendous impact on modernist and postmodernist fiction. Because the boundary that divides the fictional world of the classical myth is dissolved, the hybrid world is a coexistence, in one unified fictional space, of the physically possible and physically impossible fictional entities (persons, events). Physically impossible events cannot be interpreted as miraculous interventions from the supernatural domain, since no such domain exists; all phenomena and events of the hybrid world,

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

both those physically possible and those physically impossible, are generated within this world, spontaneously and haphazardly. The alethic conditions in the hybrid world require us to abandon the natural/ supernatural opposition. I refer to the entities in the hybrid world that violate physical possibility as "bizarre." A model of Kafka's hybrid world is provided in his short text entitled ''A Crossbreed" [Eine Kreuzung] (1917). The unique animal of this story, "half kitten, halflamb" [halb Katzchen, halb Lamm], demonstrates all the features of hybridization: (1) it has some properties of the cat-the head and the claws, and some of the lamb-the size and the shape; (2) it possesses properties that both animals share-the eyes, the coat, the movements, and the restlessness [die Unruhe]; (3) it lacks some features of its original species-"it cannot mew and abhors rats" [miauen kann es nicht und von Ratten hat es Abscheu]. Finally and most importantly, in addition to the features derived, inherited, from its "parents," the hybrid acquires emergent properties of its own; it is alien to both cats and lambs and seems to possess some human properties: "Did this cat with the soul of a lamb also have the ambition to be human" [Menschenehrgeiz]? (303, 395). To sum up, the bizarre hybrid behaves as a cat, as a lamb, as neither, and, tentatively, as a human being. 2 The most famous story of Kafka's hybrid world is "The Metamorphosis" [Die Verwandlung] (1912). A physically impossible event happens for no reason and without any explanation: one morning Gregor Samsa wakes up in the form of an Ungeziefer (pest, vermin).3 Gregor has changed from a human being into a hybrid form with both human and animal features. The bizarre event is not yet fully domesticated. Although Gregor's family and other human inhabitants of the hybrid world do not try to explain the metamorphosis as a supernatural event, they react emotionally as if it were one-with horror and revulsion. In the story ''A Country Doctor [Ein Landarzt] (1917), the hybrid world is fully established; the unexpected discovery of a pair of horses and a groom in an unused pigsty is greeted with amusement by the doctor and his maid. The maid's comment indicates that she understands perfectly the workings of the hybrid world: "One never 188

Modern Myth knows what is in store in one's own house" [Man weisst nicht, was fur Dinge man im eigenen Hause vorratig hat] (124; 164). The bizarre, the physically impossible, is in the midst of the human world, waiting there to be discovered or to interfere, purely by chance. Having been lured into the hybrid world by "a false alarm on the night bell" [Fehllauten der Nachtglocke], the doctor, riding a truly hybrid equipage-"with an earthly vehicle, unearthly horses" (128; 170)cannot escape from its modality. Once he had discovered the hybrid world, Kafka used its semantic potential to generate many and diverse stories. In "The Cares of a Family Man" [Die Sorge des Hausvater] (1917), a hybrid thing-being cohabits with people in their house and even engages in simple conversations. In "The Hunter Gracchus" [Der Jager Gracchus] (1917), the modal conditions of the hybrid world make it possible for a dead man to coexist with living people. To be precise, Gracchus, quite in accordance with the semantics of the hybrid world, is both dead and "in a certain sense" [gewissermasen] alive too (287; 368). I believe that the modus of the hybrid world also strongly influences the wellknown story "The Judgment" [Das Urteil] (1912). Strictly speaking, no bizarre event happens in this narrative, but the father's unexpected curse and Georg's self-destructive reaction are so hyperbolized that they produce the effect of the bizarre. Finally, "A Report for an Academy" [Ein Bericht fur eine Akademie] (1917) is a self-parody of the hybrid world, specifically, of the "Metamorphosis": an animal becomes a hybrid being, acquiring essential human features but at the same time preserving some properties of the ape nature [Affennatur]. In this story, the process of hybridization is perfectly natural: the ape becomes an anthropoid by persistent and diligent learning.4 3.

The Visible/Invisible World

This variant of.the modern myth emerges independently, but almost simultaneously, in the fiction of Andrej Belyj and Franz Kafka. Although the two writers did not know each other's work and were probably not even aware of each other's existence, the fictional worlds

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

of their most accomplished novels, Belyj's Petersburg (1916) and Kafka's The Trial (1925) and The Castle (1926), reveal a profound semantic similarity.5 As already indicated, the split in the fictional world is brought about by textural strategies of the saturation function (VIl.4): the facts of the visible (determinate) domain are constructed explicitly, those of the invisible (indeterminate) domain implicitly. Thus in Belyj's Petersburg, the senator is a person of the visible d9main, his properties, actions, and setting are determinate: "My senator had just reached his sixty-eighth year" (5; 5); ''Apollon Apollonovic raised his bald head and strode out of the room'' (9; 7); "Nikolaj Appolonovic's quarters consisted of rooms, a bedroom, a study and a reception room'' (40; 27). In contrast, the senator's superiors are not explicitly constructed; their existence is inferred from a texture that expresses action without specifying its agent(s) (by the common device of passive voice): ''Apollon Apollonovic Ableuchov was peremptorily struck from the list of candidates for an exceptionally important post" (385; 232). It is by the same device-deleting the agent from the action-constructing texture-that Kafka creates the invisible domain in The Trial. Let me repeat the words (see VII.2) addressed to Joseph K. by the wardens in the opening scene of the novel: "You are under arrest. ... Proceedings have now been instituted against you" [Sie sind ja verhaftet .... Das Verfahren ist nun einmal eingeleitet] (8; 5-6). The texture presupposes the existence of some authority that ordered Joseph K.'s arrest but hides its identity. Later on, the authority is given a name, "the Court," but it will remain hidden, invisible, to the very end of Joseph K.'s ordeal. Similarly, the seat of power in the second novel of Kafka, "the castle hill," "was hidden, veiled in mist and darkness, nor was there even a glimmer of light to show that a big castle was there" (7; 3). Later the castle is "clearly defined in the clear air" [deutlich umrissen in der klaren Luft] (n; n), but K. is unable to reach it. 6 In Belyj's Petersburg, the dyadic structure is complicated by two additional features. First, a transitional, intermediate domain of shadows is inserted between the visible and the invisible domains. In fact,

Modern Myth it is the climate of the city of Petersburg, with its frequent fogs, that generates the shadows: "The streets of Petersburg possess one indubitable quality: they transform passers-by into shadows; and shadows, the streets of Petersburg transform into people" (32; 22). Despite its murky mode of existence-or, rather, precisely because of it-the domain of shadows is the core of Belyj's fictional world, the main setting of the novel's conflict and the origin of its main intrigue. Second, Belyj's fictional world is split into politically antagonistic spheres. The struggle between the government of imperial Russia and the revolutionary "Party'' cuts across all three layers of the fictional world. The highest institutions of government and the headquarters of the rebellion (the central committee of the Party) operate in the invisible world. In the visible world, the antagonism is symbolized by the tension between the glamorous city center ("the prospects") and the shabby suburbs ("the islands"). The visible branch of government, residing on the prospects, is represented by Senator Ableuchov. The islands, the breeding ground of rebellion, are inhabited by visible secondary characters ("the people"). Although they live in segregated quarters, the rulers and the ruled cannot be separated; the prospects are linked with the islands by bridges. The bridges play a prominent role in the story of Petersburg and, particularly, in the life history of its protagonist, Nikolaj Apollonovic, the senator's son. Nikolaj is a "split" individual, living and acting in both antagonistic worlds, the world of the prospects, where he belongs by birth and dwelling, and the world of the islands, where he finds political allies in his private rebellion against his father. Nikolaj's life is the history of a person who is alienated from the world of privilege but who fails to find a place in the ranks of the revolutionaries. Let us repeat that the struggle between the rulers and the rebels is played out primarily in the domain of shadows. Here, the identities and loyalties of the agents are confused because of the anonymity of its inhabitants-"shadows have no faces." The lack of clear identification creates most favorable conditions for double agents (agents provocateurs) who serve or seem to serve both sides of the political conflict. The confusion in the domain of shadows is best represented

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

in the minor figure of Morkovin who claims to be "an ardent terrorist" (235; 145) but admits to serving in the secret police [ochranka] as well (236; 146). He then gives the following explanation for his double role: "I have been assigned to the secret police by the party'' (237; 146). If we believe this statement, Morkovin is an agent of the revolutionary party serving in the secret police; if we believe the logic of his actions, he is an agent of the secret police who penetrated the party. There is no possibility of determining beyond doubt his true allegiance. A faceless individual cannot be revealed as double-faced. In the confrontation of two armies of shadows, infiltration and confusion are a necessary consequence of their mode of operation. In Kafka's universe, the lines between the visible and the invisible domains are drawn more strictly. In The Castle, the two domains are set in different spaces, the invisible one on the castle hill, the visible one in the village at the foot of the hill. In The Trial the Court's proceedings and activities seem to take place in temporary, ad hoc selected locations anywhere in the city (an ordinary house, the lumber room in the Bank). A prominent feature of Kafka's fictional world is the lively traffic between the contrary and separated domains. In both novels, the invisible world establishes a "bridgehead" in the visible domain: the village office [Herrenhof] of the castle in The Castle, the attic offices of the Court (which seem to be the one permanent locale) in The Trial. In these visible divisions, direct contacts between representatives of the invisible domain and selected inhabitants of the visible domain take place. A more significant factor of the lively contacts between the domains is the introduction of two special groups of mediating agents: emissaries and informers. Emissaries are agents of the invisible powers charged with carrying out a specific mission in the visible domain. Such are the warders who arrest Joseph K. in The Trial and the clownish assistants of K. in The Castle. Since the emissaries receive their instructions from the invisible domain, their credentials cannot be verified. Their authority rests solely on the fact that the inhabitants of the visible domain do not question the legitimacy of the invisible power. The informers, on the other hand, are inhabitants of

Modern Myth the visible domain who control the flow of information across the boundary. Occasionally, they volunteer to carry messages from the visible into the invisible domain (Barnabas in The Castle); more typically, they are self-appointed reporters who provide the inhabitants of the visible domain with information about conditions and activities in the invisible domain. Titorelli, in The Trial and Olga, in The Castle, are the most important of these informers. Their information is necessarily subjective and unreliable: hearsay, rumor, traditional tales.7 Behind the veil of unreliable, ofren contradictory, descriptions, the Court and the castle remain a mystery for the inhabitants of the visible domain.

4. The Pattern of Control One and the same hierarchy of power is typical of both Kafka's and Belyj's fictional worlds: the visible domain is under the dominion and control of the invisible domain. In Kafka's world, where no intermediate zone is interposed, the pattern of control is relatively simple: the visible-domain inhabitants are under permanent threat of an order, a decree, a decision that originates in the invisible domain and deeply affects their existence. In The Trial the Court selects the accused with the randomness and capriciousness of an authoritarian regime. Suddenly, without apparent cause and with no proper explanation, the invisible Court strikes to change radically the life history of those persons against whom "proceedings have been instituted." While the defendants seem to represent a small group within the population, the randomness of the selection subjects everybody to the Court's unpredictable decisions. Moreover, there is no escaping the claws of the Court. Titorelli informs Joseph K. (in chap. 8) that he had never heard of a single case of "definite acquittal." If an "ostensible acquittal" [scheinbare Freisprechung] is granted, the case can be reopened at any time in the future; in fact, the acquitted might be rearrested the moment he returns home from the Court. In The Castle the submission of the village to the invisible authorities has all the features of feudal fief, including ius primae noctis (see Bei193

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

cken 1974, 333-34). With respect to the hero, the castle's arrogance is apparent in the fact that it arbitrarily, repeatedly, and without explanation reverses its decisions about his status and changes his instruction to him. The meticulous and pedantic bureaucracy of the castle operates no less randomly than the judges of the Court. The asymmetry of power is a breeding ground for revolt. Joseph K.'s rebellion is purely rhetorical but is clearly apparent when compared with the attitude of such defendants as Block. Whereas Block accepts without questioning the rules of the game imposed by the Court, Joseph K. challenges by rational arguments the irrationality of these rules. He is deterred neither by warnings nor by threats; he rushes to judgment, convinced of his innocence. He persists in his defiance to the end, up to his very last pathetic question: "Where was the judge whom he had never seen? Where was the High Court, which he had never reached?" [zu dem er nie gekommen war] (165; 286). In The Castle, K.'s rebellion is emotional and short-lived; he is so fascinated by the castle that only exceptionally does he think of his relationship with the invisible authority in terms of conflict (51; 59). The real rebel of The Castle is Amalia, but her refusal to submit to the feudal power damns not only her but her entire family (see Politzer 1969, 50; Heller 1974, 132). In Belyj's Petersburg, the pattern of control is more intricate due to the confusing role of the intermediate domain of shadows. In principle, power is directed from the invisible into the visible domain. This subordination is nowhere more apparent than in the case of the seemingly all-powerful senator. I have already quoted (VIII.1) the decision of the invisible powers to remove the senator's name from the list of candidates for a high governmental post. The end of his career comes when he refuses, because of his legalistic convictions, to obey an order from the invisible government. Significantly, his refusal is characterized as "rebellion," an interpretation that links Ableuchov's disobedience with the central conflict in the novel's world. The visible representative of the ruling power becomes a "traitor" when, at a moment of crisis, he refuses to act unlawfully. But the domain of shadows affects substantially the pattern of 194

Modern Myth control: the ultimate source of "instructions" is uncertain. The main intrigue of the novel, Nikolaj Apollonovic's mission to kill his own father, is particularly telling. Nikolaj receives a bomb from Dudkin, the underground revolutionary operating as a shadow; Dudkin has acted on the instructions of another shadow, Lippancenko. The letter demanding that Nikolaj use the bomb against his father goes by a different route but can also be traced to Lippancenko, because it is signed with his cryptogram. Because both Dudkin and Nikolaj believe that Lippancenko is a high-ranking functionary of the Party, they assume that both the bomb and the letter come from the Party's invisible headquarters. 8 In fact, the macrostructure ofBelyj's fictional world makes it impossible to state with certainty where the plot against Senator Ableuchov originates. All that can be said with assurance is that it is traceable to the domain of shadows. However, due to the presence of double agents, actions that originate in this domain may be equally a revolutionary plot or a government-induced provocation. A third, most intriguing alternative can be contemplated, given Belyj's fictional-world structure: the instruction to kill Senator Ableuchov is not mediated by the domain of shadows but actually originates in it. Because of their mode of operation, the shadows cannot be fully controlled from "above"; they could become an autonomous source of decision making and acting, playing their own game. The shadows may turn against their own masters. The mission of the executioners in the last chapter of Kafka's The Trial raises a similar question. It has been commonly accepted that the two gentlemen who kill Joseph K. "like a dog" were sent by the Court to implement its sentence. This inference is derived from the fictional encyclopedia of The Trial: since the Court's proceedings and decisions are purely random and arbitrary, any random and arbitrary event affecting the defendant-if no other source is given-is assigned to the Court. But textural evidence indicates that the executioners are not the Court's emissaries. As we have observed (STil.2), the representatives of the Court are named consistently by definite descriptions corresponding to their function in the institution-the judges, the magistrates, the wardens, the prison chaplain-but the 195

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

executioners do not carry such a label. They are vaguely called "two gentlemen," "his companions" [seine Begleiter]; Joseph K. perceives them as "old minor actors, maybe ... tenors" and even asks them in which theater they perform (162; 280-81). If we accept that Kafka's executioners and Belyj's "terrorists" have dubious credentials, a rather intriguing hypothesis about the conditions in the world of the modern myth can be contemplated. Behind the institutionalized randomness of the invisible Court and the invisible government hides an anonymous, noninstitutionalized randomness. The world of random arrests and secret court proceedings breeds "freelancing" agents, private terrorists who pursue their own goals and carry out their own missions. The observers of such a world, its readers and interpreters, naturally tend to make the invisible institution responsible for the actions of this private enterprise. Whatever the source of the particular missions, it is obvious that Belyj's and Kafka's heroes live in a world dominated by a hidden, inaccessible power. A challenge to this power is doomed to failure. The story of Belyj's novel is the story of failed revolution, that of Kafka's novels the story of failed quest. Kafka's protagonists are trying to gain access to the invisible power by repeated, obstinate attempts. But the structure of the invisible world is such that these attempts fail by necessity. Both the castle and the Court are infinite; 9 it is physically impossible for Kafka's heroes, who live in a finite time and space, to explore the infinite expanses of the invisible world. The invisible world of the modern myth surrenders neither to a rebel nor to an explorer.

5. The Restoration of the Supernatural? The visible/invisible world of the modern myth has been created as a secularized counterpart of the classical myth. The secularization is radical in Kafka's version: there are no supernatural beings, no miracles happen, in the fictional worlds of The Trial and The Castle. The invisible domain is a world of human institutions, of a Court, of an administrative office. To be sure, the inhabitants of the visible domain are faced with interventions of the same intensity, arrogance,

Modern Myth and unpredictability as were the humans in the mythological world. Kafka's visible/invisible world is a myth precisely because it highlights the contrast between a human and an antihuman world. However, no supernatural explanation or justification is posited. The antihuman world is operated by the humans themselves, the alien forces are nothing other than the mysterious, perverse ingredients of human nature and societal organization. Kafka's Court and castle are radical versions of Dicken's Circumlocution Office (III.2.1) . 10 In Belyj's Petersburg, the supernatural does not seem to be fully eliminated. The shadows emerging from and disappearing into the mist resemble phantoms. And, indeed, in the streets of Petersburg phantoms appear. The existence of phantoms would radically affect the semantic structure of th/ fictional world and the pattern of control: intervening through the domain of shadows, a supernatural domain would be the ultimate controlling force in Belyj's fictional world. One phantom of Petersburg, the Christ image, represents a universal, religious supernatural; this phantom, however, is a passing figure. The main role of the satanistic Sisnarfne is to provide a striking interpretation of "our capital city'': having no visible administration, Petersburg is ruled by shadows of ambiguous ontological status. The most active phantom, indeed, the driving force of the conflict between the power and the revolution, is familiar to all students of Russian literature and history: the Bronze Horseman created by Alexander Puskin. His intertextual reappearance links the events of 1905 with the Russian past, presenting them as just one episode in the protracted conflict between the authoritarian government and a lonely, desperate rebel. But in Belyj's radical reinterpretation the phantom of Russian history is not an enemy but an ally of the rebel. The Bronze Horseman impels Dudkin to the final, liberating act, which symbolizes the end of tyranny. Is, then, Belyj's fictional world a return to the classical myth-is the capital of Russia split between the natural world and the netherworld? The answer to this question must be negative. Sklovskij noticed that in Belyj's work, "fantastic events are now asserted, now dis197

INTENSIONAL

FUNCTIONS

claimed" (1929, 214). The phantoms of Petersburg dissolve in the city's permanent fog or transform into natural beings or objects. Belyj's text suggests, but does not authenticate, the supernatural. The supernatural is not a domain of the world structure but rather an interpretive hypothesis: the events of the fictional world are so confusing and incomprehensible that they could be of supernatural origin. Yet the modern myth refuses to confirm this hypothesis. The appearance of the phantom of Russian history in Petersburg is a telling symptom of the strict localization of Belyj's modern myth. St. Petersburg might be a city of shadows, but it is St. Petersburg, the capital of imperial Russia at a turning point of its history, at the time of the revolution of 1905. In contrast, the settings of Kafka's narratives have no names (VII.2); the Court and the castle could be located anywhere and everywhere. 11 It seems to me that a significant distinction between the two versions of the modern myth comes into sight. Kafka, in the tradition of Western culture, created a universal, abstract, anthropic modern myth; Belyj, deeply immersed in the Russian cultural tradition, produced a national modern myth, a myth of Russia and of its historical destiny. The modern myth in both of its variants is the product of the secular culture of the twentieth century. Human actions, and, especially, the activities of social institutions, are incomprehensible, but a transcendent, supernatural explanation is either no longer available or lacks authenticity. The senselessness of human actions and historical conflicts, the daily encounters with the bizarre, cannot be explained and redeemed by recourse to divine or demonic forces. The modern myth restates the precariousness of the human condition that the classical myth stated. But now that the gods are dead, humans themselves are responsible for the chaotic world they have created and operate.

I

Epilogue Fictional Worlds in Transduction: Postmodernist Rewrites

Literature is a historically evolving activity, and so are its constructs, fictional worlds. Fictional-worlds theory, to which this book has been devoted, must lead out into the history of fictional worlds. Others will write this history. I can do no more than conclude this book with a few observations about the most conspicuous historical connections between fictional worlds.

I.

lntertextuality

The links that bind particular literary works in succession have been traditionally examined under the heading of influence. More recently, this concept has been seriously questioned and displaced by the idea of intertextuality. 1 In the original, radical formulations (Kristeva 1969; Barthes 1971), intertextuality was posited as a universal, absolute property of texts, as "the very condition of textuality" (Hutcheon 1989, 8). But this conception is so broad as to be theoretically vacuous and analytically useless. Moreover, absolute intertextualists see only one side of the coin: the entry of extant textual material into the formation of successor texts. They do not see what is done with this material, how it is shaped, how it is integrated into the new 199

HETEROCOSMICA

text's totality. 2 Hutcheon has identified the intratexts and intertexts of Kurt Vonegut's Slaughterhouse Five and of E. L. Doctorow's Ragtime, thus giving us a precise image of these novels' discursive complexity (1989, 9-10, 21-22). But this positioning of the novels within the web of intertextuality does not explain their character as individualized and identifiable literary works, the one Vonnegut's, the other Doctorow's. Intratexts and intertexts, like all material absorbed into a work, submit to the principles of the new creation. The intratextual and intertextual ingredients interact in complex ways, but there is order in this chaos, the order of the emergent literary structure. Absolutized intertextuality does away not only with the originality but also with the historicity ofliterary texts, making them all just ripples in an anonymous intertextual flow. The impasse of absolute intertextuality is well expressed in Culler's resigned complaint: "By its very nature, perhaps, the description of intertextuality can only be accomplished by projects that distort and restrict the original theoretical program" (1981, u8). This "distortion'' is, in fact, beneficial: it allows us to break out of the infinite regress, in which absolute intertextuality is trapped, and view intertextuality not as an immutable law but as a historically changing factor of literary text production. There are periods when literary texts are "oriented toward intertextuality'' [mit Einstellung auf lntertextualitat] (Lachmann 1990, 60); in other periods, intertextuality is not a significant factor of text production; in yet others, it leaves more or less noticeable traces. It is this way out of the impasse that enabled Culler and a cohort of literary detectives to analyze intertextuality, to uncover traces of texts in other texts. Riffaterre's studies were the model to be followed: he preserved the broad conception of intertextuality but at the same time converted it into an analytical procedure "to achieve greater interpretive certainty'' (Clayton and Rothstein 1991, 23). Riffaterre differentiates two sources of intertextuality: particular texts and universal cultural stock ("sociolect") (1978, 1-22). 3 Gautier's line, "Drawing the people through the desert after her" [Trainant dans le desert les

200

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction peuples apres elle], is intertextually linked to a line from a particular work, Racine's Phedre: "Drawing all hearts after him" [Trainant tous les coeurs apres soi]. Universal intertextuality shapes the meaning of the word "armoire" in one of Eluard's poems: "The French sociolect makes it the place for hoarding within the privacy of the home .... Pere Goriot mispronounces it ormoire, the place for or, for gold, for treasure" (1978, u, 3). It is becoming apparent that intertextual analysis differs from influence study in that it is focused on semantic interpretation. The notion of influence is strictly unidirectional, it designates the irradiation of chronologically preceding texts toward succeeding texts. Because of this chronological succession we can claim that, for example, Byron influenced Puskin or Dostoevsky influenced Camus, but the reverse is not true. lntertextuality is bidirectional; it is a sharing of semantic traces in texts irrespective of their chronological order. Through intertextuality, texts are bound together in a relationship of mutual semantic illumination. Explicit intertextuality, quotation in particular, is of minor interest for literary study; the real challenge is implicit intertextuality, semantic traces of hidden intertexts. This kind of intertextuality is governed by the general conditions of implicitness spelled out in VIl.2. First, it is marked by allusions, which direct the interpreter from one literary text to other texts, to artworks, and so on (Preminger 1974, 18; Ben-Porat 1976; Amossy 1980). Second, it follows the basic rule of the semantic interpretation of implicitness: the text's meaning can be grasped without identifying the intertext but is enriched, often quite substantially, by its discovery. As we know already, the "unilateral dependence" creates indeterminacy in semantic interpretation: radical disagreements about intertextual meaning are very common, indeed, necessary. lntertextuality has been treated as a property of texture: intertextual meaning resides in words, phrases, quotes, cliches, and the like. In terms of our semantics, this intertextuality is a constituent of the text's intensional meaning. 4 But for a literary semantics that reinstates

201

HETEROCOSMICA

reference in general and fictional reference in particular, the purely intensional conception of intertextuality, despite its appeal and relevance, is insufficient. Literary works are linked not only on the level of texture but also, and no less importantly, on the level of fictional worlds. 5 I have emphasized repeatedly in this book that fictional worlds gain a semiotic existence independent of the constructing texture; they thereby become objects of the active, evolving, and recycling cultural memory. They enter into their own chain of succession, complementing and reinforcing or competing and undermining one another. They move from one fiction maker to another, from one period to another, from one culture to another as extensional entities, while their original texture, style, modes of narration, and authentication have been forgotten. A fictional world is more memorable than the texture that brought it into existence. I think that readers will be hard pressed if asked about the narrative mode and style of Madame Bovary; but they will never forget the tragic fate of Emma Bovary. This explains why intensional intertextuality, as stated earlier, is primarily implicit, whereas the succession of fictional worlds is almost always explicit, often emphatically so.

2.

Literary Transduction

lntertextuality and fictional-world succession -confirm the need for a two-pronged semantics presented in this book: literary works are linked on both the intensional and the extensional level. I use the term literary transduction to encompass both kinds of lineage. Literary transduction thus supersedes and absorbs intertextuality. The concept ofliterary transduction is an outgrowth of the idea of literature as a specific form of communication. The idea has been hinted at in the prologue (Pr.4), and now is the time to make it more definite. In a rudimentary representation, borrowed from the general theory of communication, literary communication is a simple transmission of information: an author (sender) produces a text (message) destined for a reader (receiver).

202

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction Schema 6

~-----11►~ ~-----1►►~ This conception has two major faults from the viewpoint of literary semantics: first, it presumes that reading is a passive "decoding" of the text, and, second, it does not notice that a fictional world is transmitted through the message. I propose to replace the conventional schema 6 with schema 7, which takes into account these two critical comments. Schema7 ~

writes

~ ----I►►

reads ~--r--T,-e-xt_-,--,

~

◄◄-----~

W(F)

The new model, which echoes the principles of fictional-world accessibility (Pr.2.3), represents lite~ary communication as interaction: in the act of writing the author produces a text and thereby constructs a fictional world; in the act of reading, the reader processes the text and thereby reconstructs the fictional world. Both the author and the reader perform communicative acts. But let us reemphasize

203

1

11 [It==: t _g

constructs

~I { ~

1

l

err== "' t reoomtt=

constructs

-~ I

rn

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction that these acts are not equivalent but complementary. While highlighting the active role of the reader, we insist on the asymmetry of control in literary communication. The author is responsible for text production and world construction; his text functions as a kind of score in which the fictional world is inscribed. The reader's text processing and world reconstruction follow the instructions of the score. To be sure, nobody can prevent actual readers from reading however they please and from using the text for whatever purpose they wish. But an individualistic ethics of reading, which grants the readers this license, is not a theory of reading. This brief restatement of the principles ofliterary communication should suffice here, because I want to do something else with schema 7. I want to develop it into schema 8, from which we can read off the concept of literary transduction. Transduction takes the literary work beyond the communicative act into an open, unlimited chain of transmission. The prototype of literary transduction is translation, and it was Jiri Levy's schema of translating (Levy 1963) that inspired schema 8. According to Levy, translating creates "a complex literary communication chain in which the result of one message becomes the starting point of another message" (1963, 37). The translator, who received the original text from its author, transforms the text into another language and thus becomes a second sender, making the text accessible to foreign readers. I have already indicated how the act of translation should be understood within our two-pronged semantics (STII.1). The translator cannot render precisely the intensional meaning of the original texture, because the form of expression in the target language differs from that of the original language. But he or she is able, indeed, has the duty, to preserve the fictional world in its extensional structuring and, as far as possible, in its intensional structuring as well. Thus, for example, an English translator of Kafka's Der Prozess or a German translator of Defoe's Robinson Crusoe has to render not only the specific extensional world structures of the two novels but also their unique intensional structuring resulting from the function of naming (see STil.2). 205

HETEROCOSMICA

3. Postmodernist Rewrite These restrictions apply because of the nature of translating; the rewriting of fictional worlds is not subject to them. On the contrary, the protoworld can be transformed quite radically, and therefore the successor world can be linked to it in diverse relationships. I propose to explore the semantic potential of rewriting by examining its most topical manifestation, the postmodernist rewrites of classic literary works. 6 In rewriting a classic work the postmodernist writer not only rejuvenates the past Qauss 1978, 3rn) but also challenges it. Postmodernist critical theory questions and "corrects" the established, inherited literary canon. Postmodernist rewrites of classic works pursue the same goal by literature's own means: they confront the canonical protoworld by constructing a new, alternative fictional world. Yet the challenge returns, like a boomerang, to benefit postmodernism. As Hutcheon has observed, the postmodernist irony "does indeed mark the difference from the past, but the intertextual echoing simultaneously works to affirm ... the connection with the past" (1989, 5). At a time of radical violations of norms, categories, and modes of narrative, the rewrite appropriates the classic work's well-spun story, its popular characters, and, in some cases, its familiar setting. In other words, the rewrite not only confronts the canonical fictional world with contemporary aesthetic and ideological postulates but also provides the reader with a familiar space within the strange landscapes of radical postmodernist experimentation. All postmodernist rewrites redesign, relocate, reevaluate the classic protoworld. Undoubtedly, this remaking is motivated by political factors, in the wide, postmodernistic sense of "politics."7 Yet the politics of fiction making operates by diverse strategies, so that at least three distinct types of rewrites can be posited: a. Transposition preserves the design and the main story of the protoworld but locates them in a different temporal or spatial setting, or both. The protoworld and the successor world are parallel but the rewrite tests the topicality of the canonical world by placing it in a new, usually contemporary, historical, political, and cultural context. 206

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction b. Expansion extends the scope of the protoworld, by filling its gaps, constructing a prehistory or posthistory, and so on. The protoworld and the successor world are complementary. The protoworld is put into a new co-text, and the established structure is thus shifted. c. Displacement constructs an essentially different version of the protoworld, redesigning its structure and reinventing its story. These most radical postmodernist rewrites create polemical antiworlds, which undermine or negate the legitimacy of the canonical protoworld. This typology of postmodernist rewrites is no more than a preliminary orientation in a varied and constantly changing terrain. Three popular postmodernist novels give us the opportunity to see the different strategies of rewriting at work and in their results. 3.1. The politics of politics. Ulrich Plenzdorf's short novel The New Sufferings ofYoung W [Die neuen Leiden des jungen W.] (1973) is a rewrite ofJohann Wolfgang von Goethe's. The Sufferings ofYoung Werther [Die Leiden des jungen Werther]. Immediately after its appearance, the "cult novel" of the sentimental age became a source for imitation and a target for parody (see Blessin 1985, 58-60; Engel 1986; Swales 1987, 98-rno). In fact, Goethe himself can be credited with initiating the rewriting process when, in 1787, he published a substantially revised version of the 1774 original. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries an industry of "Wertheriaden" prospered. In Germany, Werther became a puppet manipulated by the vagaries of German politics (attracting even such a "prominent" author as Joseph Goebbels) Qager 1984, 35). In a sense, then, Plenzdorf's novel is just the most recent stage in the transduction history of Werther; like many of its predecessors, its fictional world exudes the spirit of recent German political history. 8 In terms of our typology, Plenzdorf's rewrite is a transposition: Werther's tragic story is transferred from a German principality at the end of the eighteenth century to the German Democratic Republic of the 1960s. But the relationship between the original and the rewrite is more complex than this typological labeling indicates. In a

207

HETEROCOSMICA

typically postmodernist turn, Plenzdorf both appropriates and actualizes the classic work.9 The similarity and difference between the respective narrative acts give us the first clue to the bonds between the two works: Plenzdorf's is a text after death (VI.3.3) in a literal sense, Goethe's in a metaphorical sense. Plenzdorf's narrator, Wiebeau, has to dispatch his narrative from "beyond the Jordan" (16; 7), since everything that he has created during his short life has been destroyed. Werther's letters are saved from destruction or oblivion thanks to an editor who publishes them after Werther's death. In both cases, the fictional world is constructed primarily by the protagonist's Ich-narrative; but, also in both cases, additional text sources are activated. Goethe's editor is not a mere mediator ofWerther's letters; he supplements the protagonist's narrative and constructs important episodes of his story, especially his final decline and end, gathering information from first-hand witnesses: Lotte, Albert, Werther's servants, and others (''.Allocution'' to the reader in the first edition of the novel, 131) (see Flaschka 1987, 185). Plenzdorf's dead narrator is able not only to write a text but also to listen to and comment on the communications between persons still living, following his father, who searches for information about his son's life and death. The participants and witnesses whom the father meets construct alternative versions of certain episodes ofWiebeau's story. Yet the authentication force of Edgard's narrative is not thereby diminished, not only because he is the Ich-narrator but also because the posthumous dating of his narrative act endows it with sincerity and objectivity of distance. Goethe's text appears in the fictional world of Plenzdorf's hero quite by chance, as an anonymous livre trouve. It first becomes part of Plenzdorf's texture in the simplest and most explicit form of intertextuality, ·as quotation (collected on Edgard's tapes to Willi and given to Edgard's father after his son's death). 10 The quotations intrude into Wiebeau's !ch-narrative as intertext from a remote era, expressing an alien sensibility and written in an "impossible'' style. Werther's letters sound ridiculous to Edgard, for whom "real" literature is Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye, the "cult novel" of the 1960s.

208

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction Yet the character of intertextuality changes radically, when the protagonist-narrator discovers that Werther's words can be used as a rhetorical weapon in his struggle for love and freedom (see Brenner 1982a, 26; Weimann 1982, 166); by firing his "Werther-Pistol," he leaves Charlie speechless, "knocks out" her fiance and outrages his boss, Addi. Only Edgard's friend Zaremba is not stunned but is able to understand Goethe's "Old High German" (99; 55). 11 The rhetorical use of the Werther quotations links Goethe's and Plenzdorf's novels in explicit intertextuality. But in a postmodernist rewrite, as I have argued in Ep.2, intertextuality is just an auxiliary factor of a deeper historical and semantic link, the fictional world transduction. 12 In Plenzdorf's novel, the cooperation of intertextuality and world transduction is very smooth, as exemplified by a telling leitmoti£ The device is first formed intratextually: when Werther sees the farmhand ("Bauernbursch'') under arrest for murder, he establishes a connection with him by conjugating the officer's phrase: "He cannot be saved" [Er ist nich zu retten]; "You cannot be saved, unfortunate man! I well see that we cannot be saved" [Du hist nicht zu retten, Ungliicklicher! Ich sehe wohl, dass wir nicht zu retten sind] (99; 109-10; emphasis added). The intratextual device becomes intertextual when Wiebeau, commenting on Werther's fate, resumes the phrase: "He could not be helped" [Dem war nicht zu helfen] (19; 36). Finally, in her conversation with Edgard's father, Charlie applies the same phrase to Edgard and repeats it three times (with slight variations): "Edgard could not be helped" [Edgard war ja nicht zu helfen] (40; 73). Quite spontaneously, as it were, intratextuality and intertextuality link Werther's, the farmhand's, and Wiebeau's tragic stories.13 Plenzdorf's most striking intertextual coup comes when he forces Goethe's text to play a performative function in his rewrite. Goethe's text becomes a means of Plenzdorf's fictional-world construction. When Charlie's fiance returns from military service, Edgard reports the event to Willi, using Goethe's construction of Albert's return: "Enou~h, Wilhelm: the betrothed is here! ... Fortunately I was not present to witness his reception! That would have rent my heart" (72; 40). The fictional world of The New Sufferings thus issues from two 209

HETEROCOSMICA

textures, the colloquial, slangy, ironic style of Wiebeau and the affective, hyperbolic, and syntactically ornate style of Werther. The two textures create two intensionally differentiated domains within Plenzdorf's fictional world, one mirroring the world of eighteenth-century sentimentalism, the other expressing the sensibility of the r96os. The performative intertext is the most intimate fusion of the canonical work with its rewrite: two closely parallel fictional worlds are thus created. The macrostructural affinities of the parallel worlds can be readily observed when comparing the groups of the principal acting persons. The constellations are a perfect match in the extensional structure. Yet there are significant divergences in the naming of the protagonists: Wiebeau instead of Werther, Charlie instead of Charlotte (Lotte), Willi instead of Wilhelm, Dieter instead of Albert. With the exception of the last case, the rewrite uses non-German forms, Charlie and Willi adopted from English, Wiebeau from French. 14 This intensional shift signals a change in the cultural and historical anchoring of the fictional world. The youth culture of The New Sufferings is cosmopolitan, in contrast to the provincial German culture of the canonical prototext. While the homology of the agential constellation is the most obvious, the similarity of modal macrostructing is the most powerful semantic link between the classic and the postmodernist works. Werther perceives that the world is severely constrained by the very conditions of human existence. In other words, his is a world of a/ethic restrictions (V.2). 15 Humanity is "imprisoned within walls," "the active, inquiring energies of man'' are severely hampered, "all our efforts have no other aim than to satisfy our needs which in turn serve no other purpose than to prolong our wretched existence" (7-8; 30). In the world of alethic constrains, given and unchangeable, human activity is either banal or senseless. In contradistinction, Plenzdorf shapes Wiebeau's fictional world by deontic restrictions, imposed by the totalitarian requirements of social conformity (V.3). 16 These requirements are expressed implicitly, in Wiebeau's sarcastic renarrating of an anonymous socialist realistic film. The film's protagonist is 210

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction a reformed criminal who finds satisfaction and personal happiness in adjusting to social norms. But it is the protagonist's nonconformist brother who holds Wiebeau's sympathy: "I understood him completely" (41;22). Goethe's classic novel, the socialist-realist film, and Plenzdorf's postmodernist rewrite form a politically loaded triangle of world transduction. The different modal restrictions that Goethe's and Plenzdorf's protagonists experience determine the similarities and differences in their character and fate. They both are rebels, trying, each in his own way, to break out of the constraints governing their worlds. Werther's is a rebellion of sentiment; he retires from the gloomy world of human existence into the inner world of his heart. Putting himself in contrast to "a man of reason" [Mann des Verstandes] ,. Werther emphasizes that it is his heart "which is my only pride, it alone is the source of everything, all my strength, all my bliss [Seligkeit] and all my misery'' (74; 86). His heart is filled with "the sweet feeling of freedom," the serenity [Heiterkeit] of the beauty of nature, the joy of communion with children, and, last but not least, the agony of love. Wiebeau, who lives in a world of societal restrictions, is a cultural rebel. Rejecting the role of a well-adjusted "model boy," he chooses a semilegal existence in the youth counterculture, mocking the official social representations, apotheosizing the jeans, listening to rock music, painting abstract pictures. Across two centuries, the canonical and the postmodernist work share not only a world of restrictions but also its inevitable progeny-the nonconformist and rebel. Werther is primarily a mind, a mind dominated by strong passions (Leidenschaften).17 His passions, like those of Dostoevsky's fictional persons (III.1.3), are beyond his control and thus prone to sudden and extreme swings from euphoria to dysphoria. The sentimental hero is in a state of permanent emotional turmoil. Fleeing from erotic passion, he tries to engage in rational practical activity; but this short episode only turns his existential angst into complete alienation. In a rare letter to Lotte he writes: "I liv[e] among strange people, utterly alien to my heart .... I do not rightly know why I rise, why I go to bed" (64; 77-78). As his heart loses the power of 211

HETEROCOSMICA

world creation, he becomes a patient in the grip of an uncontrollable depression. He returns to Lotte without purpose, without hope. His final act has often been commented upon, but it is worth pointing out its paradoxical motivational character: the self-destruction of a man driven by passion is a carefully prepared and ideologically justified rational act of escape, an act of liberation from the alethic restrictions of his world. In this respect, Werther's mode of acting is like that of Dostoevsky's Raskolnikov, not like Rogozin's. 18 Wiebeau never doubts that life is worth living and never contemplates ending it voluntarily. While Werther is a child of the age of suffering, Wiebeau is a child of the age of doing. Death comes to him as a tragic, absurd accident, caused by his eagerness to accomplish. But let us not overlook one important similarity between Werther's and Wiebeau's demise. After the double failure-in love and in activityWiebeau is at the end of his rope and comes to "understand Old Werther when he said he couldn't continue" (147; 83). Wiebeau could not and does not cause his own death but, "bad loser" that he is, accepts it as the best ending to his unwinnable rebellion. To describe Goethe's and Plenzdorf's novels as narratives of failed rebellion seems to contradict their most common interpretation as narratives of unrequited erotic passion. But the modal framework, which has led us thus far, enables us to bring the two strains of Werther's and Wiebeau's tragedy together. Their passion is hopeless, because the women they desire have a different attitude toward the world. Both Lotte and Charlie do not perceive the restrictions, which are. so strongly experienced by their suitors; rather, they accept the world as it is and want nothing but to live according to its conventions. Only in a brief, exceptional moment do they succumb to the elation of"illicit" passion, but this moment is followed by repentance and final withdrawal. 19 Werther and Wiebeau's loves are unrequited because they did not find partners who would share their rebellious stance against the modalities of their worlds. The role of religion in the fictional worlds of Werther and The New Sufferings brings our contrastive analysis to its conclusion. God is still very much present in Werther's doxa, but only as a spiritual 212

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction force of the past, as the creator of the world. At present, he is removed from and unmoved by human suffering and unable or unwilling to give consolation and strength. God is not dead yet, merely absent; he has stopped communicating with his creatures, he has become "silent" (92; 104). While still believing in a superior being, Werther feels "deserted" [verlassen] by him. Wiebeau's is a postreligious world, there is no construct of deity. Paradoxically, in this atheistic world Wiebeau survives his death in a literary reincarnation made possible by a radical voiding of mimetic conventions (VI.3.3). 3.2. The politics of madness. At first sight, Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea (1966) is just a prehistory of Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre (1847). It narrates what happened to Rochester before he met Janehow he married in the West Indies and why he took his wife back to England. In this sense, Rhys's story seems to explain Rochester's behavior toward Jane and especially his failed attempt at bigamy. A firm link between the two worlds and stories is forged by the time overlap of the final part of Rhys's novel with the narrative ofJane Eyre. 20 Rhys's rewrite is thus the most magic of all transformations that fiction can accomplish: past made present. What is distant, backgrounded, fragmentary, and ghostly in Jane Eyre becomes close, continuous, human in Wide Sargasso Sea. 21 But this presentation does not endow the past with more definiteness. On the contrary, Bronte's world is made of certain fictional facts and absolute values, Rhys's is full of uncertainties and ambiguities. This seemingly paradoxical aspect of the transformation indicates that the postmodernist rewrite is not a mere sequel or prequel to Jane Eyre; it supplements the canonical world, but with a world of a different extensional and intensional structuring. The most obvious trace of the transformation is a major shift in the agential constellation. In Jane Eyre, Rochester, although initially distanced by class difference and position of power, gradually becomes the center of Jane's domain and, consequently, the center of the novel's fictional world. Even when far away during the Moor House episode, he is constantly present in Jane's mind, and at a decisive moment she hears his call in a paranormal experience of"clairau213

HETEROCOSMICA

dience" (see Traill 1996, 8). Rochester's first wife, Bertha, is doubly removed from the center of the fictional world, by being a madwoman and by being incarcerated, isolated in an attic room. She intrudes into the fictional world only occasionally to spread terror and fear. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Antoinette (Bertha) moves to the center of the agential constellation, surrounded by her family (mother Annette, brother Pierre, Aunt Cora, stepfather Mason, stepbrother Richard), her maid-friend Christophine, and her nameless husband. Surprisingly, Jane has no counterpart in Rhys's fictional world. 22 The absenting of Jane and the decentering of Rochester is the most telling evidence of a substantial extensional redesigning ofBronte's world. If in Jane Eyre the "central confrontation" is between Jane and Bertha (Gilbert and Gubar 1979, 339), 23 in Wide Sargasso Sea it is between Antoinette (Bertha) and her husband. If it is true that "the madwoman in literature by women ... is usually in some sense the author's double, an image of her own anxiety and rage" (Gilbert and Gubar 1979, 78), then the placing of the "madwoman'' at the center of the agential constellation means the elevation of the woman/writer into the position of social dignity and literary authority. But if we accept this allegory we must also accept that the ultimate objective of Rhys's rewrite is a reevaluation of madness. Rhys "frees the madwoman from the bestiality and lunacy'' (Friedman 1989, u8-19) but, more importantly, constructs a different causation. In Jane Eyre madness is caused genetically, it is a disease that runs in the family of Rochester's first wife. That is the only explanation that the reader is given, yet it is worth remembering that he or she gets it solely from Rochester's subjective account. Rochester thus can present himself as a victim of a conspiracy between his father and Bertha's stepfather; he was duped into marriage, not informed about the family history of madness. In Wide Sargasso Sea the construct of madness has also a personal (Ich-form) origin, but Rhys treats the subjective mode in such a way (see below) that the reader is able to infer fictional facts. Madness is construed as a socially conditioned pathology, caused by the colonial atmosphere, racial conflict, and male domination. These social deter214

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction minants conspire to deprive the heroine of personal identity; unsure of her place in the world, insecure in all her relationships, forced into an arranged marriage, deprived of all her property, she lives in constant fear. 24 In a moment of crisis she confesses to Christophine: "I am so afraid ... I do not know why, but so afraid. All the time" (96). Antoinette thus relives the fears of her mother, who felt hated, threatened, unsafe. The daughter repeats her mother's history, but this reenactment is due not to genetic endowment but to the persistence of the woman's condition. Madness is the limit of the disintegration of feminine personality in the social environment in which both the mother and the daughter are forced to live. All that is required to reach this limit is a traumatic event (the burning down of Coulibri and the death of her son in the case of Annette, her husband's betrayal in the case of Antoinette) and a performative declaration by male authority. 2 5 I have mentioned the namelessness of the male protagonist of Rhys's novel. 26 This textural feature is not the only symptom of organized manipulation of naming. A special intensional function of naming (STII.2) operates in Rhys's text. The naming of fictional persons is shifty: some of them have two names, others claim names that may not belong to them, still others are renamed. Christophine's alias is Josephine, Daniel Cosway "has no right to that name," according to Antoinette (ro6) and Christophine (129), and, most importantly, Antoinette is renamed Bertha. Without apparent reason, but exercising his supreme Adamic power, her husband starts calling her the name that the madwoman in the attic bears in the fictional world of Jane Eyre. Antoinette perceives the link between her husband's intention and the name-change intension: the renaming is an attempt to alter her identity: "My name is not Bertha. You are trying to make me into someone else, calling me by another name" (121). But the uncertainties of the fictional persons' identity go deeper. Despite its first-person form, Rhys's novel is polyphonic; the subjective narrators do not control their narratives tightly, other voices, other perspectives participate in the world construction. This holds especially true for Christophine, who does not function as a narrator 215

HETEROCOSMICA

but whose voice contributes substantially to the novel's polyphonic construction (see O'Connor 1986, 145). AB a result, Rhys's fictional person is not a fixed construct but an overlay of different, often contrary, presentations and projections. Antoinette is for a long time confused about the character of her husband, but members of her family are not hesitant. Richard sees him as "an honourable gentleman'' whom he would trust with his own life. In contrast, Aunt Cora does not like what she has seen of "this honourable gentleman." "Stiff. Hard as a board and stupid as a foot ... except where his own interests are concerned" (95). And Christophine does not hide from him that she considers him a liar, who married Antoinette for her money and now is unfaithful and cruel to her, "wicked like Satan self" (124-32). 27 At first sight, Rhys's use of the first-person narrative seems io work against the refocusing of the fictional world from a male to a female center. While the Ich-narrative ofJane Eyre has an exclusively feminine source, Rhys's narrative mode achieves a gender balance, since both Antoinette and her husband participate in the fictional world construction. But this contrast is spurious. First, the crucial episodes of Rochester's past in Jane Eyre are presented by the male protagonist, especially in his embedded narrative in volume 3, chapter 1. Second, the polyphonic character of Rhys's text allows the reader to make inferences that go beyond or even against the narrators' subjective perspectives. The end result is a world construction where the reader is presented with the principal witnesses' accounts but is given enough unmanipulated information to make up his or her own mind about who is guilty and who is innocent. Some critics believe that the reading of Wide Sargasso Sea, in a sort of feedback, could affect the contemporary reader's attitude toward Bronte's canonical work, especially toward her heroine. But it is a very crude and superficial reader who "loses sympathy forJane Eyre's quest, loses faith in the worth of such a quest" (Friedman 1989, 119). Rhys as a writer and artist is much more subtle: by not including Jane in her fictional world, she withholds any political reevaluation of her quest. After all, both Bronte's and Rhys's heroines embody the same 216

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction "characteristically Romantic theme-the struggle of an individual consciousness towards self-fulfilment" (Lodge 1966, 114). 3.3. The politics of fiction making. Just as Goethe's Werther launched an industry of "Wertheriades," so did Defoe's Robinson Crusoe stimulate a never ending series of "Robinsonades"; just as Plenzdorf's rewrite stands out among the popular reworkings of Werther, so does J.M. Coetzee's rewrite Foe (1986) among the Robinsonades.28 We come to it at the end of our demonstration of rewrite types, since it is the most radical type, a politically loaded polemic against the canonical work. The undermining of the canon begins with an efficient narrative device: the chronological order of the classic protowork and its postmodernist rewrite is reversed. In Coetzee's fictional world, the narrative act of Susan Barton precedes Defoe's act of writing, which created the world and the story of Crusoe as we know it. Susan's narrative is claimed to be the original, "true" story, and Defoe's novel thus appears as a distorting rewrite of the prototext.29 Susan constructs the "original" fictional world around a Cruso who is no culture hero, no builder of a civilization (I.1). He lives in primitive physical conditions: the only piece of furniture in his flimsy habitat is a bed (later Susan mentions a "stove built very neatly of stone" [14]); except for a knife, "all tools on the island were of wood or stone" (15). He does not keep a calendar and, last but not least, does not write. Cruso cannot be a culture hero because he has no desire, no motivation, to improve his primitive existence. When Susan suggests that they explore the shipwreck and, perhaps, "save from it tools of the greatest utility," he replies: "We have a roof over our heads, made without saw or axe. We sleep, we eat, we live. We have no need of tools" (32). Cruso seems to be content in his isolation and altogether uninterested in the world beyond his island: "It was as though he wished his story to begin with his arrival on the island, and mine to begin with my arrival, and the story of us together to end on the island too" (34). To be sure, Cruso has been engaged for years in an ambitious project-building gigantic terraces-a project he undertook with the express purpose ofleaving behind a legacy (18). But for

HETEROCOSMICA

him the terraces are useless, because he has no seeds to turn them into fertile fields. Thus, in the best case, Cruso prepares the ground for a future civilization: "The planting is reserved for those who come after us and have the foresight to bring seed" (33). Cruso left no record of his stay on the island, and his laconic reminiscences are full of contradictions that, in the end, Susan does not know "what was truth, what was lies, and what was mere rambling" (12). Cruso's death on his involuntary return to England definitely separates the story from its most authentic potential source. With Friday mute, Susan is in a privileged position: she has at her disposal "all that Cruso leaves behind, which is the story of his island" (45). But the recipients, Foe in the first place, will accept the story only if Susan can convince them of her authentication authority. To this end she first pursues, quite naturally, the mimetic strategy: authenticate the narrative by knowledge of the facts and by a commitment to telling the "truth." As her narrative progresses, however she learns that miming a truthful report of personal experience does not necessarily result in an acceptable story. A dull existence yields a dull story. So Susan turns from mimesis to convention, adopting the narrative poetics spelled out, explicitly and implicitly, by the master narrator, Foe: a story needs a structure and a dose of thrill, adventure, and moral. 3 Following the master's poetics, Susan discovers that she is as skillful as he is in giving shape to the story and providing it with "philosophical" interpretations. She replaces Foe, occupies his table, writes with his pen on his paper, and puts the pages she has written into his chest. Her narrative invests the story of "the Female Castaway'' with as many "strange circumstances" (67) as the master could desire. Assuming by fiat the conventional authentication force, Susan is free not only to invent fictional fact but also to create gaps: "It is . . . in my power to guide and amend. Above all, to withhold" (123). Susan displaced the male author, but at a high price-by abandoning her own poetics of "telling the truth'' and submitting to his "sellable" narrative conventions. She gives up reinterpreting the mythology of poiesis and no longer desires "a man Muse, a youthful god who visited authoresses in the night and made their pens flow."

°

218

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction She continues using a sexist name for the creative act: she is "father" to her story, just as the male writer is. Ultimately, she accepts submission to the man/author: "I was not intended to be the mother of my story, but to beget it. It is not I who am the intended, but you" (126). Somehow, fate itself has selected (de)Foe to be the father of Cruso(e)'s story.3 1 The struggle for the authenticating pen does not end with Susan's accepting the secondary role of the story begetter. A handicapped author seems to be coming into his own at the end of Coetzee's novel. Replacing Susan at Foe's table, Friday "with Foe's robes on his back and Foe's wig [is] poised over Foe's papers.... [He] held a quill with a drop of black ink glistening at its tip" (151). Surprisingly, the master does not protest against this occupation of his place; on the contrary, he prevents Susan from snatching away Friday's "tools": "It is part of learning to write" (151). In a symbolic, unfinished gesture, Foe's authenticating quill passes from Susan to Friday. But there will be a major difference between Friday's writing and that of his "predecessors." He is mute, he has no articulated speech, therefore his writing will be the primary, indeed, the sole, means of world construction. Friday's will be an absolute writing similar to God's.3 2 Bypassing speech, his narrative will be a direct, unmediated transcript of his memory. It will be the "true" record that Susan was trying to write but abandoned. In the successive displacements of world-creating authority-which is the story of Coetzee's Foe-Friday is the final "intended" author. Deprived of speech, unaware of narrative conventions, indifferent to criticism, the liberated slave will imprint his version of the world, his version of the story, on paper, without interference of established poetics, without self-serving ambition, without commercial considerations. Here, finally, is a future author who will write down truth, and nothing but the truth . We cannot make any pronouncement on the fate of this future author, if we do not first tackle a puzzling aspect of Foe's fictional world. Every reader and critic of Coetzee's novel knows that in a somewhat weird, incongruous manner episodes drawn from Defoe's Roxana are injected into its fictional world. A girl appears (accompanied by a 219

HETEROCOSMICA

nanny) who claims to be Susan's lost daughter and to bear her name. One is tempted to say that Coetzee's Foe is a double rewrite-of both Robinson Crusoe and Roxana. But if we examine the global role of the Roxana episodes, we perceive that they form a metafictional layer in the world structure of Foe. It is, in fact, Susan who has already assigned this status to the girl from Roxana, when she refused her legitimacy. She recognizes that the girl is a being from a "different order," one who had no mother but was "fathered" by the fiction maker, Foe. The infusion of metafiction into the fictional world of Foe is closely tied to the struggle for authentication authority. If beings from different ontological orders co-occur, then the ontological status of all inhabitants of the fictional world is problematized. Who is the author and who is the authored, who is the fiction maker and who is a fictional being? Susan refers to the actual-world persons as "substantial beings" (131). But if such persons-among whom she counts herself, Foe, and Friday-can meet, interact, and communicate with persons who arrived from a fictional world, how can they be substantial, how can they be actual? When Susan poses this question, she shows great talent for possible-worlds thinking: either the girl and her companion (nanny) are from a "different order" or her own "substantive order" is not what it seemed: "I thought I was myself and this girl a creature from another order speaking words you made up for her. But now I am full of doubt. Nothing is left to me but doubt. I am doubt itself Who is speaking me? Am I a phantom too? To what order do I belong? And you: who are you?" (133). Susan is in doubt and confused, because in her fictional world the most crucial world divide is obliterated. The absorption of the fiction maker into the fictional world, typical of metafiction (VI.4), erases the boundary that in the actual world exists between the author and his fictional creations. And the congregation of fictional persons from different "houses" of the creator erases boundaries between fictional worlds. When Susan meets the girl from another fictional world, she experiences the anxiety of an actual person who suspects that he or she is authored fiction. In such a world, is there any hope for Friday to finish his appren220

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction ticeship, to become author? The last, obscure chapter of the novel gives a doubly confusing answer to this question. Yet another, anonymous, narrating "I"-obviously a fictional counterpart of the actual author-appears and enters Daniel Defoe's house. He finds a girl, Susan, and Foe, all dead. Yet there is still life in Friday, and "from his mouth, without a breath, issue the sounds of the island" (154). On the second entrance, Friday seems to be dead as well: ''Above his neck-I had not observed this before-is a scar like a necklace, left by a rope or chain" (155). But now the visiting author finds in Foe's dispatch box the yellowed manuscript of Susan's narrative. Or, at least it seems to be that manuscript, but only in its first sentence. After that sentence, the narrative is totally rewritten, supposedly by the visiting author: he does not reach "the dark cliffs of the island" but sinks under the sea, into the shipwreck, which might be the seat of the sea monster (kraken) and is "the home of Friday." Here are the bodies of Susan Barton, of the captain, and of Friday. In his home, Friday also seems to be dead, but when the author opens his mouth, "from inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, without interruption. ... It runs northward and southward to the ends of the earth" (155-57). I quote in some detail from this short part in order to attempt what some critics have thought impossible: to make sense of it. Indeed, the text makes no sense if read as constructing a standard fictional world. But it is comprehensible if we realize that in the last part of Foe, Coetzee's radical fiction making proceeds beyond ontological contradictions of metafiction to logical contradictions of an impossible world. Friday is alive/Friday is dead, once in Foe's house, once at the bottom of the sea; Susan lies dead in Foe's bed/Susan floats dead in the shipwreck with "her dead captain"; Susan reaches the island and writes her narrative/Susan does not reach the island and does not write anything; the manuscript is written by Susan/the manuscript is written by the anonymous "posthumous" author, and so on. Why all this heavy semantic bombardment of the reader? Perhaps for one reason only: Friday is a possible author, but in an impossible world, in a world whose signs do not signify, whose stories are full of 221

HETEROCOSMlCA

contradictions, whose authors give up authority. 33 What issues from Friday's mouth "without breath, without interruption" and reaches "to the ends of the earth'' is sound not sign, event not narrative. But let us not rejoice too loudly for finding an interpretation that makes sense. It should not go unnoticed that the metafictional and impossible character of the fictional world of Foe is underdetermined and, therefore, open to other interpretations. Such scenes as the Epping Forest episode and the visits to the houses of dead in the final part are constructed with a degree of opaqueness and discontinuity that sug4 gests a dreamlike world (see Penner 1989, 126; Spivak 1991, 165-66).3 Never mind that such a "naturalization" does not eliminate the paradoxes and contradictions of Foes fictional-world structure; it makes them palatable for a mimetically conditioned reader.

4. Impossible Worlds? Fiction thrives on the contingency of worlds, emphatically asserted by the idea of possible worlds: every world and every entity in the world could be or could have been different from what it is. Postmodernist rewrites grow in this fertile semantic ground. They come into existence because every fictional world, however canonical, however authoritative, however habitualized, can be changed, can be displaced by an alternative world. The complexity of the rewrite's meaning and its challenge to semantic interpretation is due precisely to the fact that it refers not only to its own fictional world but also, in various ways and degrees, to its source, the protoworld. One can imagine a reader who reads Wide Sargasso Sea without ever having read or heard ofJane Eyre or reads the earlier work in ignorance of the later. 35 One can imagine a world where all copies of Robinson Crusoe have been destroyed and all memory of the book erased but Foe has survived and continues to be read. But these are either exceptional cases or mere thought experiments. In the standard case of semantic processing the reader of, say, Foe reconstructs the fictional world of Coetzee's novel, but at the same time he or she activates as cognitive background the fictional encyclopedia of Robinson Crusoe. The se222

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction mantic processing of the rewrite is thus quite similar to that of a historical novel: when reading War and Peace, the reader both reconstructs the fictional person Napoleon and activates the corresponding entry of his or her actual-world encyclopedia. The semantics of the rewrite is governed by the principle of "unilateral dependence" (VIl.2), which applies to all signs that combine explicit (overt) and implicit (covert) meaning: their meaning is enriched by the recovery of the unexpressed signifier but is not necessarily dependent on this recovery. I agree with the critics who see in postmodernist rewrites a challenge to canonical works. But contemporary ideological criticism overemphasizes the "rupturing," "subversive revision," "delegitimation" of the "master narrative" (see Friedman 1989, passim). To this kind of radical critique we have to respond simply by saying that there is no such thing as falsification in the realm of fiction. The rewrite does not invalidate or eradicate the canonical protoworld. Just as Wide Sargasso Sea stands on its own as an autonomous fictional world, so has and will Jane Eyre. The rewrite enriches, expands, the universe of fiction, without deleting the extant world; it takes its place alongside the canonical protoworld, and, hopefully, itself will enter the canon. We have observed that a rewrite can be a radical polemic against the canonical work. Yet I can imagine Coetzee having a drink with Defoe, Charlotte Bronte having tea with Jean Rhys, Plenzdorf going on a pilgrimage to visit Goethe in Weimar. This fictional symposium of fiction makers might seem naive in a time that stresses radical ruptures. But why would a writer engage in rewriting . if he or she were not aware of the continuity of poietic activity? The existence of the postmodernist rewrite supports a view ofliterary history that is "sensitive to both the forces of stability and those of subversion" and that can demonstrate "how the multilayered organization of temporality makes possible both artistic permanence and evolution" (Pavel 1990, 354). Hutcheon (1996, 213, 216-17) has suggested that the postmodernist rewrite violates the principle of compossibility (defined in Pr.2.2): in its agential constellation we find persons from different on223

HETEROCOSMICA

tological domains, a mixture of "natives" and "migrants." Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Friday coexist with Coetzee's Susan, Bronte's Bertha (alias Antoinette) with Rhys's Christophine. By the rules of the rewrite, nothing can prevent Emma Bovary from taking Alda Karamazov as her lover. 36 Consequently, the rewrites' fictional worlds seem to be impossible. Indeed, in Ep.3.3 we observed a postmodernist rewrite constructing an impossible world. But the impossibility of the world of Foe's last part does not mean that the fictional worlds of all rewrites are impossible. There is nothing impossible, neither physically nor logically, about the fictional worlds of The New Sufferings of Young W. or The Wide Sargasso Sea. The impossibility of the fictional world of a rewrite is judged by the same criterion that applies to all fictional worlds: only those are impossible that contain or imply contradictory states of affairs. But how is it possible that the violation of the principle of compossibility does not create impossible worlds? The answer to this question has been given already by Genette and Margolin. Genette, who does not work with the concepts of possible-worlds semantics, emphasizes at the conclusion of his major sweep through "hypertextuality": "Every object can be transformed, every method imitated; there is no art that, by nature, escapes these two modes ofderivation which, in literature, define hypertextuality'' (1982, 435). Faust or Electra transported into a modern drama create no contradiction; effecting a "diegetic transposition," the modern author can freely modify these ancient fictional persons to adapt them to their new milieu (1982, 343, 344). Margolin (1996), who is a possible-worlds theorist, has recourse to the counterpart relation and thus sees no problem with the alleged violation of compossibility. He investigates in detail what are the "relevant dimensions of similarity'' between the original individual and his or her counterpart, that is, what essential properties they share.37 In the prologue (Pr.2.1) I have argued that the essentialist conception of counterparthood is too restrictive and pleaded for a radically nonessentialist conception of transworld identity. The semantics of 224

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction the postmodernist rewrite confirms this postulate. Just as there is a fictional Napoleon who lost the actual Napoleon's essential property of dying at Santa Helena, so there is a fictional Robinson Cruso(e) who died on his return to England. Just as the actual Napoleon can be transformed into an unlimited number of fictional Napoleons, some of them differing essentially from the actual-world prototype, so can the fictional Edward Rochester appear in an unlimited number of alternate incarnations, some of them essentially different from the protagonist of Jane Eyre. The only distinction, though semantically highly significant, is that the transworld identity lineage of Napoleon originates in the actual world, whereas that of Rochester originates in the fictional world created by Charlotte Bronte. 38 McHale considers Carlos Fuentes's novel Terra Nostra one of the pioneering works of postmodernism, because it constructs a scandalous, carnivalesque "transhistorical party ... where characters apparently from disparate historical eras are brought together at the same time and place" (1987, 17). If in fictional writings historical persona can be transported away from the time and space of their actual existence, why should the same right be denied to fictional individuals? A postmodernist rewrite is an assertion of the fiction maker's entitlement to draw on the rich pool of popular and less popular fictional persons and create counterparts who differ substantially from the "originals" and become members of completely new constellations. By its very nature, the rewrite hinges on the presence of counterparts; but it agential constellation need not be extensionally identical to that of the protoworld. Some persons can be deleted, such as Jane in Rhys's novel, others can be added, such as Susan in Coetzee's narrative. Coetzee's Cruso and Friday find themselves in the company of Susan, whom they could not encounter in Defoe's world. Since the fictional world of Foe is not identical with the fictional world of Robinson Crusoe but is its sovereign alternate, no violation of the principle of compossibility is at hand. The nonessentialist semantics of transworld identity relies on one constant: the proper name as a rigid designator (Pr.2.1). The individuals keep their proper names when moving through different possi225

HETEROCOSMICA

ble worlds, so that we recognize them, even if their essential properties change in the moves. Yet, as we have observed, postmodernist rewrites do not always obey the semantics of rigid designation. We are not much bothered by the minor difference between "Crusoe" and "Cruso," and we know why "Antoinette" is equivalent to "Bertha." But how can we claim that a fictional person of the name Wiebeau is a counterpart of the person called Werther, that Antoinette's nameless husband is a counterpart of Rochester? The allowances that the postmodernist rewrites take with proper names can be accommodated by adjusting the strategy of transworld identification. We start by aligning the protowork and its presumed rewrite on the basis of some strong textural and structural evidencethe title, the quotations, the intertextual allusions, the similarity of the fictional worlds structure, the homology of agential constellations, the parallelism of the story lines, the like setting. Only when we have strong enough evidence for the rewrite hypothesis will we draw the transworld identity lines. Some of these lines will link individuals with different names. Such lines indicate that the rewrite appropriates one aspect of the semantics of the proper name that possible-worlds semantics has noticed, although only in passing: the transposition of an individual from one world to another might be accompanied by his or her rebaptizing: the counterpart acquires an alias.3 9 The semantics of the alias does not invalidate but rather supplements the semantics of rigid designation. Aliases are variants of one and the same rigid designator in different possible worlds, as long as we can keep track of the consecutive baptisms (Pr.2.1). 40 In outsmarting the norm of compossibility, postmodernist literature has substantially expanded our fictional universe. Adhering to a radically nonessentialist poetics of personal identity, it reincarnated historical and canonical fictional persons in shockingly alternative guises, lives, and constellations. But the current boom in transworld travel and transhistorical parties has made it as easy for a writer to move a fictional person from one world to another as it is for a child to move a Lego piece from one tower to another. The game is no longer exciting, and it is time to invent a new one.

226

I

Notes

Prologue: From Nonexistent Entities to Fictional Worlds 1. With a few exceptions, philosophers have not recognized that fiction making is a major cultural and aesthetic activity; they support their theses with contrived examples or specimens from trivial literature (primarily the detective story and science fiction).To believe that the difference between artificial exempla and literature is only in "embellishments," as, for instance, Plantinga claims (1974, 160), shows an archaic attitude toward poetic art. Among the philosophers, Walton should be singled out for praise, because he not only recognizes works of fiction as "cultural objects" but also draws the necessary epistemological conclusion: an "integrated theory'' of fictionality is desired "in which both aesthetic and metaphysical matters are treated in a unified fashion" (1990, 6). Unfortunately, his own theory (see Pr. 1.5) does not do justice to "cultural objects." 2. It is well known that Russell reversed the position of his juvenilia and formulated his rigid semantics of nonexistent entities in a critique of Meinong's views (n. 40). 3. For a criticism of the concept of empty terms, see Dambska [1948] 1979). The undifferentiated mass of nonexistents reappears in Chastain's enumeration: "Failure of reference" occurs in all "singular terms which name nothing, maps with imaginary rivers and mountain ranges, paintings of fictitious scenes, hallucinations, dreams, and so on'' (1975, 196). 4. What is a failure from the viewpoint of literary semantics is a triumph oflogical consistency. "A nonexistent golden mountain ... neither has the property of being golden nor has the property of being not golden'' (Grossman 1983, 410). According to Crittenden, Russell's view of fictional terms would force us to accept the Odyssey as "a historical account" that makes false claims about history (about the existence of cyclops, for instance) (1991, 25).

227

Notes to Pages 4-5 5. Frege's semantics is sometimes interpreted as requiring a threevalue logic: true, false, and gap (see Herzberer 1980). In fact, Frege was unequivocal about the matter: "By the truth-value of a sentence I understand the circumstance that it is true or false. There are no further truth-values" ([1892] 1969, 46; 62). Fregean logic of fiction is a logic of truth-value gaps, as conceived by van Fraassen (1966; see also Haack 1974, 47, 55-56; Pelc 1977, 245). 6. Frege anticipated twentieth-century functional linguistics, which claims that polyfunctionality is a basic and necessary property of naturallanguage communication (see Holenstein 1981; Dolezel 1990, 149-rn 1996). However, many philosophers oflanguage have been unwilling to acknowledge that under different functional conditions language, or, more precisely, language use is governed by different logico-semantic principles. Evans, for example, characterized Frege's exemption of fictional language from the truth-conditions of ordinary language as "barely intelligible" (1982, 23). Evans failed to mention that the exemption from truth-valuation has a venerable history in philosophy. Already Aristotle had removed prayers and invocations from the authority of logic and relegated these speech acts to the domain of rhetoric (De interpretatione 17a). The most forceful post-Frege argument in favor of valuating certain types of statements as neither true nor false is Austin's (1970, 99). 7. There is no historical link between Frege's and Saussure's semantics, and their logical connection has been noticed only recently by Ducrot and Todorov (see STII, n.4). 8. Riffaterre explains self-referentiality of poetic language in contrast to ordinary-language semantics. In ordinary language, reference proceeds along the "vertical" axis linking signifier, signified, and referent; in poetic language "the axis of signification is horizontal. The referential function in poetry is carried out from signifier to signifier" (1983, 35-36).This explanation reveals that the idea of self-referentiality rests on a terminological confusion. In the first occurrence (the "vertical" axis) the term applies to an extralingual relationship-from the sign to the world; in the second (the "horizontal" axis) it designates a relationship between sign and sign, which is intralingual. A similar argument against the concept of self-reference has been put forth by Kerbrat-Orecchioni: "The referent disappears only when sense disappears; conversely, the emergence of a sense requires a correlative representation of a referent" (1982, 31). Kerbrat-Orecchioni's critique of Saussurean self-referentiality stems from the

228

Notes to Pages 5-9 same doubt as Evans' questioning of Frege's pure-sense language: how can language be meaningful without any connection to the world? 9. A theory of fictionality was already lacking in the "classical" version of Saussure-inspired poetics, in the Prague school (see Dolezel 1990, 164-67). The Prague school scholars did not proclaim poetic language self-referential but left the concept of poetic reference underdeveloped. Mukafovsky spoke vaguely about "universal" and "particular" reference ofliterary texts (1948, 1:35-36). Jakobson claims that "introversive semiosis" (message signifying itself), which dominates music, glossolalic poetry, and nonrepresentational visual arts, also plays a "cardinal role" in representational art and poetry; nevertheless he recognizes that in the latter arts it "coexists and coacts" with "extroversive semiosis" (1971, 705). Recently, Riffaterre proposed a semantics of fictionality within the doctrine of self-referentiality. "Freeing fiction from the shackles of reference," he bases fictional truth on text grammar: "Readers need not be familiar with the reality that the text is about in order to believe it true. The only reference against which they need to test the narrative's truth is language. All they have to verify is that the text is derived grammatically" (1990, 8). Riffaterre's study of the various techniques of fictional text derivation is a model of narrative poetics, but his identifying of truth-valuation with grammaticality is theoretically counterproductive. IO. Throughout this book, particular is used in Strawson's sense: it is an entity that can be identified by "individuating facts" or "logically individuating descriptions," facts or descriptions that are true of one and only one entity. The basic individuating fact of material bodies is their spatiotemporal location (1959, 9-30; see also 1992, 54-58). Universal is the opposite ofparticular. u. While Auerbach used actual universals as semantic interpretants, Watt takes them as historical determinants of fictional particulars. Mimesis becomes the explanandum of the genesis of fictional entities. There is, however, no epistemological difference between the semantic and the historical praxis of mimesis: Watt's mimetic history is a projection of mimetic interpretation onto the time axis. 12. A more charitable evaluation could see pseudomimesis as an unintended subversion of the mimetic doctrine: if fictional realms are presumed to exist, wherever or however, then the one-world frame is seriously put into question. 13. Russell's contribution to this law was stated in Pr.I.I; the inclusion of Leibniz will be understood after reading Pr.2.1.

229

Notes to Pages ro-r3 14. Martfnez-Bonati expressed this belief when he emphasized that "the fundamental compass of narrative" is "a world of individuals." "Cervante'sDon Quijote is not basically a type or symbol, but an individual" (1981, 24). In philosophical literature, the same conviction is expressed by Parsons: "The characters of fiction ... are always understood as concrete" (1982, 318). 15. Woods is aware of this restriction of formal theories when he

points out that "fictional discourse lays strong claims upon a non-negligible semantic status; and the appropriate theories, I should think, would need to articulate the appropriate doctrines of reference, inference and truth" (1982, 553). Wirrer (1982) connects the "fiction operator" (contrasted with the "fact operator") with the "fiction convention," thus suggesting a link between the formal and the pragmatic theories of fictionality. 16. The pragmatics of pretense needs a semantics of fictional entities, or, as Lycan puts it, it "still must distinguish between fictional truth and fictional falsity" (1994, 67), so it borrows the most primitive version of the mimetic doctrine. Fictional persons are "people," fictional settings actual places: "Miss Murdoch ... tells us a story; in order to do that, she pretends to make a series of assertions about people in Dublin in r9r6" (emphasis added). Conan Doyle "blundered" when he made Sherlock Holmes and Watson go from Baker Street to Paddington Station by a route that is "geographically impossible" (Searle 1979, 70). In such a perspective, the fictionalist's statements about fictional entities are either pretended true assertions or blunders. 17. For a meticulous philosophical critique of the various versions of "pretended reference," see Crittenden 1991, 45-52. 18. Anna Wierzbicka takes a similar position in the broader area of human communication. Pragmatics is approached "as a part, or an aspect, of semantics"; "but this does not mean that anything that has ever been called 'pragmatics' could, or should, be swallowed by semantics" (1991, 5, 19). 19. "A possible world," Kuhn explains, "is often spoken of as a way

our world might have been .... Thus, in our world the earth has only a single natural satellite (the moon), but there are other possible worlds, almost the same as ours, except that the earth has two or more satellites or has none at all. ... There are also possible worlds less like ours: some in which there is no earth, others in which there are no planets, and still others in which not even the laws of nature are the same" (1989, 13). Ac-

230

Notes to Pages r3-r5 cording to Kirkham, "a possible world is a hypothetical entity postulated as an aid to talking about and studying the various ways the universe might have been different.... A possible world is a complete universe that differs in some way or another (or in more than one way) from the actual universe" (1992, 11). 20. Chisholm considers the term actual ambiguous and proposes instead "the world that obtains" or "the prevailing world" (1981, 129); this might be a useful terminological suggestion, but it only confirms the need for assigning to one possible world exclusive ontological status. 21. In cognitive activities possible worlds are means for grasping actuality. "We explore the plurality ofpossibilia to find out a suitable model for realia" (Eco 19886, 57). 22. Adams, calling possible worlds "completely determinate," formulates th~ criterion of this property: "(1) For every possible world, w, and every pair of contradictory propositions, one member of the pair is true in w and the other member is false in w. (2) Each possible world, if temporally ordered at all, is a complete world history and not a momentary stage of one. The actual world, therefore, includes what has actually existed or happened and what will actually exist or happen, as well as what now exists or happens" (1979, 191; see also Bradley and Swartz 1979, 4-5; Rescher and Brandom 1980, 2). 23. Kripke's inconspicuous note is very important in assuring us that the concept of miniworld is logically compatible with the concept of infinite possible world: "If we restrict the worlds to a narrower class of miniworlds, essentially all the issues regarding say, rigid designation, remain the same. So do the questions of modal semantics" (1980, 19 n. 18). 24. This idea was central to the first, eighteenth-century version of possible-worlds poetics inspired by Leibniz and Wolff and developed by J. J. Bodmer, J. J. Breitinger, and A. G. Baumgarten (see Dolezel 1990, 33-52). Leibnizian poetics was forgotten, and the term world was used merely as faron de parler in such phrases as "the world of Crime and Punishment," "the Shakespearean world," "the world/universe of science fiction," etc. Penetrating observations about fictional worlds of novels, prefiguring tenets of possible-worlds semantics, were made by Dorothy Van Ghent (1953). Alexander Zholkovsky works with the concept of an author's "poetic world" (1984, 63-82, 195-214), as does McCormick (1988, 256). The title of this book adopts a term used by Baumgarten (albeit in a narrower sense) and thus indicates the link of contemporary possibleworlds semantics of fictionality to the eighteenth-century episode.

231

Notes to Pages I6-I7

25. Ruth Ronen, while emphasizing the "affinity between possible worlds and fictional worlds," expresses a similar caveat (1990, 288, 295; 1994, 5-9). Some possible-worlds philosophers, obviously fearing logical difficulties, retreat into the one-world model frame when theorizing about fiction. Thus Plantinga's daring ontology and semantics is coupled with the most timid, Russellian conception of fictionality: "Stories are about nothing at all and the names they contain denote neither actual nor possible objects" (1974, 163). Woltersdorff succumbs to universalist mimesis and deletes fictional particulars: "Essentially what I have done is elaborate Aristotle's suggestion that characters are types-not persons of a certain type but person-types. The character Hamlet is not a non-existent particular, but a type" (1989, 248). 26. Leibniz posited a sharp distinction between the actual world and the realm of fiction: "It cannot be denied that many stories, especially those we call novels, may be regarded as possible, even if they do not actually take place in this particular sequence of the universe which God has chosen-unless someone imagines that there are certain poetic regions in the infinite extent of space and time where we might see wandering over the earth King Arthur of Great Britain, Amadis of Gaul, and the fabulous Dietrich von Bern invented by the Germans" ([1679] 1857, 179; Loemker 1969, 263). "Whether Astree is possible in an absolute sense is a question to which I answer 'Yes,' because it does not imply any contradiction. Yet in order for this novel to exist in fact, it would be necessary for the rest of the universe also to be entirely different from what it is" ([1714] 1887, 572; Loemker 1969, 661). It is statements like these that justify my including Leibniz's name in the designation of the "law" that postulates ontological homogeneity of the actual world (Pr. 1.4). 27. A curious case is highly instructive. lssacharoff (1987, 86-87) points out that von Gerlach, a fictional person of Jean Paul Sartre's play The Condemned ofAltona, by coincidence bears the name of an actual person. Sartre was so embarrassed when he discovered the "mistake" that he apologized in the prefatory note to his play to "one of the bravest and best-known opponents of National Socialism." But, strictly speaking, Sartre had nothing to apologize for: the coincidence does not make Sartre's von Gerlach actual, it only brings about a rare semantic phenomenon-post-Jestum transworld identity. Kripke, who is not aware of the von Gerlach case, comments on a similar but construed example: "The mere discovery that there was indeed a detective with exploits like those of Sherlock Holmes would not show that Conan Doyle was writ232

Notes to Pages I7-I8

ing about this man; it is theoretically possible, though in practice fantastically unlikely, that Doyle was writing pure fiction with only a coincidental resemblance to the actual man'' (1980, 157). 28. In the end, Lewis disarms all those who might classify him as essentialist with a charming innocence: "The essences of things are settled only to the extent that the counterpart relation is, and the counterpart relation is not very settled at all" (1983, 42). I feel, therefore, comfortable using the convenient term counterpart in a radically nonessentialist semantics of fictionality. 29. With respect to fictional counterparts of actual places, the principle of verisimilitude has been rejected by Ronen: "a) it is impossible to demarcate essential properties of Paris which do (or should) recur in each of its literary constructions; b) diverse descriptive sets can be attributed to the same name in different fictional worlds and therefore descriptions that replace a name in one particular fictional world cannot be transferred or applied to other possible worlds" (1988, 503). Discussing the opposition of biography and fiction, Cohn emphasizes "the biographer's constraint and the novelist's freedom" (1989, 6). 30. Pavel states that "within fiction names work like usual proper names, that is as rigid designators attached to individuated objects, independent of the objects' properties" (1986, 37). It is, however, questionable to extend the concept of rigid designation to the so-called natural kinds and other, unspecified types of common names. If one claims that "virtually every term in the common language is rigid" (Schwartz 1977a, 39 n. 23), then the whole point of rigid designation is lost. 31. In the dramatic text of his above-mentioned tragicomedy, Napoleon in New Orleans, Kaiser meticulously manipulates the use of the proper name and alias. When the actor named Youyou assumes the personality of the emperor in the colossal fraud concocted by his friend, he is renamed Youyou-Napoleon. But when the gang confesses to the fraud, he is returned to the name Youyou. 32. Of the theoretical difficulties, let me mention just one: the "mixed-bag" conception requires two different semantics for the fictional text, one for sentences about Pierre Bezuchov, another for sentences about Napoleon. In reading fictional texts we are expected to be switching constantly from one mode of interpretation to another (Pollard 1973, 61; Pelc 1977, 266). Long before possible-worlds semantics of fictionality, the ontological homogeneity of fictional entities was recognized by Margaret Macdonald: ''A storyteller is not making informative assertions

233

Notes to Pages I8-20 about real persons, places and incidents even when these are mentioned in fictional sentences. But rather ... these also function like purely fictional elements, with which they are always mingled in a story" (1954, 181). 33. It has been noted that the same principle is valid from the viewpoint of the reader: "For the reader it is not easier to create and believe in the well-documented world of Zola than it is for him to imagine hobbits or elves; the imaginative leap into the novel's world of time and space must be made in both cases" (Hutcheon 1980, 78). Crittenden, who does not accept possible-worlds semantics, bases his theory on "one specific kind of fiction": "novels and stories having to do with normal human beings in realistic kinds of situation" (1991, 79). His claim that "realistic fiction is ... philosophically fundamental" has no historical or theoretical grounds. Crittenden is aware of the existence of "non-realistic fiction" (myth, fairy stories, fantasy, science fiction, modernist fiction), but his severely hamstrung poetics cannot offer any theoretical explanation of their "structure" (1991, 155). 34. Leibniz could not accommodate the notion of transworld identity within his conception of possible worlds. Referring to his famous reflection on possible Adams, Parkinson writes: "Leibniz is saying that we are not to think of one and the same individual as a member of a number of possible worlds. The complete concept of Adam is tied to one possible world, the possible world of which that concept is a member" (1995, 216.) The principle of compossibility is more profiled in Ep. 4. 35. The necessary link between the laws of the world and the compossibility of its constituents was perceived clearly by Russell: "Without the need for some general laws, any two possibles would be compossible, since they cannot contradict one another. Possibles cease to be compossible when there is no general law to which both conform" (1937, 67). Rescher vacillates. When speaking about possible individuals, he asserts "an aggregative conception of possible worlds": "Possible worlds just are certain collections of possible individuals .... Worlds impose no 'emergent' features on their individuals, features which could not in principle be determined to hold of these individuals considered in separation, without reference to world environments" (1975, 94). However, when discussing the "lawfulness" of possible worlds, Rescher reverses his position: "To accept a law is to exclude possibilities-it is to introduce a characteristic restriction on the sphere of'possible individuals'" (146). 36. According to Eco, "a WJ is accessible to a Wi when the world

234

Notes to Pages 20-24 structure of W'i can generate (through manipulations of the relations between individuals and properties) the world structure of WJ" (1979, 231). 37. Thanks to the stability of these instructions, readers' processings show substantial agreement, as empirical studies of reading practices discover. With respect to poetry, Fairley arrived at the following conclusion: "Reading and responding to poems is not entirely an idiosyncratic and subjective experience.... Substantial agreements may be found regarding matters of structure and meaning" (1979, 349). Similarly, studying the readers' processing of narratives, Miall found a high degree of conformity, suggesting that "the reading process is directed in systematic and partly predictable ways by the literary text" (1990, 337). 38. Philosophers of fictionality, unaware of the semiotic mechanisms of accessibility, encounter serious difficulties when theorizing about the reception process: either the actual "observer" (reader, spectator) is denied access to fictional worlds (Wolterstorff 1980, m-12) or the implausible assumption is made that he or she is both actual and fictional (Walton 1978/79, 21-22). 39. Crittenden saves face when analysing critically "pan-fictionalism," the claim "that anything whatever is fictional" (1991, 163). Suddenly, he accepts the concept of fictional world and sets it apart from the real world: "A fictional world is an entire set of characters, events, and background circumstances all bound together into a unity, and it is from this entire totality that the mature reader is conceptually removed" (1991, 171). So, in the end, we cannot make a telephone call to Watson, and, alas, neither can we ask Holmes to hunt down our criminals. 40. Quite a few contemporary theorists of fiction (Chisholm 1972; Parsons 1980; Kany6 1980; Merrell 1983, 93-97; Pavel 1986, 27-31; McCormick 1990, 252-73; Pozuelo Yvancos 1993, 134-35; Lycan 1994, 4-19; for some reservations see Woods 1978a) have been attracted to Alexis Meinong's ontology (first proposed in 1904), resuscitating it after Russell's onslaught (Meinong [1904] 1960). Meinong's ontology, which accepts entities "without restriction to the special case of existence" and "tries to encompass also everything that is not real" (Meinong [1923] 1974, 224, 225), seems to be compatible with a theory that grants the status of existence to fictional semiotic objects. 4r. The opposition between world imaging (representation) and world constructing is obliterated in radical constructivism, which claims that all texts are world constructing and all worlds dependent on textual activity (see Goodman 1978; Schmidt 1984). According to Goodman,

235

Notes to Pages 24-27 "We can have words without a world but no world without words or other symbols" (1978, 6). Goodman gives no directions as to where "words without a world" could be found. For a criticism of the "semiotic idealism," see Savan 1983 and Freundlieb 1988. The opposition between I-texts and C-texts is also annulled in mimetic semantics, which, as we have seen (Pr. 1.3), makes fictional texts represent the actual world. Not surprisingly, mimesis serves well as a face-saving device for the radical constructivist: "Fiction, then, whether written or painted or acted, applies truly neither to nothing nor to diaphanous possible worlds, but, albeit metaphorically, to actual worlds .... Fiction operates in the actual worlds in much the same way as nonfiction" (Goodman 1978, rn4). Rorty, who has no sympathy for "the relationship which hooks mental representations to reality," nevertheless cleverly recognizes the need to preserve some realists, so that the philosophical game can continue: "The ironic attitude towards 'truth' which 'modernism' exhibits would be impossible without a lively philosophical tradition which keeps the picture of mind or language alive. Without the foredoomed struggle of philosophers to invent a form of representation which will constrain us to truth while leaving us free to err, to find pictures where there are only games, there would be nothing to be ironic about. In a culture lacking the contrast between science and poetry, there would be no poetry about poetry, no writing which was a glorification of writing itself" (1982, 136). 42. This may be right de facto, but it is not true de jure. Prominent narratologists, especially Roland Barthes and A. J. Greimas, have explicitly claimed that all recits, fictional or nonfictional, fall into the domain of narratology. 43. Text-inherent commentaries have to be clearly distinguished from the actual readers' evaluations of the story, its acting characters, etc. The latter will be influenced by the former, but, in principle, the readers, having at their disposal the total information carried by the fictional text, are able to form their own opinions. 44. Mieke Bal is right that the prefix meta, so popular in French narratology, should be reserved "for a more appropriate use" (as in metalanguage and metatheory, I suppose); but I do not find attractive her suggestion to replace it with hypo (1972, 35). 45. Reflecting on the above-quoted opening sentence of Anna Karenina, Searle noticed the special status of I-digressions within his "pragmatics of pretence": "That, I take it, is not a fictional but a serious utter-

Notes to Pages 27-38 ance. It is a genuine assertion. It is part of the novel but not part of the fictional story'' (1979, 74). 46. To distinguish the sentences of the fictional text from paraphrase statements, Pavel designated the latter as ersatz-sentences (1975/76). Woods dramatized the truth-conditions of ersatz-sentences by calling them "bet-sensitive": one would win a bet on "Sherlock Holmes lived on Baker Street" but lose a bet on "Sherlock Holmes lived on Berczy Street" (1974, 13-14; for a similar argument, see Plantinga 1974, 162; Searle 1979, 72; Chateaux 1976; Purtill 1978; Woods 19786). The general import of the truth-conditions of paraphrase for a theory of literary interpretation is pointed out in Dolezel 1985. Crittenden supports the truth-valuation of paraphrase sentences by an argument that is especially relevant in the context of contemporary literary theory: "The contents of a story-its fictional world-have an independent status that can be learned by anyone who reads it. These contents are objective and independent of individual belief in this way: whether a certain character is in a story or whether a given state of affairs holds there are not matters of arbitrary belief; rather, these depend on what the sentences setting out the story say" (1991, 93).

l· One-Person· Worlds 1. Narratology has paid no attention to this structure. Norman Friedman, who is aware of the existence of one-person stories, treats them as exceptional cases, suitable for poetry rather than narrative (1975, 172-73). In contrast, psychology and psychoanalysis find the world of "solitude" fascinating (see Storr 1988). 2. According to Novak, three possible outcomes of the experiment were considered in Defoe's time: "Some writers believed that the isolated natural man might, through the use of his reason, achieve the same moral and intellectual condition as the human being raised in society. Others ... suggested that he would be savage and brutal but have greater freedom and happiness and fewer vices than civilized man. The majority of writers, however, argued that man was a social animal, that the bestial life of the solitary savage was insecure, and that far from being happy, the isolated natural man lived in constant fear of death" (1963, 23). 3. The fact that Defoe achieved a radical change in Crusoe's condition by a minimal sign has been praised as manifestation of his "perfect

237

Notes to Pages 38-42 art" (Tillyard 1969, 68-69; see also Blewett 1979, 39; Rogers 1979, n3-16). 4. Crusoe's "clear-eyed co-operation with circumstances" has been pointed out by Richetti (1975, 39). Richetti has also recognized the contrast between the conduct of cultural heroes and Crusoe's mode of acting but claims that "a strong temptation'' toward the heroic mode is observable in Defoe's narrative (1975, 53). 5. He sees "no Prospect of Life" and therefore proposes to himself to "consider the next Day what Death [he] should dye" (47). The next day, however, this intention is forgotten. 6. It has been observed in critical literature that Defoe's narrative is not free of contradictions and inconsistencies; they are especially apparent when it comes to Crusoe's stock. We are told, for example, that he came ashore with nothing "but a Knife, a Tobacco-pipe, and a little Tobacco in a Box" (47). This does not prevent Defoe from constructing an episode about Crusoe's lack of a pipe and his joy when he was able to make one (144). (For a theoretical assessment of authorial contradictions, see VI.2.) 7. My analysis incorporates divinity into the novel's fictional world and thus rejects the suggestion that it is a mere "rhetorical device, convenient for the presentation of change and for tying up of narratives" (Bell 1985, 94). On the other hand, it is an exaggeration to call Crusoe's history "a conversion story, like that of Augustine or Baxter." As the critic himself had to acknowledge, Crusoe is not a true convert, because he sheds his Christianity "as soon as [he] gets back to Europe" (Benjamin 1969, 35-36). Watt's opinion, that "each of his [Crusoe's] actions is followed by a passage of reflection in which Crusoe ponders over the problem of how it reveals the intentions of the divine providence" (1963, 79), is a sweeping generalization based on rather meager evidence. The two examples that Watt submits (Crusoe's illness and the sprouting of the randomly spilled corn) are not actions but nature events. Moreover, Watt overlooks the fact that Crusoe corrected his original interpretation of the corn incident when he discovered its true cause. 8. To avoid any misunderstanding, let me state that there is no necessary connection between the one-person world and the first-person narrative mode. Crusoe's Ich-form both precedes and continues beyond the island episode. The two other instances of the one-person world presented in this chapter are not /ch-form narratives. 9. A remarkable distinction is worth noting. While the rationalistic

238

Notes to Pages 42-45 philosophy of human striving is constructed in the apersonal, gnomic I digressions, religious quietism is expressed by the subjective first-person narrative: "I look'd now upon the World as a Thing remote, which I had nothing to do with, no Expectation from, and indeed no Desires about: In a Word, I had nothing indeed to do with it, nor was ever like to have" (128). The difference could indicate that rejection of the world is the fictional person's transient opinion at a moment of resignation, whereas rationalistic philosophy is the actual author's firm belie£ IO. Picking up on a remark by Hemingway, some critics consider "Big Two-Hearted River" an episode of the "Nick Adams cycle," narrating Nick's return from the war (Baker 1969, 156; Flora 1982, 147). For Philip Young the short story also becomes meaningful only when set in a coherent narrative of the cycle; otherwise, "a story about a man fishing" is felt by many readers to be "quite pointless." Yet Young is unspecific as to the place of"BigTwo-Hearted River" in the life story of Nick Adams; he sees it as "a picture of a sick man, and of a man who is in escape from whatever it is that made him sick. ... The blows which he has sufferedphysical, psychical, moral, spiritual and emotional-have damaged him" (1966, 47). There does not seem to be much about Nick that is sick. The "damage" to his personality structure is done by the severe restrictions reigning in the fictional world of this short story. 11. Nick is a typical modern consumer: "he liked to open cans," and he thinks that the canned apricots "were better than fresh apricots" (217). Surprisingly, an American critic claims that "Nick is quite adept at providing tasty food on this journey" (Flora 1989, 53). 12. In the one-person world, there is almost no opportunity to create dramatism by verbal acting. Nick's is restricted to brief intransitive speech acts, typical of soliloquy (apostrophe, self-address, exclamation). 13. It has been claimed that the duels of human agents with animals, typical of Hemingway's fictional world, are basically "sports events" rather than "existential confrontations between man and nature" (Nicolaisen 1979, 36). But even if we accept Nick's duel with the big trout as a sports event, we cannot overlook the existential dimension of the confrontation between animal and man in The Old Man and the Sea. 14. Overzealous interpreters have suggested that Nick's expert routines are "a ritualization of conventional activity" that help him "recover psychic balance" (Defalco 1963, 145; see also Wells 1969, 132; McLain 1974, 160; Flora 1989, 52). My analysis of the semantic structure ofNick's acting reveals rather the mental poverty of pure expertness.

239

Notes to Pages 4r53 15. The landscape becomes a "motion picture" when Nick walks and the temporal dimension is drawn into the construction: "For some time as he walked Nick had been in sight of one of the big islands of pine standing out above the rolling high ground he was crossing. He dipped down and then as he came slowly up to the crest of the ridge he turned and made toward the pine trees" (212-13). Referring to landscapes of this kind, Nicolaisen claimed that "it is only the feet which seem to establish a direct contact with the exterior world; otherwise nature is prominently empty and deprived of the life that usually affects man's senses" (1979, 19). My analysis flatly contradicts this claim. 16. It is symptomatic that the only thing Nick does "meditatively'' is "sucking the apricots down'' (217). 17. Unlike Crusoe and Nick, Des Esseintes "is ultimately dependent on the world 'outside,' both for its material resources, and also for the content of his aesthetic projects (art, literature, jewels, perfumes all come from the outside)" (Lloyd 1990, 91). 18. The progress of Des Esseintes's disease forces him to expand his physical activities; thus, for example, "he went so far as to leave the house and go for strolls in the country'' (187; 94). 19. The standard occidental hierarchy of senses is enunciated by Strawson: "Traditionally, five senses are recognized as distinguishable modes of perception of public objects. Of these, taste and smell are strikingly more trivial than the others ... It does not seem that to suppose our experience free of gustatory or olfactory elements would, by itself, be to invite a significant conceptual revolution" (1959, 64). The fin-de-siecle "revolution'' of the "lower" senses is a challenge to the occidental hierarchy. 20. The ideological character of Des Esseintes's aesthetics renders his practical reasoning tautological: the choice of an alternative is predetermined by its ideological weight. Such is the case of the color selection for his rooms (which we have already mentioned): "There could be no doubt whatever as to Des Esseintes's choice" (98; 30). 21. During the "London trip" interlude, Des Esseintes's imagination reproduces images of Dickens' fictional characters (248; 138). The visit to Des Esseintes's fictional world of persons from other fictional worlds is rare in Huysmans's novel but highly interesting for fictional semantics (Ep.4). 22. The significance of Des Esseintes's hallucinations was not lost on the critics. Court-Perez notes that "Des Esseintes no longer controls his dreaming, he becomes an object of what invades him" [ne dirige plus son

240

Notes to Pages 53-56 reve, il devient l'objet de ce qui l'envahit] (1987, 91-92); Lloyd perceives the reversal of the outside/inside opposition: "The outside irrupts from within as a virulent, destructive force which the hero cannot resist" (1990, 92). 23. This assumption has also been confirmed with regard to the evaluations of the painter Gustave Moreau (Brunner and Coninck 1929, 75-108; Issacharoff 1970, 58-59; Maingon 1977, 48-49, 108). A detailed

assessment of the relationship between Des Esseintes's essay on Latin literature and its historical sources can be found in Fumaroli 1977, 407-18, and Ceard 1985. According to Court-Perez (1987, 61-62), Gourmont asked Huysmans to write a preface to the first edition of Le Latin Mystique; in subsequent editions, this preface was not reprinted.

fl· Action and Motivation r. The two core parts of the traditional model of narrative structure are enhanced by secondary constituents, particularly spatial setting and temporal organization. 2. In 1963, von Wright still writes: "The concept of a human act has, as such, been relatively little discussed in philosophic literature" (19636, 35). The focus on action theory is a symptom of a more general turn in analytic philosophy-a radical expansion of its scope: "In order to gain the clarity, rigor, and precision that analytic philosophers have valued so highly, they have imposed severe limitations on what is and is not the proper business of philosophy and philosophic analysis .... The dialectic of analytic philosophy itself has brought us to a renewed sense of the complexity and variety of philosophic issues that need to be confronted. Concerning the concept of action, we are becoming aware of how inadequate our grasp is of the complexity of this concept and its interrelationships with other concepts. But even more important, we are becoming aware of questions that must be raised which analytic philosophers have scarcely begun to ask" (Bernstein 1971, 302). In some European writings an empirically oriented action theory is called "praxeology'' (see Daval 1981). 3. Von Wright's proposal relates the logic of action to classical formal logic through the logic of change: "We could say that formal logic, as we know it today, is essentially the logic of a static world.... Acts, however, are essentially connected with changes .... A necessary requirement of a Logic of Action is therefore a Logic of Change" (19636, vii). Brennen241

Notes to Pages 56-57 stuhl, who criticized von Wright on some points, accepted his conception of "event": "a change of state of the person or of its environment" (1975, 192). 4. "One event is an alternative to another for an agent just in case he can bring about each but not both'' (Zimmerman 1984, 190). 5. The basic bodily movements often show individual or cultural "symptoms"; they are performed with characteristic "body techniques" (see Mauss 1979, 97-123). These symptoms play a major role in the design of some fictional agents. 6. This model of acting is a theoretical background for interpreting metaphors, category shifts, and so on (a ball kicking a person, a ball becoming an acting person). Other seemingly problematic cases are not anomalies of the action structure but distortions in the action description (texture). Thus, the description "The ball broke the window" is "ellipsis of event-causality'': even though the person is not explicitly expressed, the sentence presupposes that the breakage was "caused" by an agent (Davidson 1980, 54; VII.2 above). 7. Mele, arguing against the obsessive need of some philosophers to "individuate" actions, finds it more profitable to accept that "there may be a 'larger' action having 'smaller' actions among its parts" (1992, 5). 8. To be precise, the role of mental factors in acting has been recognized since antiquity, especially in Aristotle's philosophy of action (see Charles 1984; Donagan 1987, 41). Within narratology, Bremond pointed out their theoretical significance, linking acting to three kinds of binary mental "mobiles": hedonic (desire/aversion), pragmatic (favorable calculus/unfavorable calculus) and ethical (awareness of obligation/awareness of interdiction) (1973, 156, 18r88). Brand (who offers a useful survey of contemporary action theory), emphasizes that the introduction (or reintroduction) of mental factors into the concept of acting does not require a full-fledged philosophy of the mind: "By and large, action theory can proceed without resolving the outstanding issues about the nature of the mental" (1984, 45). Certainly, we are not forced int0 Cartesian dualism when we postulate a connection between the mental and the physical. Both cognitive psychologists (Flanagan 1984, 243) and philosophers (Shaffer 1968, 52-57; Danto 1979, rn) integrate mental and physical concepts into a monistic ontology. Strawson, explaining his conception of person as a fusion· of physical and mental states and events (1959, 89, rn1-3), states: "When we say such things as 'I closed my eyes and (I) thought of you' or 'When I sit in that chair, I feel deliciously relaxed,' we

Notes to Pages 5r59 do not, I suggest, for a moment suppose that we are switching the reference of'I' between its first occurrence in the sentence and its second. We are ordinarily content to operate with a concept of ourselves and other people as beings who are both corporeal and conscious; and it is to such beings that we ordinarily employ the personal pronoun to refer" (1980, 269; emphasis added). Searle maintains that we live in "one world which contains mental things in the sense in which it contains liquid things and solid things" (1983, 271; see also Rapoport 1974, 62; Dennett 1978, 26r85). 9. Since Brentano, intentionality has been thought of as a distinctive property of mental phenomena. Mental phenomena are intentional in having objects, "even though the objects which they can be said to have do not in fact exist" (Chisholm 1957, 169). It is not in my competence to resolve the tangled issue, but I sympathize with the view that the intention for and in acting is a special case of the mind's intentionality: its object is action, even though the action has not yet been or never will be materialized. It was Searle who put forth this view: "On my account intending to do something is just one form of Intentionality along with belief, hope, fear, desire, and lots of others" (1983, 3). For lucid summaries of the various views of intentionality, see Meiland 1970 and Aquila 1977. Brand succumbs to the ambiguity of ordinary language when he accepts intentionality as the defining feature of all acting but, at the same time, uses the term "intentional acting" in the narrow sense of "planned" action (1984, 37). IO. Beardsley holds that one cannot do D intentionally "without being aware that one is doing D" (1978, 168). Donagan's example shows that such a restriction is too severe and would deny the status of acting not only to routines but also to actions done unconsciously or subconsciously (see II.2). II. Nature farce is a term encountered in some versions of case grammar (Huddleston 1970). Those semanticians who do not accept N-force face serious difficulties in interpreting events. Thus Halliday has to consider the dubious term "inanimate actor" (1970, 149). Chafe makes the absurd claim that sentences of the type "It's raining" or "It's snowing" express an action because they answer the question "What's it doing?" (1970, rn2). Bartsch and Vennemann, using as example the event-description, "The water pushed the rocks over the cliff," pointed out the problem: "One would be reluctant to call it [the water] an agent, and it cannot be an instrument because for something to be an instrument it must be used by an agent in performing a task" (1972, 29).

2 43

Notes to Pages 60-63 12. Danto uses a striking example to demonstrate the person's inability to control biological events: "Consider the male erection, a bodily event externally quite like the raising of an arm .... It remains the commonly received view that erection is not an action, and men invariably are aware that it is not something they do, that it is a response, something that happens to them" (1973, 55). Shaffer points to pathological behavior-"tremors of the hand, twitches and ticks, and the violent movements associated with epileptic seizures"-to support the claim that "they are things which happen to the person rather than things which the person actively does" (1968, 79). 13. It was Austin's famous ''A Plea for Excuses" (1970, 175-204) that introduced the "breakdowns" in acting into contemporary analytic philosophy. 14. This distinction is predicted in Aristotle's differentiation of "tragic" and "comic" errors (see Else 1957, 189). 15. Cognitive psychology has provided various accounts and classifications of agential mistakes (Rehbein 1977, 230-31; Reason 1979, 6r89; Rumelhart and Norman 1982; Coval and Campbell 1992, 97, ro3-22). We should be careful, however, not to interpret as accident such modifications of actions and activities as are due to a shift in intentions. There is no "deviation of action from intention'' (as Reason claims), if the original intention was changed or abandoned. Accidents occur in the time interval (however minimal) between the intention and its implementation. 16. As Rescher observes, "Fate and fortune-inexorable destiny and mere chance-have ever been close allies," at least since the Greeks and the Romans associated the goddesses of Necessity and Fortune. Yet, in fact, they are opposites, "the one geared to blind and unpredictable chance, the other to foreordained and inexorabable fate" (1995, 8, 12). An action-based theory explains this double-faced character of accident, often exploited in fictional narratives (see III.2.3). 17. Speaking generally about events, Danto spells out this condition with characteristic wit: "What happened to me last night is that I did not sleep. There are many other things of which it would be true but uncharacteristic to say that they did not happen to me last night, i.e. I did not pass into Nirvana, I did not give birth to a giraffe, I did not turn into a pillar of pistachio ice-cream, and so-endlessly-on. But these are things I am incapable of having happen to me, and so their absences are not part of my life" (1973, 171). 18. The term motive, encountered in psychology and elsewhere, is

244

Notes to Pages 63-65 used to refer to a particular reason for a particular action: "Motive is some occurrence that functions as a spring to action" (Melden 1964, 83). But restricting motivation to particular motives leaves many actions unexplained or incomprehensible. Melden himself gives the example of Meursault's stated motive for killing the Arab (in Camus's L'Etranger) as making "no sense" (1964, 83). Ricoeur criticized this narrow view (1977, 40-48, 85-93) but did not seek advice from motivational psychology. Unlike motive, motivation is systemic both in its own characteristics (motivational systems) and with respect to persons (habitual dispositions). 19. The systems can be briefly presented as follows: (1) The sensory system stimulates bodily responses that aim at releasing pressure or tension in the organism. (2) The system of curiosity makes the organism react to new stimuli. (3) The affiliative system motivates a person's contact with others. (4) The aggressive system provokes reactions to frustration by others. (5) The achievement system stimulates goal-oriented performance. (6) The power system provides a person with the ability to withstand influence by others. (7) The independence system motivates persons to act on their own. Dividing the systems into "asocial" (sensory, curiosity, achievement) and "social" (affiliative, aggressive, power, independence), Birch and Veroff indicate which of the drives characterize the person on its own (i.e., can be operative in the one-person world) and which require societal grouping (the multiperson world) (1966). It has to be emphasized that human drives, including those that correspond to animal instincts, are strongly influenced by cultural conditions: "Even simple homeostatically motivated behaviour may in man become complicated, diversified and modified through interaction with tastes and habits of eating and food seeking which are to a considerable extent acquired and maintained through social pressures" (Vernon 1969, 39). 20. We generally agree that "biological needs such as hunger 'drive' us to activities designed to meet that need" (Evans 1989, 86). 21. Although an ideal model of decision making can be formally devised (see Brand 1984, 130), persons are "limited information processors" (Carroll and Payne 1976a, x) and cannot apprehend all the alternatives available in a given situation; they arrive at decisions by "bounded rationality'' (Crozier and Friedberg 1980, 175; see also Dawes 1976, 4). 22. The one-person world is a good starting point for analyzing emotionality, because emotion is essentially an intrapersonal experience. However, the analysis reaches over into the multiperson world where emotional relationships and collective emotions emerge (IV.2.1).

245

Notes to Pages 6670 23. ''Aggression ... may take many forms, of which anger is only one. Conversely, anger may be expressed in a great variety of ways, nonagressive as well as aggressive" (Averill 1979, u; see also Rapoport 1974, no-22). Similarly, in the curiosity drive the emotion of "interest-excitement" was uncovered; it motivates investigative, exploratory, and creative activity, especially in sciences and arts (Izard 1977, 189-238). 24. De Sousa (1987, n6) distinguishes several kinds of the emotions' object. We have to protest loudly when he restricts the "target" of emotions to "real objects" only. The object of emotion can be equally real, fictional, or illusory. 25. Solomon rejects the concept of basic emotions and generally is rather skeptical about classifying this indeterminate area of mental life. He nevertheless proposes his own "emotional register," a hodge-podge of diverse mental and modal categories, including, among others, anger, duty, faith, friendship, and hope (1976, 282-368). 26. English-writing psychologists rarely use the term passion in its etymological sense, i.e., as designating the passive experiencing of emotions (see Averill 1980, 150-51). In French semiotics, passion refers to the "deep structure" modal construct of which emotions are psychological manifestations (Parret 1986, esp. 67-91). 27. The issue of expression is part of a broader issue of the universality of emotions. Izard claims that enough evidence has been accumulated to prove that the basic emotions "have the same expressions and experiential qualities in widely different cultures from virtually every continent on the globe, including isolated preliterate cultures having had virtually no contact with Western civilization" (1977, 6). 28. According to some linguists, expressive (emotive) verbal signs constitute a special functional language (Stankiewicz 1989); they certainly seem to be governed by special illocutionary rules (see Alston 1964, 4r48; Parret 1986, 157). 29. The most influential account of akrasia in ancient philosophy was Aristotle's. We have to bear in mind, however, that this account has several strands and inspired many (often conflicting) interpretations; for a summary, see Charles 1984 (esp. 109-96). 30. The account of akrasia as a conflict of motivations chimes with Donagan's presentation of Aristotle's view: the agents' incontinence is attributed "either to their not choosing according to the conclusion reached (weakness), or to their not carrying their deliberation through (impetuosity). And he [Aristotle] puts both failures down to passion"

Notes to Pages 70-73 (1987, 148). Similarly, de Sousa singles out emotion as the factor that "plugs one argument over another into the motor system," which results in akratic acting (1987, 200; see also Schick 1991, uo-15; Audi 1993, 319-33). 31. The "impulsive character" of instinct-motivated acting was clearly recognized by William James. In Sigmund Freud's model of the mind, the role of the primary mover of acting is assigned to the unconscious. Benjamin B. Wolman explains its impact on acting by the fact that "the unconscious processes are characterized by a high tension of unbound energy that presses for immediate discharge." In contrast, the secondary, conscious processes "reflect quiescent energy, controlled action, and delay in the discharge of energy dictated by survival considerations" (1968, rn). Mardi J. Horowitz, contemplating the dynamics of conscious acts of will and unconsciously made choices, comes to the conclusion that "there is both a top-down and a bottom-up interaction of conscious and unconscious thinking" (1988, 183). Austin invents a little story to prove that intentionality is not canceled in impulsive acting: "We walk along the cliff, and I feel a sudden impulse to push you over, which I promptly do: I acted on impulse, yet I certainly intended to push you over, and may even have devised a little ruse to achieve it" (1970, 195). 32. Pears supplements this view of irrationality when he defines it as "a failure to make proper use of information" (1984, 7). 33. A view has been expressed that "calculating the product of two numbers on a blackboard is certainly an action, but calculating it in one's head seems to me not quite properly called an action:" (Brown 1968, 29). Yet even before this artificial distinction was made, the concept of mental act was defended independently by Geach (1957) and Galperin (1957). Ricoeur accepts its legitimacy, pointing out that "there is no reason why we could not call ' act' the effort to think of a name or solve a problem'' (1977, 93). Donagan, using Brown's example, rejects his distinction: "Human beings make calculations not only on their fingers and on paper, but also in their heads; and the latter are as good specimens of full human actions as the former" (1987, 23; see also Danto 1973, 142-43). 34. The polarity is well known in psychology and philosophy. Berlyne differentiates between "autistic" and "directed" thinking (1965, 19), Frankfurter between "thought acts" and "obsessive thoughts." The latter "we find occurring within us .... Although these thoughts are events in the histories of our minds, we do not participate actively in their occurrence" (1988, 59). Psychologists have acknowledged the con-

247

Notes to Pages 1r18 tribution of modern fiction (particularly that of James Joyce and Virginia Woolf to the "discovery" of the spontaneous "flow of experience": "While the psychologist stumbled, stuttered, then froze into a paralyzed silence, the artist responded with graceful enthusiasm to the challenge William James ... set forth in his chapter 'The Stream of Thought' " (Pope and Singer 1978a, 2). The idea of the generative power, of a "continuously active" brain, was embraced by postbehavioristic psychology: "We are exposed almost continuously not only to a complex of stimulation from the external environment, but to a potential elaborate stimulus-field provided by the actual workings of our brain" (Singer 1978, 214). 35. Whe~her the dream has a source in personal experience or not (see Dennett 1978, 129-48, versus Malcolm 1959) does not affect its character as a spontaneously generated mental process. Fictional narratives are a rich source of dreams, with various functions and interpretations.

Ill· Multiperson Worlds 1. An English critic called The Idiot "a failure" because it is "forced, hysterical, hyperbolic,nasty, and boring" Qones 1983, x). The critic does not find it necessary to argue this preposterous claim; he simply excises the novel from his own boring book. 2. The firmness of the author's intent is put in doubt when we learn from Dostoevsky's notebooks about the many contradictory conceptions of the hero in the drafts (see Wasiolek 1967, 12-16). 3. The portrait is a sign in the strict sense because Myskin reads off from Nastasja Filipovna's face her character in all its contradictions (68; 100; see van der Eng 1957, 85-86). 4. The impersonal form of the verb desire, available in Russian ("jemu zachotelos' ") but not in English, is crucial for expressing the spontaneity of the mental event. It is worth noting that not having acted on the spontaneous desire and having deliberated for "less than ten minutes," the prince does not take the "step." 5. A model case ofloss of control is the self-induced incapacitation by drunkenness. Dostoevsky's fictional world is full of drunkards and drunken scenes. In The Idiot, drunkenness contributes to motivating one of its most dramatic episodes, Rogozin's offer to Nastasja Filipovna (bk. 1, chap. 16; 111.1.4 below). For a secondary character, General Ivolgin, drunkenness is a permanent state; and he is not only an alcoholic but also a compulsive liar.

Notes to Pages 78-82 6. Chaos creates an extraordinarily dynamic fictional world, an often noted feature of Dostoevsky's poetics (Grossman 1925, 178; Bachtin [1929] 1984, 156; van der Eng 1957, 61; Lord 1970, viii). 7. It was Bachtin who pointed out the prominence of scandal in Dostoevsky's fictional world. He considers the "scandal scenes" to be characteristic of the Menippean satire, of which Dostoevsky's narratives are a modern manifestation ([1929] 1984, 117). Lotman sees a close link between scandal and miracle in Dostoevsky's world, because "they are both unmotivated and abnormal" (1990, 167). 8. According to van der Eng's general observation, Dostoevsky "avoids making any effort to rationalize the mystery and to reduce it to simple elements" (1957, 81). 9. The relevance of the role cannot be expressed more strongly than by the definite descriptions assigned to Society's anonymous representatives: Bar, Bishop, Guard, Physician (see STIL2). 10. Dickens' institutions are no less fictional than everything else in his world. Having done his homework, House came to the conclusion that Little Dorrit is "a satire on social and financial conditions which belong more truly to the crisis of the late 'forties than to that of the middle 'twenties, with which they are apparently meant to be connecte~(1942, 29). What appears as anachronism to a mimetic study confirms our antimimetic stance: fictional society does not (does not have to) correspond to a specific social reality. 11. Miller (1965) makes the obvious connection between Dickens' and Kafka's bureaucratic institutions. What Dickens' and Kafka's fictional constructs certainly share was well expressed by Magnet: "The necessary public authority erected by men to guarantee the social contract has an inherent tendency to resolve itself into nothing more than the violence at its disposal. It thus perpetually presents the threat of becoming as savage as the savagery it was instituted to civilize" (1985, 6). Spilka 1963 is a detailed study of the Dickens-Kafka connection. See VIIl.3 below. 12. Prison as a fictional entity spills over into the texture by the ubiquitous prison metaphor (see Reid 1967, 27). As can be expected, each critic assigns to the key symbol of the novel a meaning derived from his or her interpretive ideology. In an existentialist vein, Miller reads into it "a religious or metaphysical meaning ... as well as a psychological and social one. To be in this world ... is to be in prison, and this condition will apparently persist as long as life itself" (1965, 228-29). Holloway his-

249

Notes to Pages 82-85 toricizes the existential interpretation: ''All are prisoners through the force of an idea characteristic of the mid-nineteenth century, with its deep sense of causal law and long temporal continuity: the present is imprisoned in the past' (1967, 22). For Frye the symbol signifies "a self-imprisoning society, locking itself in to the invariable responses of its own compulsions" (1968, 65). According to Showalter, "the prisons of Little Dorrit ... have strongly sexual connotations. Like the Gorgon, they paralyse, engulf, and emasculate" (1979, 39). We should be warned, however, against interpreting Little Dorrit as a novel whose fictional world is dominated exclusively by the image of the prison. First, an equally frequent countertheme, travel, brings into the novel the dialectic of "the restlessness of travel and the stasis of imprisonment" (Thurley 1976, 230). Second, as Carey soberly reminds us, we should be wary of spreading the prison symbol too broadly and too thinly: "There can be very little meaning in such assertions as 'Society is a prison' or 'All the world's a prison.' ... If society is a prison, then there's no great difference between being in prison and out of it" (1973, n4). 13. In an allusion to Indians in a poem by Pope, Mrs. Merdle deals a blow to any idealism by an irrefutable tautology: "If a few thousand persons moving in Society, could only go and be Indians, I would put my name down directly; but as, moving in Society, we can't be Indians, unfortunately-" (289). 14. In Dickens' universe most narrative roles are doubled by a caricature. The caricature of the antisocial rebel is Rigaud. In his "rebellion," Rigaud applies criminally the means that Society uses legally: "I sell anything that commands a price. How do your lawyers live, your politicians, your intriguers, your men of Exchange? ... Society sells itself and sells me: and I sell society'' (818). 15. The accidental happenings outrage critics who believe in the classicist poetics of narrative necessity. But Van Ghent, in one of her spectacular insights, recognizes their significance and role in Dickens' fictional world: "Dickens' ~e of physical coincidence in his plots is consistent with his imagination of a thoroughly nervous universe .... Coincidence is the violent connection of the unconnected" (1950, 428). And we can add: considering "the brilliant randomness of everyday life" (Rescher 1995), Dickens' fictional world is certainly more realistic than the normative world of actional necessity. 16. At this point, it is not relevant that Miss Wade later explained that she joined the Marseilles group intentionally.

Notes to Pages 85-87 I7. Holloway rephrased the idea by stating that "everything is related to everything" through "a gradual and inevitable convergence of disparates" (1967, 15, 26). Leavis uses a telling geometrical figure to express the characteristic of the agential constellation formed by accidents: through chancy encounters characters from quite different groupings associate in "significant" relationships. "If in our diagrammatic notation we have been representing groupings by lines linking names, the lines run across one another in an untidy and undiagrammatic mess" (1970, 218). 18. It was perceived both by Sklovskij and by Frye that the main mys-

teries in Dickens' world are mysteries of the past. But they are given very different explanations. For Sklovskij they mean that "in every minute detail general laws of art are manifest" (1929, 174). Frye points out the "sharp contrast" between "the traditional mystery of birth'' and "the mystery of death on which the modern whodunit is based" (1968, 54). 19. Tender hearts fall into Frye's category of "norm-figures." They "resemble humors only in the fact that their responses are predictable, but they are predictable in terms of a norm" and thus "encourage the reader to identify with them" (1968, 70). 20. The word "good-natured' is House's; he uses it with respect to "benevolent" characters, represented in Little Dorrit by Mr. Meagles (House 1942, 39), but it is equally appropriate for the tender hearts. 21. Miller finds an analogy between Amy Dorrit and Dostoevsky's prince Myskin, "a person who is altogether good" (111.r), but claims that "Dickens' conception of the drama of absolute human goodness" is "much less subtle than Dostoyevsky's" (1965, 240, 242). Woodward (1975) sees only the contrast between Amy and Miss Wade (rebellion/ submission, self-assertion/self-effacement, passion/placidity), not noticing that Amy's passivity is no less a rejection of society than Miss Wade's activism. Rotkin does not exempt Little Dorrit (and Arthur Clennam) from the general pattern of deception that, in her opinion, permeates the novel. She can do so only at the price of gross misinterpretations, the most serious of them being her claim that Amy shows "incestuous impulses" toward her father (1989, 63-66). Fortunately for Amy and for us, Rotkin acknowledges that "the reader is unlikely to take into account the subliminal sexuality to which Dickens is alluding because of the show of filial duty in Amy's behavior" (1989, 66). 22. In the light of her overall character and narrative role, it is preposterous to claim that Amy "securely belongs" to social conventions

Notes to Pages 87-9I (Smith 1984, 2r28). Only in one case, in her last conversation with Mrs. Clennam, is Amy explicit in formulating an ideology, two conceptions of Christianity (861). Here, however, she is a mouthpiece for Dickens' own rhetoric and a follower of his own strategy: to "strike a good religious note without committing himself beyond the common stock of Christian phrases" (House 1942, no). 23. At this point, the contrast between Clennam and Amy's father becomes quite obvious: Dorrit not only accepts but exploits Amy's selfsacrifice. 24. According to Porter, the "over-riding theme" of Kundera's narrative is "comic love against a background of social change" (1981, 14). 25. Variation has been generally recognized as the essential method of Kundera's work (see Le Grand 1984, 59; Kleberg 1984, 65-69; Brand 1987; Molesworth 1987, 79; Chvadk 1989, 32; 1994, 13). According to Le Grand, the method leads to knowledge by means of play: "Cognition no longer takes the causal road, but the ludic road of chance and imagina-

tion" (1984, 60). 26. Both books, but particularly the novel, are representative ofKundera's narratives in yet another respect: their text is a synthesis of several genres of writing: "In this novel we encounter Kundera the consummate essayist on questions of culture and politics in Eastern Europe, Kundera the spinner of ironic erotic tales which probe the interrelationships among sex, power, and love, Kundera the acerbic and playful satirist of 'socialist realist' literary mores, cliches, and types, Kundera the inventor of surreal and fantastic parables, as well as Kundera the autobiographer reflecting explicitly on his personal experiences and convictions and on the unanswerable dilemmas which have shaped him as a thinker and a writer" (Eagle 1984, 251). Kleberg derives this "multiplicity'' of text genres from the tradition of the Menippean satire (1984, 64); Lodge, speaking about a "heterogeneous text," connects it with the postmodernist writing of Kurt Vonnegut in Slaughterhouse Five (1984, n6). Olejniczak believes that in Kundera's textual collage the essay takes the most prominent place (1988, 164-65). 27. Critics have observed and Kundera has confirmed-by his admiration for Laurence Sterne's Tristram Shandy (1990, 160-62), by his "hommage" to Denis Diderot's Jacques and His Master-that his work has more in common with eighteenth-century literature than just the theme of libertinism (see Liehm 1980, 50-51; Welt 1988, 189; Nemcova Banerjee 1989).

Notes to Pages 97-I02 IV: Interaction and Power I. The indeterminacy is only slightly alleviated by the fact that rational acting "makes and maintains" regularities in the world (Porn 19 77 , 8_2). Unfortunately, all persons at some times and some persons at all times pursue modes of acting that are not rational. . . 2. This severe li~!tation ?f an~ytic philosophy has been rightly crit~cized by Habermas: Analytic action theory has been fruitful for clarifymg the structures of purposeful activity. However, it is limited to the atomistic model of action by an isolated actor and does not consider the ~echanisms for coordinating action through ~hich interpersonal relations come about. It conceptualizes action on the presupposition of exactly one world of existing states of affairs and neglects those actor-world relations that are essential to social interaction'' (1984, 273-74). Berger and Luckmann had already proposed a "dialectic" of the individual and society, where the individual "simultaneously externalizes his own being into the social world and internalizes it as an objective reality" (1966, n9). 3. ~f the conste_l!ations are linked by one recurrent person, we speak, fo~lowmg SklovskiJ (1929, 88-90), about "stringing" or "threading" of episodes. Its ~est example is the picaresque novel: the picaro-protagonist ~asses success~vely through several fictional domains with separate agential constellations. When no link exists between the constellations, as is the case in some modern narratives (III.3.3: Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting), the cohesion of the fictional world is strained and a loose narrative structure, transitional between a story cycle and a novel, is created. 4. The existence of compositionally structured agential constellations was recognized in the early stage of twentieth-century narratology (German "rhetorical school," Russian school of"compositional analysis") (see Dolezel 1990, 129, 139). 5- The force of communication is most tellingly revealed in its ability to kill. Commenting on the tragedy of Ellenore in Benjamin Constant's Adolphe, Todorov writes: "It is Adolphe's letter to baron de T*** that will kill Ellenore. Nothing is more violent than language" (1971 , 101). . 6. Ea~h- person's ~owledge and beliefs define him or her as a subjective cognmve domam; cognitive motivation is thus closely associated with epistemic modalities (Y.p). 7. Moscovici's study of the introduction of psychoanalysis into French intellectual life is of general import for understanding the differ-

253

Notes to Pages Io2-I05 ent formations and transformations of social representations. In the process, psychoanalysis went through three stages: "a) the scientific phase of its elaboration from a theory by a scientific discipline (economics, biology, etc.); b) the 'representative'phase in which it diffuses within a society and its images, concepts and vocabulary are recast and adapted; c) the ideological phase in which the representation is appropriated by a party, a school of thought or an organ of state and is logically reconstructed so that a product, created by the society as a whole, can be enforced in the name of science" (1984, 58). 8. Analogous dichotomies are observed in group attitudes: the conformism of mass culture contrasts with the "avant-garde practice" that construes its representations "in opposition to the pressures of conformity'' Oodelet 1984, 237). 9. If we speak about power in the one-person world ("power of nature," "physical or mental powers of the person"), we use the term metaphorically. 10. The concept of erotic cluster and the rejection of determinism in social motivation jointly save us from the claim that "all human sexual behavior is socially scripted behavior": "Combining such elements as desire, privacy, and a physically attractive person of the appropriate sex, the probability of something sexual happening will, under normal circumstances, remain exceedingly small until either one or both actors organize these behaviors into an appropriate script" (Gagnon and Simon 1973, 19). Such a rationalization of erotic activity deprives it of its characteristic spontaneity and unpredictability. 11. Here is a sampling of such ideologies: an imaging digression-"If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it" (Hemingway, Death in the Afternoon); a critic's paraphrase-"By the fructifying power of sex ... we are saved from a narrow and withering egotism that is the bane of modern civilized man" (Charney, summarizing the erotic ideology ofD. H. Lawrence and Henry Miller [1981, 93]); a psychologist's reflection-"It would seem that only in our [Western] societies has the idealization of sex in the form of romantic love reached ... an excessive pitch.... Consequently, sexual behaviour has acquired an attractiveness altogether out of proportion to its actual pleasure and its biological importance" (Vernon 1969, 43). 12. Charney emphasizes the drive motivation in the world of sexual fiction: "Sex is an instinct that cannot be denied. Once aroused, especially by a glimpse or touch of the sex organs, the instinct presses for fulfillment

254

Notes to Pages I05-III regardless of obstacles. The human will is no match against the forces of nature, so that it is rare for the sex instinct to be diverted once it is activated. Everything happens with magical swiftness and inevitability'' (1981, 73). 13. According to Foucault, it was de Sade who constructed erotics subjected "to the unrestricted law of a power which itself knows no other law but its own" (1978, 149). 14. The phrase comes from Alexander Puskin's story, "The Queen of Spades." 15. Social scientists speak about "unidirectional influence situation," described as follows: "One social entity, A, attempts to get another, B, to do something which is contrary to B's desires or tendencies. B's responses are contrary to Xs desires and conflict exists either until B complies with Xs requests or until A alters his desires" (Raven and Kruglanski 1970, 72; see also Deutsch 1991, 30; Loyd and Emery 1994, 34). 16. Debate (Rapoport 1960) is a moderated form, verbal dueling (Abrahams 1962) a ludic ritualized form, of this type of conflict. 17. The distinction between the verbal and the physical forms has been known in rhetoric under the terms "logomatic" and "hoplomatic" conflict (see Trojan 1924, 96). 18. Nicholson pointed out that many personal and international conflicts are not rational and cannot be accounted for by the game theory; frequently, the conflict is motivated and fed by "basic passions such as fear, aggression, anxiety and the impulse to violence" (1991, 66-74). 19. Deutsch's definition of the group-"an entity consisting of people who are aware of being psychologically bound together by mutually linked interests" (1973, 49)-applies truly to small groups only. But only in "primitive" societies do "the small, family-type units account for all or almost all human 'interaction' " (Olson 1971, 18). In advanced societies "a far greater part is played by non-kinship structures like states, churches, the larger business firms, universities and professional societies" (Parsons and Bales 1955, 9; qtd. from Olson 1971, 18). 20. According to Macmurray, community "rests upon a positive apperception by its members of the relation which unites them as a group. It is a personal, not an impersonal unity of persons" (1961, 147). 21. "Institutions ... by the very fact of their existence, control human conduct by setting up predefined patterns of conduct, which channel it in one direction as against the ma:ny other directions that would theoretically be possible .... To say that a segment of human activity has been institutionalized is already to say that this segment of human activ-

2 55

Notes to Pages Iu-u2 ity has been subsumed under social control" (Berger and Luckmann 1966, 52). 22. A similar polarity of "acting" and "structure" appears in modern hermeneutics (see Widdershoven 1984). 23. In the introduction to the French original of their book, Crozier and Friedberg use the dialectics of power to launch a critique "of this purely negative and repressive conception of power _affi~me~ in the l~st few years throughout the various analytical trends (mst1t~t1onal: ~~c10analytic, etc.) and in economic, psychiatric and pedagogic~ cnt1c1s~, whether neomarxist or simply radical; it is a conception which sees, m the existence of power relations and the problems it raises, the simple, almost pathological, product and proof of the immensity of the structure of authority, proof of a certain mode of social domination, of an Establishment that it would suffice to break in order to make the problems of power immediately vanish'' (1980, 26-27). Storr's telling image (derived from the study of authentic documents of confinement) shows that even in the most severe institutional restrictions the person preserves some freedom of action: "Even the prisoner who agrees to be totally at the mercy of his captors can retain some degree of autonomy: for example deciding whether to eat the bread he is given, or to save It for future consumption'' (1988, 48). 24. Let us record for future use the features of the French"style bureaucracy, as constructed by Crozier and Friedberg: "impersonal rules, which largely prescribe, often in great detail, organizational tasks and positions, and specify how each member should behave; highly intensive centralization of the decision-making power, which places great distance between those who decide and those who are affected by their decisions; stratification of individuals in homogeneous groups, separated from one another by often insuperable barriers; and, finally, the development of parallel power relationships around zones of uncertainty unforeseen, and as a result uncodified and unregulated, in the organization chart and formal guidelines" (1980, 98). 25. Berger and Luckmann use the Marxian term reification to refer to this transformation: "Reification is the apprehension of the products of human activity as ifthey were something else than human productssuch as facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will. Reification implies that man is capable of forgetting his own authorship of the human world, and further, that the dialectic between man, the producer, and his product is lost to consciousness" (1966, 82).

b!

Notes to Pages u3-II8

V.: Narrative Modalities r. The study of modalities in fictional semantics finds much inspiration in modal logic; but we have to look also to other disciplines that concern themselves with specific properties and functions of modalities, such as semiotics, social anthropology, ethics, legal theory, epistemology, axiology, etc. 2. The role of modality in acting is formally expressed in von Wright's TIM-calculus, where T stands for the moment of ch;mge, I for the set of possible state-changes, M for modal restrictions (von Wright 1968, 50). Propp's well-known system (1928) includes the modal notions of "prohibition'' and "lack," which generate the stories of transgression and quest respectively. Greimas was the first to formulate the macrostructural function of modalities: ''A modal category takes charge of the contents of the message and organizes it by establishing a certain type of relationship between the constituent linguistic objects" (1966, 133). Later, speaking specifically about narrative theory, Greimas observed that "for a long time the construction of a semio-narrative grammar was seen as a development of modal grammar" ([1983] 1987, 165). His system of modalities (proposed in Greimas [1976] 1987) is the crux of Greimasian semiotics, used to theorize such fundamental topics as individual and social acting (IV.4), passions (II.5.3), etc. 3. The number of these systems, four, is not magical. In accordance with the general character of our fictional semantics, narrative modalities are declared an open set. If other semantic categories are identified logically as modalities and proved significant for the formation of narrative worlds, then they should be accepted into the set. 4. This formulation guards us against the naive view that persons of the natural fictional world are (or should be) "real people." On the other hand, it encompasses, say, those extraterrestrial beings who are constructed as physically possible. 5. The human condition becomes tragic with narratives of paradise lost or of a golden age past (V.5.1). The stories of human heroes of ancient myths are "stories of disasters and suffering, sometimes surmounted, more often simply endured. They tell of quarrels, stratagems, labors, and especially battles" (Redfield 1975, 31). 6. The opposition codexal/subjective modality is derived from Hilpinen. He speaks about codexal modalities, validated by a supraindividual source (society, group, culture), and relativized modalities, "used

2 57

Notes to Pages n8-r24 in situations in which some possible state of affairs is assumed to depend on the properties of certain particular individuals" (1969, 182). Hilpinen's distinction, which applies to all modal systems (V.3-5), is an important conceptual tool for fictional semantics. In order to avoid a possible misunderstanding-codexal modalities can also be "relativized" to a certain group--our term for person-specific modalities differs from Hilpinen's. Each fictional person is characterized by his or her own set of subjective operators and thus linked to other persons of the world by different modal relations. 7. This double bondage has been perceived by von Wright: "The possibility of a certain action or life may be said to depend on two factors. It depends first of all upon the agent's ability, upon what he can do in the various acting-situations. But it also depends upon what actingsituations are possible in nature, upon the opportunities for actions which nature (including other agents) will 'allow' " (1968, 49). 8. "To promulgate a norm is to assert that it is in force, and the assertion is made by producing a norm-statement" (Porn 1970, 61). 9. "Jephthah promised the Lord to sacrifice the first living being he met on his return home from war, ifthe Lord gave him victory in battle. Jephthah was victorious-and the first living being he met when he came home was, alas, not a ram, but his daughter. Promises ought to be kept-so Jephthah ought to take his daughter's life. But the Lord had also said-'Thou shalt not kill'-so Jephthah must not take his daughter's life. So whatever poor Jephthah does, he will sin'' (von Wright 1968, 79; see also Follesdal and Hilpinen 1971, 29). Ehrmann described the predicament of Corneille's Cinna in terms of"exchange": "Cinna cannot cull benefits ... except by acquiring them at the price of treason" (1970, 223, 231). The case of Hamlet should be added to the stories of predicament; it focuses on "paralysis of acting," a common consequence of this deontic condition. rn. The ludic nature of Svejk's acting was first noticed by Milan Jankovic (1966). The term itself was applied to Svejk's overall strategy by Hana Arie Gaifman (1984). This interpretation puts to rest the often repeated but unsubstantiated claim that Svejk is a coward or a shirker. IL In his "logic of preference" (a close relative of axiology), von Wright claims that "a preference ... is necessarily relative to a subject. A preference is always somebodjs preference.... A preference, moreover, is relative, not only to a subject but also to a certain moment or occasion or station in the life of a subject. Not only may people have different

Notes to Pages r24-I28 preferences, but one and the same man may revise his preferences in the course of his life" (1963a, 12, 13). However, we should not dispense with codexal values: "The interpersonal reasons for action ... remain such whatever the attitudes (or the relations) of actual valuers" (Attfield 1987, 37). 12. Deutsch labels these two kinds of attitude as "promotive" and "contrient" and defines (in a rather pedantic style) the resulting "behavior" as follows: "Promotive behavior toward an event is behavior directed at increasing, or preventing a decrease in, the probability of the event's occurrence; promotive behavior toward a person is behavior directed at increasing, or preventing a decrease in, that person's well-being.... Contrient behavior toward an event is behavior directed at decreasing, or preventing an increase in, the probability of that event's occurrence; contrient behavior toward a person is behavior directed at decreasing, or preventing an increase in, that person's well-being" (1973, 150). 13. Pecorin's "moral tenet" should stand here as a memorial to the nihilist's destructive egotism: "There is boundless delight in the possession of a young barely unfolded soul! It is like a flower whose best fragrance emanates to meet the first ray of the sun. It should be plucked that very minute and after inhaling one's fill of it, one should throw it away on the road" (284; 123). 14. Calinescu starts with an epistemic concept of secret as "information deliberately set aside, withheld or disguised," but when considering secrets in and of literary texts he ends up with a broad conception"hidden patterns, verbal or structural, textual or intertextual" that the reader uncovers or even creates (1994, 443, 463). In other words, he equates the "secrecy'' of the literary text with implicitness, dealt with in chapter VII below. 15. Bildungsroman is often claimed to be a genre of German literature, but its existence in other national literatures has been well documented. Thus, for example, Buckley (1974) gathered under this label many prominent English novels, from Dickens' David Copperfield through Joyce's A Portrait ofthe Artist as a Young Man to contemporary fictions. He points out that in English literature the hero of the Bildungsroman is often "an artist of sorts" (1974, 13), just as is typical of the German prototype. 16. "The law forestalls the excesses of a raging tribal revenge, but also serves to convert the cultural prejudices of the community into a more organized form .... The sense of unity the English have comes not from a genuinely unifying vision of justice but from the partisan togetherness

2 59

Notes to Pages I28-I36 generated within the community in power.... As the trial gets underway, the European characters cease to function as individuals and take on a collective identity, an identity in part defined by an increased, often hysterical, insistence on the boundary between communities" (Horsley 1995, 212). 17. According to Ryan, modal tensions ("conflicts") are the prime

source of plot dynamics; in "the best of possible worlds" where no modal conflicts existed, there would be no plots (1991, 120) .. 18. The mythological world is the source of all fantastic fiction. Calling it the "disjunctive mode," Traill describes the various modes of the fantastic as "the various ways in which the supernatural and the natural are configured within the fictional world" (1996, 18). It is also the base on which the modern myth is formed (chap. VIII). 19. For other versions of the creation story, see Kirk 1970 (196-97). 20. It is not relevant for this discussion that Alice's visit is in the end "naturalized," explained as a dream. The oneiric explanation does not change the supernatural character ofWonderland (see Traill 1996, 16-17).

Starter Terms II 1. It was Carnap (1947) who introduced intension as a partner of extension, thus transforming the old logical opposition extension/comprehension. In the traditional usage, established especially by the Port Royal Logic, extension means the set of objects designated by an expression, and comprehension is the sum of the objects' properties. Expressions can be defined either by extension or by comprehension (see Frisch 1969). The extension of "lion" is the set of all lions; its definition by comprehension will be something like a dictionary or encyclopedia entry: "A large carnivorous chiefly nocturnal cat (Pelis leo) of open or rocky areas of Africa and esp. formerly southern Asia that has a tawny body with a tufted tail and a shaggy blackish or darkbrown mane in the male" (Webster). 2. This formulation is dose to Dummet's paraphrase of Frege: "The possession of reference by a word or expression consists in an association between it and something in the world-something of an appropriate logical type, according to the logical category to which the word belongs" (1973, 93; see also Kempson 1977, 13). 3. Compare the following statement: "In many languages, especially in the language of mathematics and physics, only extensions play a role, so that extensional semantics is sufficient for them" (Kutschera 1976, vii).

260

Notes to Pages IJ7-I39 4. Ducrot and Todorov postulated the language dep~ndence ofintensions and thus were able to establish a connection between Frege's and Saussure's semantics: "The affinity of the opposition sense-referent and the Saussurean opposition signifier-signified becomes striking if we know that for Frege knowing the sense of an expression was a part of the knowledge of language (which is not the case for the knowledge of the referent)" (1972, 320). Grossmann's negative argument confirms the language-bound nature of intensional meaning: "Senses ... are not linguistic entities"; it follows that "there are no such entities as senses" (1969, 156, 164). In other words, if intensions are not linguistic entities, then there are no intensions. 5. Within the Saussurean tradition, "inner form" of the expression was recognized as a source of meaning by Mathesius (1947, 177). Within the Fregean framework, the dependence ofintensions on linguistic forms has been ascertained by the Russian logician B. V. Birjukov: "The sense of a complex name is determined by the sense of its parts and the character of the rules according to which it.is constructed; its sense changes when the sense of any of its parts changes. If we consider that the sense of each part is determined by its linguistic character and that the rules according to which the name is composed are fixed in the grammatical structure of the name, then it becomes dear that the sense of the name is expressed by means of language and only thus" (1964, 62). Neither Mathesius nor Birjukov established a connection between Frege's and Saussure's semantics. 6. Kristeva stated this principle of poetic language in general terms: "The praxis of literature is the exploration and discovery of the possibilities oflanguage; ... it is a dynamics that breaks the inertia oflinguistic habits and offers to the linguist a unique possibility to study the emergence of the signification of signs" (1969, 117-18). 7. The argument for the "impossibility'' of translation rests precisely on this assumption. We can resolve the paradox that translation is both "impossible" and widely practiced only. if we accept the fact that translation cannot and does not convey exactly the intensional meaning of the original; rather, it aims at its maximal approximation. To achieve this goal, the translator of a literary (poetic) text has to use various strategies of substitution. As a communicative activity, translation is not a transposition of intensional meaning from one language to another but the rudimentary form ofliterary transduction (see Ep. 2). 8. Global regularities operate, as a rule, throughout the text, but 261

Notes to Pages I39-I47 there are stylistically unhomogeneous texts, especially in modernist and postmodernist fiction. They consist of textural segments ruled by different principles (e.g., narrated in different narrative modes). These cases do no invalidate our method but present an additional challenge: How are the unhomogeneous segment, organized into the overall texture and, consequently, into the global intensional meaning? 9. I follow Linsky in claiming that the difference between proper name and definite description implies a difference in intension: "Two correferential singular terms cannot be identical in sense if one is a rigid designator [i.e., a proper name] and the other is not" (Linsky 1977, 68; see also Kempson 1977, 14; Santambrogio and Violi 1988, 8). I speak about standard usage of proper names, because a writer might resurrect the intension hidden in the name's etymology-Dickens' Mr. Gradg;rind, Zola's Albine-or even create a neologism of a "telling name"-Maupassant's Hor/a (see Hamon 1977, 150).

VI: Authentication 1. Linguists who claim that all sentences are performative (at least at the deep structure level) completely ignore Austin's basic requirement: that the performative interfere in the world. For a criticism of the "performative hypothesis," see Lycan (1984, 133). 2. The character of literature as performative has been noticed by Barthes: "Writing [in the sense of ecriture] can no longer designate an operation of recording, notation, representation, 'depiction' (as the Classics would say); rather, it designates exactly what linguists, referring to Oxford philosophy, call a performative" (1977, 145). Barthes did not go beyond this passing remark. Earlier, but no less casually, the performative character of the literary text was suggested by Iser (1971, 6-7). 3. If we want to suggest, as advised by Austin, an "explicit performative verb" (1970, 245) for fictional performatives, then my candidate is "Let it be." 4. Austin (1970, 154-74) and Kirkham (1992, 138) object to this use of fact, but this objection can be met if we differentiate between representation-dependent "facts" and representation-independent "states of affairs." 5. A sharp distinction between author and narrator is an axiom of modern narrative theory (see Kayser 1958, 91; Barthes 1966, 19). The "sayso semantics" of fictionality (Woods 1974, esp. 35, 133), where the entire

Notes to Pages I47-I49 narrative text is assigned to the author, has to be modified accordingly. 6. It has been known since antiquity, from Plato to the Latin grammarian Diomedes, that the narrative text is unhomogeneous (see Curtius 1948, 439-40; Dolezel 1973, 3). The modern investigations of the narrative text plurality include Bally 1912, Bachtin 1929, Vinogradov 1930, and Volosinov 1930. The literature of the recent decades is so vast that it can be exemplified only by a randomly selected set: Genette 1972, Bal 1977, Stanzel 1984; Chatman 1978, Lanser 1981, Lintvelt 1981; Banfield 1982. Not surprisingly, I rely on my own conceptual system presented in Dolezel 1973. 7. Martinez-Bonati is right when he states that we know there are windmills in the fields because the narrator "has said so" (1973, 186). However, he formulates his "say-so" semantics in the mimetic framework and, therefore, assigns truth-value to the narrator's statement. He presumes that the narrator's statement is true because it corresponds to the facts of the fictional world. But where is the fictional fact antecedent to, or independent of, the narrator's speech act? The fundamental difference between mimetic and possible-worlds semantics, clearly revealed here, is the theory of authentication. 8. The position of the authoritative narrative in the text sequence is not relevant. In the windmill scene from Don Quixote, the reader knows beforehand what the fictional fact is; in the episode of the acquisition of "Mambrino's helmet" (chap. 21), the hero first makes his claim, and only then does the authoritative narrator construct the fictional fact. Especially telling are those cases where the authoritative narrator corrects or confirms a fictional persons's opinion, as Trollope's narrator does in The

Eustace Diamonds: Lady Eustace had found all the family jewels belonging to the Eustace family in the strong plate room at Portray Castle .... The reader will be aware that this statement was by no means an accurate history.... It was, indeed, absolutely false (191). That Lizzie Eustace had stolen the diamonds, as a pickpocket steals a watch, was a fact as to which Mr. Camperdown had in his mind no shadow of a doubt. And, as the reader knows, he was right (289). 9. In the reader's reconstruction of the fictional world, the authorial errors either go unnoticed or are ignored or negotiated away. But a philosopher of fictionality falls for the red herring. Considering the lo-

Notes to Pages I43-I54 cation of Dr. Watson's war wound (shoulder or leg), Parsons (1980, 224) not only does not see it as the author's error or inconsistency but also takes for granted that the Dr. Watson from different Conan Doyle's stories is one and the same person. Let us add that authorial errors have nothing to do with sophisticated textural strategies that introduce contradictions into the fictional world in order to construct impossible worlds (VI. 4.2, Ep. 4). 10. A philosophically minded reader will think of the "coherence theory'' of truth. However, accepting coherence as a criterion of truth does not commit us to the principles of this theory (see Kirkham 1992, 104-6). 11. This difference has been pointed out by Hamarneh in a fine analysis of the dynamic aspects of authentication. He adds that "some of these (but not all) tend to be text specific and not generalizable criteria' (1991, 225). 12. A different source of subjectivization, the rhetoric of the narrator, gives rise to the rhetorical mode of narrative. I leave this mode aside; it has received a detailed treatment in Booth 1961 (see also Dold.el 1973, 59-60, 104-6). It is noteworthy that Booth does assign to the rhetorical narrator the ability of introducing "facts" (see, e.g., 1961, 169). But we must resist the American critic's claim that all narratives are by necessity rhetorical (even though the rhetoric is often hidden or implicit). This claim results from confusing narrator and author (see VI.2). 13. In the generalized theory of authentication, the dyadic function becomes the limit of the graded function. But this theoretical reformulation does not change the fact that for the praxis of fictional narrative the two-value function is basic. In the most adequate formal model the authentication function would be continuous; unfortunately, literary semantics is not advanced enough to operate with continuous functions. We think of the graded function as a series of discrete intervals between the two poles. 14. The zone is diversified ifidiolects of different fictional persons alternately modulate the Er-narrative, creating a multidimensional subjectivization (see Dold.el 1973, 114). 15. Bal has this narrative technique in mind when she speaks about Flaubert's text's "oscillation between two focalizations" (1977, 95-97). 16. See Dold.el 1973, 8, for a differentiation of these variants. The personal !ch-form, which concerns us here, is at hand when a person acting in the fictional world-usually the protagonist-performs the act of

Notes to Pages I54-I6I narrating. In other words, the narrator exists and acts in the world he or she constructs. Second-person narrative, quite popular since Michel Butor's La Modification (1957), has been noticed in the 1960s (Morissette 1975) but only now is receiving the theoretical attention it deserves (see a special issue of Style (1994), no. 3). I doubt, however, that the existence of the you-narrative requires a radical "rewriting" of"narrative paradigms" (Fludernik 1994, 284). It is certainly not the first and only "nonnatural" kind of narrative discourse. Moreover, the real test of the specificity of the second-person narrative will come only if its authentication force is examined. At first sight, it seems that in this respect it functions in a similar way as the !ch-form (see McHale 1987, 223; Herman 19946). 17. Modern interior monologue is equally nonnatural discourse. How did Molly Bloom record her thoughts and feelings narrated in the last chapter ofJames Joyce's Ulysses? 18. Genette describes in detail the fluctuation of Proust's "focalization'' (1972, 219-24) and appositely designates his narrative mode as poly-

modal. 19. It is by no means a unique instance of this narrative strategy. Stanzel devotes an entire section of his book to "dying in the first-person form," drawing our attention to the pioneer of the technique, Arthur Schnitzler ("Fraulein Else") (1984, 229-32). Tammi mentions several "posthumous narratives" written by Vladimir Nabokov (especially the novel Transparent Things); he points out that they violate an "old rule" formulated by the fictionist himself: "The I of the book cannot die in the book" (1985, 14r56). Hutcheon tells us that the narrator in Rudy Wiebe's The Scorched-Wood People (1977) "is made to tell the tale of the historical Louis Riel from a point of time after his own death, with all the insights of retrospection and access to information he could not possibly have had as participant" (1988, 117). Some postmodernist texts "flesh out the posthumous voice more fully, surrounding it with some of the circumstantial details of an afterlife" (McHale 1987, 230). ~o. For a meticulous presentation of the skaz technique, see Titunik 1977. Under the influence of some suggestions in Ejchenbaum's classical paper ([1918] 1963), skaz has been often defined narrowly, as an oral storytelling mode with a potential addressee: "The storyteller or raconteur addresses the tale to a possible interlocutor, who may or may not respond" (Banfield 1982, 172). In this conception, skaz is simply Ich-form in oral style. The skaz of the original practitioners is more complex and theoretically more interesting.

Notes to Pages I63-I67 21. Formally, a three-value truth-function of "free logic" could lead us out of the restrictions of our metalanguage. But the semantic interpretation of such a function presents serious difficulties, well known to both proponents and critics of free logics. Van Fraassen's attempt (1966) to escape the restrictions ofbinarism is probably essential for future discussions of three-value systems (see also Lambert 1969, 106 and Haack

1974). 22. Chatman quotes this story and Borges' term bifurcation when speaking about "antistory'' (1978, 56-57). Tammi points out that bifurcation is "an ancient device" in Nabokov's fiction (1985, 150). John Fowles, in his well-known novel The French Lieutenant's Woman (1964), proposes two alternative, mutually incompatible endings, one happy, one tragic (see McHale 1987, 106-7, 109-110). 23. "The same events (albeit with variants) or fragments of events ... are evoked at whatever level of representation-'real', or as represented on the stage or the magazine cover, or as told by Manneret or the big man with the red face" (Jefferson 1980, 55-56; see Ricardou 1973, 102-3). The mixing of different modes of existence, including blending of the actual and the fictional, is a prominent feature of modern visual art; its telling demonstration is the cubistic collage that incorporates real objects in paintings (see Hintikka 1975, 246). 24. The technique has been glimpsed by Sturrock in Robbe-Grillet's first novel, Les Gommes; the text dramatizes "conditions under which a novel comes into being, or rather tries to come into being" (1969, 172). Morrissette has recovered an underlying coherent story of La Maison de rendez-vous (1975, 260), but this story, it should be emphasized, does not have the privilege of authenticity. 25. Genette's original definition of metalepsis (1972, 245) was broad enough to include the blending of various orders of existence (such as noted in Robbe-Grillet's La Maison de rendez-vous). In a later reformulation, Genette narrowed the concept to metafictional metalepsis, to the cases "when an author (or his reader) is introduced in the fictional action of his narrative or when a character of this fiction interferes in the extradiegetic existence of author or reader" (1983, 58). 26. One of the main themes of the third level is "a diegetic parody of theories of implied readers" (Cotrupi 1991, 283). I am interested in Calvino's novel as an instance of metafiction and, therefore, will leave Cotrupi's third level aside. 27. Even minor auxiliary activities, such as cutting pages of a paper-

266

back with a paper knife (42), become part of the story of reading. 28. Maybach speaks about a "narrated reader," a reader "who takes over an agential role in the text" (1990, 8). 29. Calvino's self-disclosing act includes book production into the story of fiction making. Mishaps and accidents of printing and publishing are to a large extent responsible for the "interruptions" to which the readers are subject.

Vll· Saturation 1. The consequences of constructing a complete fictional world would be frightening: "If a piece of fiction accidentally turned out to be a complete and completely accurate account of the entire (past, present and future) history of the universe, then all characters created therein would be identical with real objects" (Parsons 1980, 184). 2. Iser admits that "the indeterminacy of a text may be so resistant to counterbalancing that any identification with the real world is impossible," which seems to leave the reader in a quandary. But Iser's reader disregards this major obstacle and proceeds with his repairwork anyway, either by "referring the text to real, verifiable factors" or by reducing the text "to the level of his own experiences" (1971, 9). 3. The mimetic character of the reader's "repairwork'' is unwittingly revealed by Barry Smith:

We can do no other, in our pre-theoretical commune with real objects and with the quasi-real objects of fiction, than ascribe all inadequacies in our knowledge to the side of epistemological incompleteness: this explains why our mode of reading works of fiction is-from this point of view-almost identical with our mode of reading not only historical works but also, e.g., newspaper reports concerning our contemporaries. In no case do we find it possible, in our reading, to draw a line between indeterminacies which are merely epistemological and indeterminacies which may be contributed by the objects themselves. (1979, 381-82) In other words, the reader of this theory disregards the specific ontology of fictional objects and reads fictional literature in the same way as he or she reads reports about the actual world, reports that can be legitimately supplemented by his or her knowledge and experience. Fortunately, "the literary theorist" is somehow able to transcend the "pre-theoretical com-

Notes to Pages I7I-I74 mune" with fictional objects. "In particular he must find a way of determining the axes along which epistemological fillings out of the various different kinds may take place in such a way as to remain faithful to the work and then, eventually, to yield a reading which is adequate to bring to light the aesthetic qualities ofthe work" (1979, 390; emphasis added). 4- The reader who would decide to place this event in any actual or imaginary place would do so arbitrarily, without any supporting evidence from the text. Most disconcertingly, the filling in would run counter to the general geographical indeterminacy of Kafka's fictional world and thus deprive it of one of its principal semantic effects, universality. 5. Later on, the texture confirms this fictional fact by Spanish words in the persons' discourse (hombre, bodegas, copita) and especially by the old waiter's macabre play with the word nada. 6. In rhetoric, the phenomenon of implicitness has been known since antiquity. It was considered the most prominent among the figures. Its most succinct definition is found in book 9 of Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory. 7. The close connection between implicitness and interpretation can be seen in Kerbrat-Orecchioni's monograph (1986); she devotes many passages and an entire chapter (5) to the theory of interpretation. 8. Hasan has expressed the dependence of the implicit on the explicit in a similar manner: "The explicit string is semantically self-sufficient; by contrast, the implicit string involves a semantic dependence. The precise meanings of the latter are not contained within itself but must be retrieved from some source extrinsic to the string" (1984, no). The implicit is retrieved either from the co-text (endophorically) or from the situation (exophorically). 9. The most telling of these signals are paratextual indexes, such as intonation, mimes, gestures, etc. But one can argue that these indexes (expressed in face-to-face communication and described or surrogated in written texts) are explicit signifiers and the meaning they convey (e.g., irony) is therefore explicit meaning. 10. The broad notion of presupposition corresponds to the conception of inference in contemporary cognitive text theory (Nicholas and Trabasso 1980; van Dijk and Kintsch 1983, 49-52; Kerbrat-Orrecchioni 1986, 161-298; Magliano and Graesser 1991, 195), where it designates all competences and procedures of text comprehension, including, for example, the disambiguation of lexical units or recovery of pronominal

268

Notes to Pages r74-r82 (deictic) reference. But, obviously, these covert meanings require not logical inference but resort to the linguistic code, to the pragmatic conditions of the text, to a frame of reference (script), and so on. 11. Prince maintains that presupposition is different from implicit meaning: "First, and most obviously, the latter is not stated whereas the former is, though not directly'' (1982, 42). But it is precisely the stating "not directly'' that characterizes implicitness. 12. There is a consensus in today's text theory that world knowledge is necessary for text comprehension (van Dijk and Kintsch 1983, 46-49, 333-46; Magliano and Graesser 1991, 206). Its crucial role in the recovery of implicit meaning has been emphasized by Eco (1979, 17-23), who popularized the term encyclopedia (see also Kerbrat-Orecchioni 1986, 163-65). In cognitive research other terms can be found, such as background information, universe ofassumptions, basic cognitive system, and so on. I believe, without being able to argue this view, that the so-called pragmatic implicature, a popular topic since P. H. Grice's lectures (1975), works only when a specific cognitive compartment of the encyclopedia is activated, namely, the knowledge of the conventions of speech acts and conversation. Compare: "To say that the speaker's intentions are public in intentional communication is to say that the hearer knows them, that the speaker knows that the hearer knows them, that the hearer knows that the speaker knows that he [the hearer] knows them and so on'' (Recanati 1979, 182). 13. Today we use the term enthymeme primarily to designate an incomplete syllogism that calls for the recovery of an implicit premise. This use goes back to Quintilian, who reformulated the original Aristotelian concept. 14. For the argument I am developing here, it is irrelevant whether La Manga is "a coastal city much resembling Cartagena'' (Bell-Villada 1990, 19) or "a composite image of Cartagena de Indias, Santa Maria, Baranquilla and other locations on the Caribbean coast" (Fiddian 1987, 192). As I have repeatedly emphasized, the participation of actual-world entities (realemes) in the construction of the fictional world-guessed at by critics-does not change the fictional character of the construct. 15. For the concept of mental map, see IY.2.2. Mental map is a compartment of the encyclopedia, as shared communal knowledge about a territory. 16. Mary Douglas recorded an interesting regularization of explicitness/implicitness in the culture of the African Lele: "Rules of hygiene

Notes to Pages I82-I90 and etiquette, rules of sex and edibility fed into or were derived from submerged assumptions about how the universe works" (1975, x).

VIII· Modern Myth 1. It is irrelevant for our present discussion that the supernatural domain is subdivided into the upper, heaven, and the lower, the underworld. According to Kirk, this triad is characteristic of mythologies of the most diverse cultural and geographical areas: "for example, it occurs in India as well as among American Indians," not to speak about NearEastern and Greek mythology. This universality of the world's macrostructure is a serious challenge to research and cannot be explained away as "too obvious" (Kirk 1970, 224). 2. The role of children in "A Crossbreed" should not go unnoticed. Only children take the hybrid being without surprise, indeed, with delight and curiosity, and consider questions about its origins, its name, its future, and its end meaningful. 3. The much disputed question, to which zoological species does the metamorphosed Samsa belong, is irrelevant, considering the principles of Kafka's semantics. It shows a mimetic perversion on the part of interpreters, their pedestrian attempts to "naturalize" Kafka's remarkable imagination (see Steinmetz 1977, 33-34). 4. An interesting residuum of the hybrid-world structure can be found in Kafka's last narrative, "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk" Uosefine, die Sangering, oder das Volk der Mauser] (1924). The narrator is a hybrid being belonging both to the mouse nation and to the human species. The hybrid world becomes a narrative mode, so that the story can be read as a standard animal tale. 5. Belyj and Kafka lived and wrote in similar historical, political, and social conditions, in societies governed by the secretive, authoritarian, and decaying power elites of the last czars and the last Hapsburgs. It is certainly interesting to ask to what degree these exterior conditions shaped Kafka's and Belyj's fictional worlds; a comparative semantic study that describes this shaping is a necessary precondition for genetic, historical studies, rather than the reverse. 6. The narrative device of the telephone, which appears both in Belyj's Petersburg and in Kafka's The Castle, allows communication to take place between visible-world persons and agents of the invisible institution without revealing the latters' identity.

270

Notes to Pages I93-20I 7. The unreliability of the informers is "laid bare" in the case of Olga. She does not tell K. what she herself has experienced or observed but transmits her brother's account (or what she claims to be his account). There is no reason why Barnabas could not convey the information directly to K., except for a structural reason: to introduce mediation into the transmission and thereby increase the unreliability of the report. Significantly, K. never asks Barnabas to confirm Olga's information. 8. This mistake is repeated naively without any questioning by the majority of Belyj's interpreters. 9. The infinitude of the castle is indicated in Olga's report about its reception office. The Court's infinite depth is explicitly asserted both by Joseph K.'s advocate, Huld, and by his main informer, Tittorelli. Huld: "the ranks and hierarchies of the Court are infinite" (88; 149). Tittorelli: "the highest Court [is] quite inaccessible to you, to me, to all of us" (116; 197). 10. Demonicization of the invisible domain is quite common in

Kafka criticism (beginning already with Max Brod's interpretation of the castle as the seat of divinity). But surely, such an interpretation reduces Kafka's new semantics to the traditional semantic structure of classical mythology. 11. The attempts of mimetic critics to find the locales of Kafka's novels on the map of Bohemia are not only primitive but counterproductive. Kafka could easily have named the city of The Trial Prague and the castle of The Castle Sifem or Sirem. But that would, of course, destroy the specific character of his myth.

Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction 1. Morgan (1989) and Clayton and Rothstein (1991) provide informative surveys of the rise of the idea of intertextuality. 2. Thai:s Morgan, who believes that "most ofliterature" is constituted by "those texts in which the author imitates or borrows features from an earlier text or set of texts" at least recognizes that "in the process [he] changes or transforms these features to suit the characteristics of his own previous work" (1989, 241). In fact, Morgan reformulates what structural poetics stated about literary influence (see, e.g., Vodicka 1942, 361-63). 3. Culler designates the two sources as "anonymous intertextuality'' and "the presence of one text in another" (1981, 103-4). 4. It is necessarily such in Riffaterre's poetic semantics, where "the

271

Notes to Pages 20I-209 axis of signification is horizontal ... is carried out from signifier to signifier" and "the referent has no pertinence to the ana/,ysis" (1983, 35-36, 15; emphasis in original). 5. Kristeva may have pointed in that direction when she wrote that in postmodernism "the question of intertextuality is perhaps even more important in certain ways, because it assumes an interplay of contents and not of forms alone" (1989, 282; emphasis added). 6. There are other modes of fictional-world transduction between translation and rewriting, such as retour de personnage (see McHale 1987, 57). But I do not deal with them here; my aim is to formulate sharply the semantic problems of world transduction, and for this purpose the postmodernist rewrite is the most fecund source. 7. That is, "the politics of gender, race, class, ethnicity, and sexual preference, to mention only the most obvious" (Hutcheon 1996, 213). 8. As if competing with Goethe, Plenzdorfhimself composed successively seven versions of his narrative (see Brenner 1982b, 347-48). 9. Plenzdorf's novel is typical of the emergence in the 1960s and 1970s of a counterofficial youth fiction in the former socialist countries-from the Soviet Union to Yugoslavia-particularly under the influence ofJ. D. Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye (1951). Taking his cue from the celebration of jeans by Plenzdorf's hero, Aleksandar Flaker calls this literature "jeans prose." It centers on a young protagonist who, as an !ch-narrator, cultivates a style based on the city youth's slang and questions the archaic cultural conventions adopted by socialist realism. Flaker emphasizes the prominence of intertextuality in jeans prose, which often puts the new work in opposition to a classical text (1975, 22, 174). Could it be that postmodernism was born under communism? IO. It has been noted that several quotations are combinations of discontiguous passages of Goethe's text (Wapnewski 1982, 332-34). Wiebeau's appropriation of Werther is motivated by a remarkable mental feature: he "can memorize things from books fantastically. That was the real suffering in my life" (30; 56). Wiebeau's Leiden start as literary to become experiential. II. Zaremba's understanding is in line with his role of the "old communist," a figure typical of jeans prose. The old idealist is close to the young hero, in contrast to the stern officials of the totalitarian regime (Flaker 1975, 96-97). 12. It is interesting to note that ideological critics minimize the connection between Goethe's and Plenzdorf's novels. In Marcel Reich-Ran272

Notes to Pages 209-2II icki's opinion, rightly rejected by Jauss (1978, 321-22), Plenzdorf's recourse to Goethe's Werther is just "an amusing trick'' (1982, 264). The ideological critic fails to understand that Plenzdorf's book, though necessarily bound to local historical and political conditions, expresses a universal postmodernist need to reevaluate the classical canon. 13. The multiple use of intertextuality in Plenzdorf's work is prefigured in Goethe's Werther. Blessin calls Werther "a reading hero" [ein lesender Held] (1985, 9). Piltz, in his expert analysis of the novel's rich intertextuality, comes to the conclusion that Werther not only reads but also lives and dies by literature (1983, 63). 14. Charlie informs Wiebeau's father that her name is not Charlotte (23; 44). Edgard is fond of his Huguenot background and.insists on the French pronunciation of his name. 15. Ideological sociocriticism reduces all modal restrictions to social restrictions, to deontic norms imposed by a social system. It is amusing to observe that in this interpretive framework Werther can be both "a new man who is formed in the process of the preparation for the bourgeois revolution'' (Lukacs [1936] 1964, 57), and a "poetic dreamer who orders his restricted life circle according to a patriarchal idyll" and "cannot be imagined as a fighting patriot or champion of the Rousseauan volonttf gtfntfrale'' (Schlrpe 1970, 54, 90). These contradictory interpretations are a necessary consequence of the reductionism of ideological criticism, which brushes over fundamental semantic, modal constraints. The extant social system is not Werther's problem. He accepts it as something given. He likes certain aristocrats and dislikes others, just as he feels sympathy for some Burgers and is repelled by others. Certainly, his attitude toward the "common people" is on the whole positive but does not go beyond the conventions of the pastorale (see also Vaget 1983, 18). 16. "In Plenzdorf's novel, the whole perception of a society with its demands, norms, expectations is articulated with much greater emphasis than in Goethe's Werther" (Swales 1987, 103). Not surprisingly, the critical reception of the novel in both former parts of Germany centered primarily around political issues (see Wang 1991, 96-103). 17. Goethe's text reinforces the focus on Werther's inner life by gapping the exterior conditions of his existence (compare VII.4 above). We do not know why Werther is in Wahlheim, what he lives on (there are hints that his mother provides him with money); his servant is mentioned only en passant and that in connection with his love for Lotte. Material objects in his environment are constructed in a sketchy manner,

273

Notes to Pages 2II-2I4 the diminutives expressing a general emotional attitude rather than a contrete shape: "ein Hiittchen," "ein Platzchen," "ein Tischlein'' [a little hut, a small place, a little table] (9; 30). Nor does the text provide us with any details about Werther's work for the ambassador, except for the fact that his writing style does not please his superior. But Werther's likes (for the Graf and for Fraillein von B.) and dislikes (for the ambassador and the conventional aristocratic society) are expressed emphatically and repeatedly. 18. Goethe constructs suicide as "Freitod," "a freely taken decision to withdraw from life." But the public was not ready to accept such a radical conception of "Selbstmord." The reactions, both positive (even imitative) and negative, led Goethe to distance himself from Werther's deed and, in a time-serving manner, motivate it by mental sickness (in the additions of the second version of the novel and in his memoirs) (see Blessin 1985, 48, 25-26, 54). 19. Barthes maintains that "Charlotte is quite insipid; she is the paltry character of a powerful, tormented, flamboyant drama staged by the subject Werther" (1978, 31). Peter Piltz, commenting cleverly on the scene when Werther overhears Lotte's conversation with a visidng friend, concludes that Lotte belongs to the world of"insensitive banality'' (1983, 57-58). 20. In view of this explicit rewrite link, I find it incomprehensible that the only "structuralist analysis" of Rhys's work (based on Greimas's and Genette's narratology) places the relationship between Jane Eyre and Wide Sargasso Sea "beyond the scope" of its concerns (Hemmerechts 1987, 441). 2r. The most telling shift in the background/foreground pattern affects the geographical setting. In Bronte's novel the foreground is England, the seat of the empire, and the colonies are a distant background (of Rochester's prehistory and St. John's posthistory); Rhys's narrative is set in the colonial West Indies, and England is a distant phantom country, even when at the end Antoinette is (re)moved there. Rhys's treatment of the opposition mother country (England)/colony (West Indies) has often been commented on by postcolonialist critics. Here, let me just mention that several connotative contrasts derive from the shift, for example, the contrast between England's "controlled and measured" landscape and the West Indian "erotic and wild" nature (Friedman 1989, 120; see also O'Connor 1986, 146-55). 22. For the opposite case, the appearance of new individuals in the

274

Notes to Pages 2I4-2I6 world of the rewrite, see Ep.3.3. Possible-worlds semantics is not unprepared for this incongruency. The Hintikkas, speaking of "failures of world lines," list among them the case when the "existence [of an indi-. vidual] may not carry over from a given world to all its alternatives" (Hintikka and Hintikka 1989, xvi, 189). 23. Gilbert and Gubar convincingly show that in Bronte's novel the confrontation between Jane and Bertha is complex, showing both antagonism and affinity (1979, 360-62). Thorpe extends the affinity across the fictional worlds by observing that Rhys's Antoinette "bears striking resemblance to Bronte's portrayal of the younger Jane" (1990, 181). 24. Staley writes of Antoinette: "She will vacillate between the separate worlds of blacks and whites because in her childhood she needed both .... She grows dependent upon both worlds, but is accepted in neither" (1979, 104). 25. Christophine, the voice of the people, has no doubt about the origins of Antoinette's madness and tells it to her husband without scruple: "It is in your mind to pretend she is mad. I know it. The doctors say what you tell them to say" (132). 26. By not naming Antoinette's husband, Rhys introduces a subtle uncertainty into transworld identification (see Ep.4). No such subtlety is displayed by critics, who, without hesitation, name the fictional person Rochester or even Edward (see Staley 1979; Thorpe 1990). (The same practice is followed in the film version of Wide Sargasso Sea, except that here the entire production lacks subtlety.) Hemmerechts at least acknowledges that in the final version of Rhys's novel "the name Rochester does not turn up once" (1987, 441). Only Ramchand respects the author's manner of naming by consistently calling the male protagonist "Antoinette's husband" or "the young Englishman'' (1990). 27. The most overt device of polyphony, dialogization, is laid bare in passages where a person's speech provokes silent thought replicas of another's (marked by italics). Such is the concealed, but most revealing, "dialogue" between Christophine and Antoinette's husband, carried out in a pattern of repeat: "But all you want is to break her up." (Not the way you mean, I thought) "But she hold out eh? She hold out." (Yes, she held out. A pity) "So you pretend to believe all the lies that damn bastard tell you." (That damn bastard tell you) (126). 275

Notes to Pages 2I6-2I9 Now every word she said was echoed, echoed loudly in my head. "So that you can leave her alone." (Leav~er alone) "Not telling her why." (Why?) "No more love, eh? (No more love). (126) 28. Robinsonades, Wertheriades, and similar epidemic transductions exemplify "multi-stage anaphoric chain[s] of texts and versions" (Margolin 1996, rr6) through which popular fictional persons are carried over centuries (see also Genette 1982, 351 and passim). There are at least two modern intermediaries between Defoe's novel and Coetzee's rewrite: Jean Giraudoux's Suzanne et le Pacifique (1921) and Michel Tournier's Vendredi ou !es limbes du Pacifique (1967). For an analysis of these French rewrites, see Genette 1982, 346-50, 418-25. 29. Penner's sober warning-"Foe does not lend itself as readily as Coetzee's earlier novels to a reading of South African and colonial analogues" (1989, 124)-and author's protesting-"Why should one automatically try to interpret my thinking in political terms? It is not necessary to know my ideas to understand my novels" (qtd. in Gallagher 1991, 16r68)-were not heeded by ideological critics. A woman's narrative whose main hero is a black slave, written by a white South African writer in the time of apartheid, was bound to inspire some real gems ofjin-demillenaire critical judgement: "[Susan's] assumption that it is possible to return Friday to his origins simply by placing him on a boat bound for Africa represents a denial of geographical, historical and linguistic specificity to the colonial subject. The 'difference' of the colonial subject is reduced to 'sameness' as it is posited with reference to white Western women" (Dovey 1988, 366). For Carusi, the novel is "an allegory of narrative as a form of commodity" in which a chain of associations is created between notions of truth, the body, and the story, to be installed and circulated as Law (1989, 13r39). "Th~ relationship between Susan Barton and Friday can be read as an allegory of a liberal's attempt to come to terms with the colonial heritage" (Mennecke 1991, 208). "In Friday's silence Coetzee acknowledges where he stands while simultaneously fictionalizing the transformative power that threatens, or promises, to eclipse the voices of what we might call, for want of a better word, colonial postcolonialism" (Attwell 1993, 108-9). The ideological critic is in-

Notes to Pages 2I9-222 sensitive to the "regime ludique" (Genette 1982, 452-53) of the rewrite transduction. 30. It should not go unnoticed that this po~tics is alluded to already b~ Captain Smith, the first recipient of Susan's tale. The captain perceives the commercial potential of the story of "a female castaway'' and suggests that Susan write it down and "offer it to the booksellers." When she points out that she lacks the art of writing, he assures her that the booksellers "will hire a man to set your story to rights and put in a dash of colour too, here and there" (40; emphasis added). When Susan replies that she will have no lies told about herself, the captain cynically remarks: "Their trade is in books, not in truth." Yet at that moment Susan is not yet ready to accept the "commercial" poetics: "I would rather be the author of my own story than have lies told about me" (40). 31. According to Hutcheon, Susan cannot tell her own story, because she "has been silenced by a controlling male writer" (1988, 199). Similarly, Gallagher maintains that "condemned by her gender to silence, Susan must turn to the more adequately equipped male in order to see her story brought into the world" (1991, 177). But it is Susan's acceptance of the conventional (commercial) poetics that silences her as an original author~ss. ~fher position in the sexual encounter with Foe is an allegory of dommat10n, as some feminist critics assert, then it is a cliche and a poor substitute for creative self-assertion. 32. "God's writing," Foe maintains, "stands as an instance of a writing without speech" (143). 33· As is his habit, Coetzee provides the critic and reader with cues for interpreting obscure passages in his work. It is Foe himself who suggests a connection between Friday, writing, and the sea monster (kraken): rowing over the kraken's eye, floating "upon the very skin of death," Friday returns safe. Foe draws one conclusion from Friday's mysterious excursion: "We must make Friday's silence speak" and therefore have to teach him "writing" (140-45). Spivak's interpretation reiterates the semantic link and enriches it by a potential intertextual dimension: the sea monster is "an image engendered in the representation of the primal scene of writing but also dredged up from The Tempest, a play repeatedly read as a representation of the colonizer-colonized dialectic" (1991, 173). 34. Mennecke keeps matters simple: he has no doubt that the entire fourth part of the novel is Susan's dream (1991, 176, 205). But he admits that the "dream sequence" resumes motifs occurring in the previous parts (194-95).

277

Notes to Pages 222-226 35. Thorpe reports that he has seen people ignorant ofJane Eyre and responding to Rhys's novel "as a self-sufficient work" (1990, 178). 36. This kind of rewrite of Emma Bovary is at least partly implemented in Woody Allen's short story "The Kugelmass Episode" (1975). But here the encounter of migrants with natives (New Yorkers, of course!) is facilitated by the genre of the grotesque and accomplished by means of magic (see Nesselroth 1996, 141). 37. William L. Ashline, who has joined the theorists claiming that the fictional works violating "the strictures of compossibility" create impossible worlds, is aware of both Genette's "metalepsis" and possibleworlds counterpart theory, but for reasons not given he ignores their relevance for the problem of compossiblity (1995, 220, 227). 38. Lycan cannot quite decide whether to grant identity to fictional individuals across worlds, but he rightly observes that if we deny this mobility to nonactuals, we have to do the same for possible counterparts of actual persons (1994, 123). Nesselroth, in contrast, is definite about the matter: "When fictional names become part of our cultural knowledge, they acquire the same value and functions as historical names and any number of stories can be written about them'' (1996, 141). 39. The rewrite's play with proper names is similar to the practice of the roman a clef, where historical persons appear under aliases. In this genre, "transworld identity between real-world persons and fictional characters has been deliberately occluded, requiring of the reader an act of decoding or decrypting" (McHale 1987, 206; see also Nesselroth 1996, 138-40). In the most comprehensive monograph on roman a these, Suleiman does not dwell on this aspect of the genre but observes that some of its fictional persons "modeled" on historical figures carry different names (1983, 120). 40. The decoding of aliases might be construed as a justification of those critics who without hesitation call Antoinette's husband "Rochester," speak of Cruso and Crusoe as one and the same castaway, and see Wiebeau as a contemporary incarnation of Werther. But my castigating of this intuitive practice (in Ep.3.2) is strengthened, rather than invalidated, by the semantics of the alias. It is justifiable on the basis of structural evidence to link Antoinette's nameless husband with Rochester, but it is crude analysis to ignore that they are fictional persons in different possible worlds and that their different naming is of-major intensional import.

I

Glossary

accessibility. Intersection (in the set-theoretical sense) that allows contact between different possible worlds. actual world. A realized possible world that is perceived by human senses and provides the stage for human acting. alternative world. A possible world that is a transform of the actual world or another possible world. authentication. The transformation of a possible entity into a fictional entity achieved by the performative power of the fictional text. authentication function. An intensional function that determines the existential structure of the fictional world. complete world. A world that allows us to decide logically every conceivable statement about it. compossible entities. Entities that can coexist in one and the same possible world. constructional text. A text that has the capacity for constructing a possible world. counterpart. An entity of a possible world that is cross-world identical with an entity in another possible world. descriptive text. A text that images the actual world. extensional fictional-world structuring. Global structuration of the fictional world generated by extensional restrictions. 279

Glossary felicity conditions. Conditions that have to be satisfied for a performative speech act to be successful. fictional agent. A fictional person capable of intentional acting. fictional domain. A set of fictional particulars that are characterized by a certain common feature. fictional existence. The status of a possible entity authenticated by the fictional text. fictional fact. An authenticated possible entity; an entity that exists fictionally. fictional particular. The elementary constituent of the fictional world. fictional person (character). A fictional entity that possesses intentionality. fictional text. A literary text that has the performative force of constructing a fictional world. fictional world. A possible world constructed by a fictional text or other performative semiotic medium. gap. An empty slot in the structure of an incomplete world. historical counterpart. An entity in the history of the actual world that is cross-world identical with a fictional-world entity. impossible world. A world that contains or implies logical contradictions. incomplete world. A world that does not allow us to decide logically every conceivable statement about it. intensional function. A regularity of the text's texture projected into the fictional world. intensional fictional-world structuring. Global structuration of the fictional world generated by the impact of an intensional function. 280

Glossary metafiction. A narrative that constructs both the fictional story and one or more of the factors of the construction-the author's fiction making, the reader's or critic's reception, the book production, and so on. mimesis. A doctrine according to which fictional worlds and their entities are imitations or representations of the actual world. mimetic function. A function that assigns actual-world prototypes or categories to fictional entities. modal operator. Logical representation of the individual values of modal systems. modal system. A system of modal restrictions-alethic, deontic, epistemic, axiological-that is the main factor of the extensional fictional-world structuring. mythological world. A fictional world that consists of a natural and a supernatural domain. natural world. A possible world in which the physical laws of the actual world are valid. performative speech act. A speech act that brings about a change in the world. possible world. A world that is thinkable. saturation. The ratio between fictional facts and gaps in the structure of the fictional world. saturation function. An intensional function that determines the degree of the fictional world's saturation. self-disclosing narrative. Narrative that reveals (lays bare) the conventions of authentication. self-voiding. Invalidation of a performative speech act caused by its misuse.

Glossary semiotic accessibility. Contact between the actual world and the fictional world made possible by the act of authorial construction and readers' reconstruction. small world. A possible world constructed from a limited set of entities. supernatural world. A world in which the physical laws of the actual world are not valid. text. The highest connected unit produced by verbal activity. text extension. The aspect of text meaning constituted by the relationship of the verbal signs to the extralinguistic world entities and expressed in a regulated paraphrase. text intension. The aspect of text meaning expressed by texture. texture. The exact wording of the text. transworld identity. A relationship of identity between entities that are located in different possible worlds. virtual fictional particular. A possible entity that is presented in the fictional text but not authenticated. world. The totality of material and mental entities that can be designated by linguistic or other semiotic means.

I

References

Cited Editions ofPrimary Sources Allen, Woody. "The Kugelmass Episode." In Side Effects. New York: Random House, 1975. Belyj, Andrej. Petersburg. Letchworth: Bradda Books, 1967; rpt. of the 1916 ed. (Petersburg, trans. Robert A. Maguire and John E. Malmstad [Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978]; trans. of the 1922 edition.) Bronte, Charlotte. Jane Eyre. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983. Calvino, Italo. If on a Winters Night a Traveller, trans. W Weaver. Toronto: Lester, 1981. (Italian orig. 1979.) Carroll, Lewis. Alices Adventures in Wonderland. In Alice in Wonderland, ed. Donald J. Gray. New York: Norton, 1971. Cervantes, Miguel de. Don Quijote de la Mancha. Vol. r. San Antonio de Calonge: Clasicos y ensayos (Colleccion Aubi). (Don Quixote. The Ormsby Translation. Ed. J. J. Jones and K. Douglas. New York: Norton, 1981.) Coetzee, J.M. Foe. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1988. Constant, Benjamin. Adolphe. London: Macmillan, 1965. (Adolphe, trans. C. Wildman [London: Hamish Hamilton, 1948].) Defoe, Daniel. The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures ofRobinson Crusoe, o/York, Mariner, ed. J. Donald Crowley. London: Oxford University Press, 1972. Dickens, Charles. Little Dorrit, ed. John Holloway. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1985. Dostojevskij, F. M. Idiot. Vol. 8 of Polnoje sobranije socinenij v tridcati tomach. Leningrad: Nauka, 1973. (The Idiot, trans. Henry Carlisle and Olga Carlisle [New York: New American Library, 1969].) - - - . Prestuplenije i nakazanije. Vol. 6 of Polnoje sobranije socinenij v tridcati tomach. Leningrad: Nauka, 1973. ( Crime and Punishment, trans. Sidney Monas [New York: New American Library, 1968].)

References Flaubert, Gustave. Madame Bovary. Paris: Gallimard, 1961. (Madame Bovary, trans. Alan Russell [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972].) Forster, E. M. A Passage to India, ed. Oliver Stallybrass. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1979. Garcia Marquez, Gabriel. Love in the Time of Cholera. Trans. E. Grossman. New York: Knopf, 1988. (Spanish orig. 1985.) Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. Die Leiden desjungen Werther, ed. E. L. Stahl. Oxford: Blackwell, 1972. (The Sorrows of Young Werther, trans. M. Hulse [London: Penguin, 1989].) Gogol, N.V. Socinenija v dvuch tomach. Vol. 1, Povesti. Moscow: Chudozestvennaja literatura, 1973. (A Selection, trans. Christopher English [Moscow: Progress, 1980].) Hasek, Jaroslav. Osudy dobreho vojdka Svejka. Prague: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1966. (The Good Soldier Svejk and His Fortunes in the World War, trans. Cecil Parrott [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974].) Hemingway, Ernest. "Big Two-Hearted River." "A Clean Well-Lighted Place." In The Short Stories ofErnest Hemingway. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1966. Henry, 0. "Roads of Destiny." In Roads ofDestiny. Garden City, N.J.: Doubleday, 1918. Hrabal, Bohumil. Ostfe sledovane vlaky [Closely Watched Trains]. Prague: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1965. Huysmans, J.-K. A Rebours, ed. Marc Fumaroli. Paris: Gallimard, 1977. (Against Nature, trans. Robert Baldick [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1959].) Kafka, Franz. Der Prozess (1960). Das Schloss (1968). Samtliche Erzahlungen (1970), ed. Paul Raabe. Frankfurt am Main: FischerTaschenbuch Verlag. (The Trial. Trans. Willa Muir and Edwin Muir. New York: Modern Library, 1956. The Castle. Trans. Willa Muir and Edwin Muir. New York: Schocken Books, 1974. Collected Stories. Ed. G. Josipovici, trans. Willa Muir and Edwin Muir, Malcolm Pasley, Joseph Kresh and Martin Greenberg, Eithne Witkins and Ernest Kaiser. London: Everyman's Library, 1993.) (The dates of Kafka's texts are taken from Binder 1975.) Kundera, Milan. Smefne ldsky. Prague: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel, 1970. (Laughable Loves, trans. Suzanne Rappaport [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975].) - - - . Kniha smichu a zapomneni. Toronto: Sixty-eight Publishers,

References 1981. (The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, trans. Michael Henry Heim [Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981].) Lermontov, M. J. Gero} naJego vremeni. In Sobranije socinenij v cetyrech tomach, 4:196-335. Moscow: Biblioteka "Ogonek," 1969. (A Hero of Our Time, trans. Vladimir Nabokov [Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1958] .) Lewis, Sinclair.Babbitt. Leipzig: Tauchnitz, 1922. Plenzdorf, Ulrich. Die neuen Leiden des Jungen W. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1976 (1st ed. 1973). (The New Sufferings ofYoung W., trans. Kenneth P. Wilcox [New York: Ungar, 1979].) Proust, Marcel. A la Recherche du temps perdu. Vol. 1, Du cote de chez Swann. Paris: Gallimard, 1954. Rhys, Jean. Wide Sargasso Sea. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993. (1st ed. 1966.) Robbe-Grillet, Alain. La Maison de rendez-vous. Paris: Les Editions de Minuit, 1965. Schulz, Bruno. "Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass." In Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass, trans. C. Wieniewska. New York: Walker, 1977. (Polish orig. 1937.) Sukenick, Ronald. 98. 6. New York: Fiction Collective, 1975. Trollope, Anthony. The Eustace Diamonds. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1986. - - - . Phineas Redux. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1990. Wells, H. G. "The Country of the Blind." In The Short Stories ofH G. Wells. London: Benn, 1927. Williams, Nigel. Star Turn. London: Faber & Faber, 1985.

Seco_ndary Sources Abelson, Robert P. 1976. "Script Processing in Attitude Formation and Decision Making." In Carroll and Payne 1976a, 33-45. Abrahams, Roger D. 1962. "Playing the Dozens." Journal ofAmerican Folklore 75:209-20. Adams, John-K. 1985. Pragmatics and Fiction. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Adams, Robert M. 1979. "Theories of Actuality." In Loux 19796, 190-209. Ajzen, leek. 1985. "From Intentions to Actions: A Theory of Planned Behavior." In Kuhl and Beckmann 1985, u-39.

References Allen, Sture, ed. 1989. Possible Worlds in Humanities, Arts, and Sciences: Proceedings ofNobel Symposium 65. Berlin: de Gruyter. Allwood, Jens, Lars-Gunnar Andersson, and Osten Dahl. 1977. Logic in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Alston, William P. 1964. Philosophy ofLanguage. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Amossy, Ruth. 1980. Les ]ewe de !'allusion litteraire dam "Un Beau Tenebrewc" de Julien Gracq. Neuchatel: Baconniere. Anscombe, G. E. M. 1957. Intention. Oxford: Blackwell. Apter, M. J. 1979. "Human Action and Theory of Psychological Reversals." In Underwood and Stevens 1979, 1:45-65. - - - . 1989. Reversal Theory: Motivation, Emotion, and Personality. London: Routledge. Aquila, Richard E. 1977. Intentionality: A Study ofMental Acts. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Aquist, Lennart. 1987. Introduction to Deontic Logic and the Theory of Normative Systems. Naples: Bibliopolis. Arie Gaifman, Hana. 1984. "Svejk-the Homo Ludens." In Stolz, Titunik, and Dolezel 1984, 3or22. Aristotle. 1984. De interpretatione. In The Complete Works ofAristotle, ed. Jonathan Barnes, 1:25-38. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Ashe, Geoffrey. 1985. The Discovery ofKing Arthur. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor/Doubleday. Ashline, William L. 1995. "The Problem oflmpossible Fictions." Style 29:215-34. Attfield, Robin. 1987. A Theory ofValue and Obligation. London: Croom Helm. Attwell, David. 1993. J M Coetzee: South Africa and the Politics ofWriting. Berkeley: University of California Press. Audi, Robert. 1993. Action, Intention, and Reason. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Auerbach, Erich. 1957. Mimesis: The Representation ofReali-ty in Western Literature. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. (German orig. 1946.) Auletta, Gennaro. 1994. "11 rapporto tra i concerti di possibile ed esisteate nel quadro della te~ria leibniziana di mondi possibili." Filosofia 45=275-89. Aune, Bruce. 1977. Reason and Action. Dordrecht: Reidel. Austin, J. L. 1962. How to Do Things with Wort&. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 286

References - - - . 1970. Philosophical Papers. 2d ed.; ed. J. 0. Urmson and G. J. Warnock. Oxford: Clarendon Press. - - - . 1971. "Performative-Constative." In The Philosophy ofLanguage, ed. J. R. Searle, 13-22. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (French orig. 1962.) Averill, James R. 1979. ''Anger." In Nebraska Symposium on Motivation, I978: Human Emotion, ed. R. A. Dienstbier, 1-80. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. - - - . 1980. "The Emotions." In Staub 1980, 134-99. Bachtin, Michail. [1929] 1984. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics. Trans. Caryl Emerson. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1984. (Russian orig., Problemy tvorcestva Dostojevskogo; 2d ed., Problemy po-

etiki Dostojevskogo.) Baker, Sheridan. 1969. "Hemingway's Two-Hearted River." In Benson 1975, 150-59. Bal, Mieke. 1977. Narratologie: Les Imtances du recit. Paris: Klincksieck. - - - . 1985. Narratology: Introduction to the Theory of Narrative. Toronto: University ofToronto Press. Bally, Charles. 1912. "Le Style indirect libre en frarn;:ais moderne." Germanisch-Romanische Monatsschrift 4:549-56, 597-606. Banfield, Ann. 1982. Unspeakable Sentences: Narration and Representation in the Language ofFiction. London: Routledge. Barnes, Hazel E. 1974. The Meddling Gods: Four Essays on Classical Themes. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Barthes, Roland. 1966. "Introduction a !'analyse structurale des recits." Communications 8:1-27. - - - . 1970. S/Z Essai. Paris: Seuil. (English trans, S/Z· An Essay, trans. Richard Miller [New York: Hill & Wang, 1974].) - - - . 1971. "De l'Oeuvre au texte." Revue d'esthetique 24:225-37. - - - . 1972. Le Degre zero de lecriture suivi de Nouveawc essais critiques. Paris: Seuil. - - - . 1977. Image, Music, Text. New York: Hill & Wang. - - - . 1978. A Lover's Discourse: Fragments. Trans. Richard Howard. New York: Hill & Wang. (French orig. Paris: Seuil, 1977.) Bartsch, Renate, and Theo Vennemann. 1972. Semantic Structures: A Study in the Relation between Semantics and Syntax. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum. Bayley, John. 1960. The Characters ofLove: A Study in the Literature of Personality. London: Constable.

References Beardsley, Monroe C. 1978. "Intending." In Values and Morals: Essays in Honor ofWilliam Frankena, Charles Stevemon, and Richard Brandt, ed. Alvin I. Goldman and Jaegwon Kim, 163-84. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978. - - - . 1981. "Fiction as Representation." Synthese 46:291-313. Beicken, Peter U. 1974. Franz Kafka: Eine kritische Einfohrung in die Forschung. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum. Bell, Ian. 1985. Defoe's Fiction. London: Croom Helm. Bellamy, John G. 1985. Robin Hood: An Historical Enquiry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Bellen, Irena. 1970. "On a Condition of the Coherence ofTexts." Semiotica 2:335-63. Bell-Villada, Gene H. 1990. Garcia Mdrquez: The Man and His Work. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. Ben-Amos, Dan. 1980. "The Concept of Motif in Folklore." In Folklore

Studies in the Twentieth Century: Proceedings ofthe Centenary Conference ofthe Folklore Society, ed. Venecia J. Newall, 1r36. Woodbridge: Brewer. Benjamin, Edwin B. 1969. "Symbolic Elements in Robinson Crusoe." In Ellis 1969, 34-38. Ben-Porat, Ziva. 1976. "The Poetics of Literary Allusion." PTL: A journal for Descriptive Poetics and Theory ofLiterature 1:105-28. Benson, Jackson J., ed. 1975. The Short Stories ofErnest Hemingway: Critical Essays. Durham: Duke University Press. Benthem, Johan van. 1988. A Manual ofIntensional Logic. 2d ed. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Berger, Peter L., and Thomas Luckmann. 1966. The Social Construction ofReality. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Berlyne, D. E. 1965. Structure and Direction in Thinking. New York: Wiley. Bernstein, Richard J. 1971. Praxis and Action: Contemporary Philosophies ofHuman Activity. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Billing, Peter. 1992. Eskalation und Deeskalation internationaler Konflikte:

Ein Konfliktmodell aufder Grundlage der empirischen Auswertung von 288 internationalen Konflikten seit I945. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Binder, Hartmut. 1975. Kafka: Kommentar zu samtlichen Erzahlungen. Munich: Winkler. Birch, David, and Joseph Veroff. 1966. Motivation: A Study ofAction. Belmont, Cali£: Brooks/Cole. Birjukov, B. V. 1964. Two Soviet Studies on Frege, ed. and trans. Ignacio Angelleli. Dordrecht: Reidel. 288

References Blessin, Stefan. 1985. Johann Wolfgang Goethe: Die Leiden des Jungen Werther. Frankfurt am Main: Diesterweg. Blewett, David. 1979. Defoe's Art ofFiction: Robimon Crusoe, Moll Flanders, Colonel jack, and Roxana. Toronto: University ofToronto Press. Bolles, Robert C. 1975. Theory ofMotivation. 2d. ed. New York: Harper &Row. Booth, Wayne C. 1961. The Rhetoric ofFiction. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Boulding, Kenneth E. 1962. Conflict and Defame: A General Theory. New York: Harper. Bradley, Raymond, and Norman Swartz. 1979. Possible Worlds: An Introduction to Logic and Its Philosophy. Oxford: Blackwell. Brand, Glen. 1987. "Kundera and the Dialectic of Repetition." Cross Currents 6:461-72. Brand, Myles. 1984. Intending and Acting: Toward a Naturalized Action Theory. Cambridge: MIT Press. Bremond, Claude. 1973. Logique du recit. Paris: Seuil. - - - . 1982. ''A Critique of the Mori£" In French Literary Theory Today, ed. Tzvetan Todorov, 125-46. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l'Homme. Brennenstuhl, Waltraud. 1975. Handlungstheorie und Handlungslogik:

Vorbereitungen zur Entwicklung einer sprachadiiquaten Handlungslogik. Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor. Brenner, Peter J. 1982a. "Die alten und die neuen Leiden. Kulturpolitische und literarhistorische Voraussetzungen eines Textes in der DOR." In Brenner 19826, n-68. - - - , ed. 19826. Plenzdorfi "Neue Leiden des Jungen W.' Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Brooke-Rose, Christine. 1981. A Rhetoric ofthe Unreal: Studies in Narrative and Structure, Especialry ofthe Fantastic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brooks, Cleanth. 1947. The Well Wrought Urn: Studies in the Structure of Poetry. New York: Harcourt, Brace. Brown, D. G. 1968. Action. Toronto: University ofToronto Press. Brown, Gregory. 1994. "Compossibility, Harmony, and Perfection in Leibniz." In Woolhouse 1994, 2:261-87. Brunner, Henrietta, and J. L. Coninck. 1929. En Marge d' '.ti Rebours" de J-K Huysmam. Paris: Dorbon-Aine.

References Buckley, Jerome Hamilton. 1974. Season of Youth: The Bildungsroman from Dickens to Golding. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cahn, Dudley D., ed. 1994. Conflict in Personal Relationships. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. Calinescu, Matei. 1994. "Secrecy in Fiction: Textual and lntertextual Secrets in Hawthorne and Updike." Poetics Today 15:443-65. Carey, John. 1973. The Violent Effigy: A Study ofDickens' Imagination. London: Faber & Faber. Carl, Wolfgang. 1994- Frege's Theory of Sense and Reference: Its Origins and Scope. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Carnap, Rudolf 1947. Meaning and Necessity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Carroll, John S., and John W Payne, eds. 1976a. Cognition and Social Behavior. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. - - - , 19766. Preface to Carroll and Payne 1976a, ix-xiii. Carusi, Annamaria. 1989. "Foe: The Narrative and Power." Journal ofLiterary Studies 5:134-44. Ceard, Jean. 1985. "Huysmans, historien de la latinite de la decadence." In Huysmans, ed. Pierre Brunel and Andre Guyaux, 155-64. Les Cahiers de l'Herne. Paris: LHerne. Chafe, W L. 1970. Meaning and the Structure ofLanguage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Chan, Leonard K. K. 1991. "Molecular Story Structures: Lao She's Rickshaw and F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby." Style 25:240-50. Charles, David. 1984. Aritstotle's Philosophy ofAction. London: Duckworth. Charles, Michel. 1977. Rhetorique de la lecture. Paris: Seuil. Charney, Maurice. 1981. Sexual Fiction. London: Methuen. Chastain, Charles. 1975. "Reference and Context." In Language, Mind, and Knowledge, ed. Keith Gunderson, 194-269. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Chateaux, Dominique. 1976. "La Semantique du recit." Semiotica 18:201-16. Chatman, Seymour. 1978. Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Chisholm, Roderick M. 1957. Perceiving: A Philosophical Study. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. - - - . 1972. "Beyond Being and Nonbeing." Injenseit von Sein und

References Nichtsein: Beitrage zur Meinong-Forschung, ed. Rudolf Haller, 25-36. Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt. - - - . 1981. The First Person: An Essay on Reference and Intentionality. Brighton: Harvester Press. Christensen, Inger. 1981. The Meaning ofMeta.fiction. Bergen: Universitetsforlaget. Chvatfk, Kvetoslav. 1989. "Milan Kundera and the Crisis of Language." Review of Contemporary Fiction 9, no. 2:2r36. - - - . 1994. Svet romdnu Milana Kundery [The World of Milan Kundera's Novels]. Brno: Atlantis. Clayton, Jay, and Eric Rothstein. 1991. "Figures in the Corpus: Theories oflnfluence and Intertextuality." In Influence and Intertextuality in Literary History, ed. J. Clayton and E. Rothstein, 3-36. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. Cohn, Dorrit. 1978. Transparent Minds: Narrative Modes for Presenting Consciousness in Fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press. - - - . 1989. "Fictional versus Historical Lives: Borderlines and Borderline Cases." journal ofNarrative Technique 19:3-24. - - - . 1990. "Signposts ofFictionality." Poetics Today n:775-804. Coste, Didier. 1989. Narrative as Communication. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Cotrupi, C. Nella. 1991. "Hypermetafiction: Italo Calvino's Ifon a Wi'nter's Night a Traveller." Style 25:280-90. Court-Perez, Franc;:oise. 1987. Joris-Karl Huysmans: A Rebours. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Coval, S. C., and P. G. Campbell. 1992. Agency in Action: The Practical Rational Agency Machine. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Cresswell, M. J. 1988. Semantical Essays: Possible Worlds and Their Rivals. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Crittenden, Charles. 1991. Unreality: The Metaphysics ofFictional Objects. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Crozier, Michel, and Erhard Friedberg. 1980. Actors and Systems: The Politics of Collective Action. Trans. Arthur Goldhammer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (French orig., 1977.) Csuri, Karol, ed. 1980. Studia Poetica. Vol. 2. Szeged: University of Szeged, Department of Comparative Literature. Culler, Jonathan. 1975. Structuralist Poetics: Structuralism, Linguistics, and the Study ofLiterature. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

References - - - . 1981. The Pursuit ofSigns: Semiotics, Literature, Decomtruction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Currie, Gregory. 1984/85. "What Is Fiction?" Journal for Aesthetics and Art Criticism 43:385-92. Curtius, E. R. 1948. Europiiische Literatur und lateinisches Mittelalter. Bern: Francke. (English trans., 1973.) D'Agostino, F. B. 1994. "Leibniz on Compossibility and Relational Predicates." In Woolhouse 1994, 2:245-60. Dallenbach, Lucien. 1984. "Reading as Suture (Problems of Reception of the Fragmentary Text: Balzac and Claude Simon)." Style 18:196-206. Dalton, Elizabeth. 1979. Uncomcious Structure in "The Idiot''.· A Study in Literature and Psychoanalysis. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dambska, Izydora. [1948] 1979. "Concerning the So-called Empty Names." In Semiotics in Poland, I894-I909, ed. Jerzy Pelc, 126-30. Dordrecht: Reidel. Danto, Arthur C. 1973. Analytical Philosophy of Action. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. - - - . 1979. "Causality, Representations, and the Explanation of Actions." In Whittemore 1979, 1-19. Daval, Roger. 1981. Logique de /'action individuelle. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Davidson, Donald. 1980. Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press. - - - . 1982. "Paradoxes of Irrationality." In Philosophical Essays on Freud, ed. Richard Wollheim and James Hopkins, 289-305. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Davidson, Donald, and G. Harman, eds. 1972. Semantics of Natural Language. Dordrecht: Reidel. Dawes, Robyn M. 1976. "Shallow Psychology." In Carroll and Payne 1976a, 3-11. Deci, Edward L. 1980. "Intrinsic Motivation and Personality." In Staub 1980, 36-80. Defalco, Robert. 1963. The Hero in Hemingway's Short Stories. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. Dennett, Daniel C. 1978. Braimtorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology. Cambridge: MIT Press. De Rivera, Joseph. 1977. A Structural Theory ofEmotiom. New York: International Universities Press. de Sousa, Ronald. 1987. The Rationality ofEmotion. Cambridge: MIT Press.

References Deutsch, Morton. 1973. The Resolution of Conflict: Constructive and Destructive Processes. New Haven:-Yale University Press. - - - . 1991. "Subjective Features of Conflict Resolution: Psychological, Social, and Cultural Influences." In Vayrynen 1991, 26-56. Dijk, Teun A. van. 1973. "Models for Text Grammar." In Logic, Language, and Probability, ed. Radu I. Bogdan and Ilkka Niiniluoto, 145-80. Dordrecht: Reidel. - - - . 1974/75. ''Action, Action Description, and Narrative." New Literary History 6:273-94. - - - . 1977. Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics ofDiscourse. London: Longman. - - - , ed. 1985. Handbook ofDiscourse Analysis. 4 vols. London: Academic Press. Dijk, Teun A. van, and Walter Kintsch. 1983. Strategies ofDiscourse Comprehemion. New York: Academic Press. Dolezel, Lubomfr. 1971. "Toward a Structural Theory of Content in Prose Fiction." In Literary Style: A Symposium, ed. Seymour Chatman, 95-110. London: Oxford University Press. - - - . 1972. "From Motifemes to Motifs." Poetics 4:55-90. - - - . 1973. Narrative Modes in Czech Literature. Toronto: University ofToronto Press. - - - . 1977. ''A Pragmatic Typology of Dialogue." In Papers in Slavic Philology, vol. 1, In Honor offames Ferrell, ed. B. A. Stolz, 62-68. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Publications. - - - . 1979. "Extensional and Intensional Narrative Worlds." Poetics 8:193-211. - - - . 1980. ''A Short Note on a Long Subject: Literary Style." In Vozmi na radost': To Honour Jeanne van der Eng-Liedmeier, ed. B. J. Amsenga, J. Pama, and W G. Weststeijn, 1-7. Amsterdam: Slavic Seminar. - - - . 1982. "Mukafovsky and the Idea of Poetic Truth." Russian Literature 12/i3:283-97. - - - . 1983. "Proper Names, Definite Descriptions,and the Intensional Structure of Kafka's The Trial." Poetics 12:511-26. - - - . 1985. "Literary Text, Its World and Its Style." In Identity ofthe Literary Text, ed. Mario J. Valdes and Owen Miller, 189-203. Toronto: University ofToronto Press. - - - . 1990. Occidental Poetics: Tradition and Progress. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.

293

References - - - . 1996. "Polyfunctional or Monofunctional Lanugage?" In The

Search for a New Alphabet: Literary Studies in a Changing World. In Honour ofDouwe Fokkema, ed. Harald Hendrix, Joost Kloek, Sophie Levie, and Will van Peer, 73-77. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Donagan, Alan. 1987. Choice: The Essential Element in Human Action. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Douglas, Mary. 1975. Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Dovey, Teresa. 1988. The Novels ofJ M Coetzee: Lacanian Allegories. Craighall: Ad. Donker. . Ducrot, Oswald. 1972. Dire et ne pas dire: Principes de semantique linguistique. Paris: Hermann. Ducrot, Oswald, and Tzvetan Todorov. 1972. Dictionnaire encylopedique des sciences du langage. Paris: Seuil. Dummett, Michael. 1973. Frege: Philosophy ofLanguage. London: Duckworth. Eagle, Herbert. 1984. "Genre and Paradigm in Milan Kundera's The Book ofLaughter and Forgetting." In Stolz, Titunik, and Dolezel 1984, 251-84. Eco, Umberto. 1976. A Theory ofSemiotics. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. - - - . 1979. The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. - - - . 1989a. "Report on Session 3: Literature and Arts." In Allen 1989, 343-55. - - - . 19896. "Small Worlds." VS. Versus 52/53:53-70. - - - . 1990. The Limits ofInterpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. - - - . 1994. Six Walks in the Fictional Woods. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Eco, Umberto, with Richard Rorty, Jonathan Culler, and Christine Brooke-Rose. 1992. Interpretation and Overinterpretation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Ehrmann, Jacques. 1970. "Structures of Exchange in Cinna." In Structuralism: A Reader. ed. Michael Lane, 222-47. London: Cape. Ejchenbaum, Boris. 1922. Molodoj Tolstoj [Young Tolstoy]. Petersburg: Grzebin. - - - . [1918] 1963. "Kak sdelana 'Sinel' Gogolja'' [How Gogol's Overcoat is Made]. In Gogol from the Twentieth Century, ed. and trans. Robert A. Maguire, 269-94. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

294

References (Russian orig. rpt. in Literatura: Teorija, kritika, polemika, 149-65. Leningrad: Priboj, 1927.) Ekman, Paul. 1980. "Biological and Cultural Contributions to Body and Facial Movement in the Expression of Emotions." In Rorty 1980, 73-rn1. Eliot, T. S. 1950. The Sacred Wood: Essays on Poetry and Criticism. London: Methuen. Ellis, Frank H., ed. 1969. Twentieth-Century Interpretations ofRobinson Crusoe: A Collection of Critical Essays. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Else, Gerald Frank. 1957. Aristotle's Poetics: The Argument. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Eng, J. van der. 1957. Dostoevskij romancier: Rapport entre sa vision du monde et ses procedes litteraires. The Hague: Mouton. Engel, Ingrid. 1986. Werther und die Wertheriaden: Ein Beitrag zur Wirkungsgeschichte. St. Ingbert: Rohrig. Epstein, Seymour. 1983. "A Research Paradigm for the Study of Personality and Emotions." In Personali-ty: Current Theory and Research. Nebraska Symposium on Mo#vation I982, ed. Monte M. Page, 91-154. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Evans, Gareth. 1982. The Varieties ofReference, ed. John McDowell. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Evans, Phil. 1989. Motivation and Emotion. London: Routledge. Even-Zohar, Itamar. 1980. "Constraints on Realeme Insertability in Narrative." Poetics Today 1:65-74. Ewin, R. E. 1981. Co-operation and Human Values: A Study ofMoral Reasoning. New York: St. Martin's Press. Fairley, Irene. 1979. "Experimental Approaches to Language in Literature: Reader Responses to Poems." Style 13:335-64. Farr, Robert M., and Serge Moscovici, eds. 1984- Social Representations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fiddian, Robin. 1987. "A Prospective Post-script: Apropos of Love in the Time of Cholera." In Gabriel Garcia Mdrquez: New Readings, ed. Bernard McGuirk and Richard Cardwerll, 191-205. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fillmote, Charles J. 1968. "The Case for Case." In Universals in Linguistic Theory, ed. E. Bach and R. T. Harms, 1-89. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Flaker, Aleksandar. 1975. Mode/le der jeans Prosa: Zur literarischen Oppo-

295

References sition bei Plenzdorf im osteuropaischen Romankontext. Kronberg/Ts.: Scriptor. Flanagan, Owen J., Jr. 1984. The Science ofthe Mind. Cambridge: MIT Press. Flaschka, Horst. 1987. Goethes "Werther':• Werkkontextuelle Deskription und Analyse. Munich: Fink. Flora, Joseph M. 1982. Hemingway's Nick Adams. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. - - - . 1989. Ernest Hemingway: A Study ofthe Short Fiction. Boston: Twayne. Fludernik, Monika. 1994. "Introduction: Second-Person Narrative and Related Issues." Style 28:281-311. Foley, Barbara. 1986. Telling the Truth: The Theory and Practice ofDocumentary Fiction. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Follesdal, Dagfinn, and Risto Hilpinen. 1971. "Deontic Logic: An Introduction." In Hilpinen 1971, 1-35. Foucault, Michel. 1978. The History ofSexuality. Vol. 1, An Introduction. Trans. Robert Hurley. New York: Pantheon Books. (French orig. Volante du savoir, 1976.) Fraassen, Bas C. van. 1966. "Singular Terms, Truth-Value Gaps, and Free Logic." journal ofPhilosophy 63:481-95. - - - . 1968. "Presupposition, Implication, and Self-Reference." Journal ofPhilosophy 65: 136-52. - - - . 1971. Formal Semantics and Logic. New York: Macmillan. Frankfurter, Harry G. 1988. The Importance of What We Care About. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Frege, Gottlob. [1892] 1969. "Uber Sinn und Bedeutung." In Funktion, Begriff, Bedeutung: Funf logische Studien, 3d ed., ed. Giinther Patzig, 40-65. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht (German orig. in Zeitschrift for Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 100:25-50; English trans. in Translations .from the Philosophical Writings of Gottlob Frege, ed. and trans. Peter Geach and Max Black, 56-78 [Oxford: Blackwell, 1980].) - - - . [1918/i9] 1966. "Der Gedanke: Eine logische Untersuchung." In Logische Untersuchungen, ed. Giinther Patzig, 30-53. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. (German orig. in Beitrage zur Philosophie des deutschen Idealismus 1:58-77; English trans. in Collected Papers on Mathematics, Logic, and Philosophy, ed. Brian McGuinness, 351-72 [Oxford: Blackwell, 1984] .)

References Freundlieb, Dieter. 1988. "Semiotic Idealism." Poetics Today 9:8or41. Frickey, Pierrette M., ed. 1990. Critical Perspectives on jean Rhys. Washington: Three Continents Press. Friedman, Ellen G. 1989. "Breaking the Master Narrative: Jean Rhys's Wide Sargasso Sea." In Breaking the Sequence: 'Women's Experimental Fiction, ed. Ellen G. Friedman and Miriam Fuchs, 117-28. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Friedman, Norman. 1975. Form and Meaning in Fiction. Athens: University of Georgia Press. Frisch, Joseph C. 1969. Extension and Comprehension in Logic. New York: Philosophical Library. Frye, Northrop. 1968. "Dickens and the Comedy of Humors." In Experience in the Novel: Selected Papers .from the English Institute, ed. Roy Harvey Pearce, 49-81. New York: Columbia University Press. Fuchs, Catherine. 1982. La Paraphrase. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Fumaroli, Marc. 1977. Preface and notes to A Rebours, by J.-K. Huysmans, r51, 39r443. Paris: Gallimard. Gabriel, Gottfried. 1975. Fiktion und Wahrheit: Eine semantische Theorie der Literatur. Stuttgart: Fromann-Holzboog. Gagnon, John H., and William Simon. 1973. Sexual Conduct: The Social Sources ofHuman Sexuality. Chicago: Aldine. Gallagher, Susan V. 1991. A Story ofSouth Africa: J M Coetzee's Fiction in Context. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Galperin, P. J. 1957. "Umstvennoje dejstvije kak osnova formirovanija mysli i obraza'' [Mental Act as a Basis for the Formation ofThought and Image]. Voprosy psichologii 3, no. 6:58-69. Garber, Frederick. 1982. The Autonomy ofSelf From Richardson to Huysmans. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Gazdar, Gerald. 1979. Pragmatics: Implicature, Presupposition, and Logical Form. New York: Academic Press. Geach, Peter. 1957. Mental Acts: Their Content and Their Objects. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Genette, Gerard. 1972. Figures III. Paris: Seuil. (English trans. (of the portion "Discours du recit") in Narrative Discourse: An Essay in Method, trans. Jane E. Lewin [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1980].) - - - . 1982. Palimpsestes: Litterature au second degre. Paris: Seuil. - - - . 1983. Nouveau discours du recit. Paris: Seuil. - - - . 1991. Fiction et diction. Paris: Seuil.

297

References Genot, Gerard. 1984. Grammaire et recit: Essai de linguistique textuelle. Document 32. Nanterre: Centre de Recherches de Langue et Litterature Italiennes. Gilbert, Sandra M., and Susan Gubar. 1979. The Madwoman in the At-

tic: The Woman Writer and the Nineteenth-Century Literary Imagination. New Haven: Yale University Press. Goodman, Nelson. 1978. Ways ofWorldmaking. Indianapolis: Hackett. Gorr, Michael. 1979. "Omissions." In Whittemore 1979, 93-102. Graesser, Arthur C., and Leslie F. Clark. 1985. Structures and Procedures ofImplicit Knowledge. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex. Green, 0. H. 1979. "Refraining and Responsibility." In Whittemore 1979, 103-13. Greenspan, Patricia S. 1980. "A Case of Mixed Feelings: Ambivalence and the Logic of Emotions." In Rorty 1980, 223-50. Greimas, A. J. 1966. Semantique structurale: Recherche de methode. Paris: Larousse. - - - . 1970. Du Sens: Essais semiotiques. Paris: Seuil. - - - . 1987. On Meaning: Selected Writings in Semiotic Theory. Trans. Paul J. Perron and Frank H. Collins. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. - - - . [1976] 1987. "Toward a Theory of Modalities." In On Meaning, 121-39. - - - . [1983] 1987. "Knowing and Believing: A Single Cognitive Uni. verse." In On Meaning, 165-79. - - - . [1979] 1989. "Basil Soup, or the Construction of an Object of Value." In Paris School Semiotics, ed. P~ul Perron and Frank Collins, vol. 2, Practice, 1-12. Amsterdam: Benjamins. - - - . [1974] 1990. "Toward a Topological Semiotics." In Narrative Semiotics and Cognitive Discourses, trans. Paul Perron and Frank H. Collins, 139-59. London: Pinter; Grether, David M. 1980. "Bayes Rule as a Descriptive Model: The Representativeness Heuristic." Quarterly journal ofEconomics 95: 537-57. Grice, Paul H. 1975. "Logic and Conversation." In Speech Acts, ed. P. Cole and J. L. Morgan, 41-58. Syntax and Semantics 3. New York: Academic Press. Grimshaw, Allen D., ed. 1990. Conflict Talk. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Grossman, Leonid. 1925. Poetika Dostojevskogo [Poetics ofDostojevskij]. Moscow: Gosudarstvennaja akademia chudozestvennych nauk.

References Grossman, Reinhardt. 1969. Reflections on Frege's Philosophy. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1969. - - - . 1983. The Categorial Structure ofthe World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Guenthner, Franz. 1978. "Systems of Intensional Logic and the Semantics of Natural Languages." In Studies in Formal Semantics: Intensionality, Temporality, Negation, ed. Franz Guenthner and Christian Rohrer, 41-74. Amsterdam: North-Holland. Haack, Susan. 1974- Deviant Logic: Some Philosophical Issues. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Habermas, J ilrgen. 1984. The Theory of Communicative Action. Vol. 1, Reason and the Rationalization ofSociety. Trans. Thomas McCarthy. Boston: Beacon Press. (German orig. 1981.) Halliday, M.A. K. 1970. "Language Structure and Language Function." In New Horizons in Linguistics, ed. John Lyons, 140-65. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Hamarneh, Walid. 1991. "The Construction of Fictional Worlds and the Problem of Authenticity: Jabra Ibrahim Jabra and Fathi Ghanim." Style 25=223-39. Hamilton, David L. 1976. "Cognitive Biases in the Perception of Social Groups." In Carroll and Payne 1976a, 81-93. Hamon, Philippe. 1977. "Pour un Statut semiologique du personage." In Poetique du recit, ed. Gerard Genette and Tzvetan Todorov, 115-80. Paris: Seuil. Harman, Gilbert. 1972. "Deep Structure as Logical Form." In Davidson and Harman 1972, 25-47. - - - . 1976. "Practical Reasoning." Review ofMetaphysics 29:431-63. Hasan, Ruqaiya. 1984. "Ways of Saying: Ways of Meaning." In The Semiotics of Culture and Language. Vol. 1, ed. Robin P. Fawsett, M.A. K. Halliday, Sydney M. Lamb, and Adam Makkai, 105-62. London: Pinter. Haubrichs, Wolfgang, ed. 1976-78. Erzahlforschung: Theorien, Mode/le und Methoden der Narrativik. 3 vols. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Heintz, John. 1979. "Reference and Inference in Fiction." Poetics 8:85-99. Heller, Erich. 1974. Kafka. Modern Masters Series. London: Fontana/ Collins. Hemmerechts, Kristien. 1987. A Plausible Story and a Plausible Way of Telling It: A Structuralist Analysis ofjean Rhys's Novels. Frankfurt am Main: Lang.

299

References Herman, David. 19943-. "Hypothetical Focalization." Narrative 2:230-53. - - - . 1994b. "Textual You and Double Deixis in Edna O'Brien's A Pagan Place." Style 28:378-410. Herzberger, Hans G. 1980. "True, False, Etc." In New Essays in Philosophy ofLanguage, ed. F. J. Pelletier and C. G. Normore, 1-14. Guelf, Ont.: Canadian Association for Publishing in Philosophy. Heuvel, Pierre van den. 1985. Parole, mot, silence: Pour une poetique de lenonciation. Paris: Corti. Hilpinen, Risto. 1969. "An Analysis of Relativised Modalities." In Philosophical Logic, ed. J. W Davis, D. J. Hockney, and WK. Wilson, 181-93. Dordrecht: Reidel. - - - , ed. 1971. Deontic Logic: Introductory and Systematic Readings. Dordrecht: Reidel. Hily-Mane, Genevieve. 1983. Le Style de Ernest Hemingway: La Plume et le masque. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. Hintikka, Jaakko. 1962. Knowledge and Belief An Introduction to the Logic ofthe Two Notions. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. - - - . 1971. "Some Main Problems of Deontic Logic." In Hilpinen 1971, 59-104____ 1974. "Practical vs. Theoretical Reason: An Ambiguous Legacy." In Practical Reason, ed. Stephan Korner, 83-102, Oxford: Blackwell. - - - . 1975. The Intentions ofIntentionality and Other New Models for Modalities. Dordrecht: Reidel. - - - . 1989; "Exploring Possible Worlds." In Allen 1989, 52-73. Hintikka, Jaakko, and Merrill B. Hintikka. 1989. The Logic ofEpistemology and the Epistemology ofLogic: Selected Essays. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Hirst, Paul, and Penny Woolley. 1982. Social Relations and Human Attributes. London: Tavistock. Holenstein, Elmar. 1981. "On the Poetry and the Plurifunctionality of Language." In Structure and Gestalt: Philosophy and Literature in Austria-Hungary and Her Successor States, ed. Barry Smith, 1-43. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Holloway, John. 1967. Introduction to Little Dorrit, by Charles Dickens, 13-29. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Holthusen, Johannes. 1969. Prinzipien der Komposition und des Erzahlens bei Dostojevskij. Cologne: Westdeutscher Verlag. Horowitz, Mardi J. 1988. Introduction to Psychodynamics: A New Synthesis. New York: Basic Books.

300

References Horsley, Lee. 1995. Fictions ofPower in English Literature: r900-r950. London: Longman. House, Humphry. 1942. The Dickens World. 2d. ed. London: Oxford University Press. Howell, Robert. 1979. "Fictional Objects: How They Are and How They Are Not." Poetics 8:129-77. Hrushovski [Harshaw], Benjamin. 1984. "Fictionality and Fields of Reference: Remarks on a Theoretical Framework." Poetics Today 5:227-51. Huddleston, R. 1970. "Some Remarks on Case-Grammar." Linguistic Inquiry 1:501-u. Hutcheon, Linda. 1980. Narcissistic Narrative: The Metafictional Paradox. 2d. ed. New York: Methuen, 1984. - - - . 1988. A Poetics ofPostmodernism: History, Theory, Fiction. New York: Routledge. - - - . 1989. "Historiographic Metafiction: Parody and the lntertextuality of History." In O'Donnell and Davis 1989, 3-32. - - - . 1996. "The Politics oflmpossible Worlds." In Mihailescu and Hamarneh 1996, 213-25. Illg, Jerzy, ed. 1988. Kundera. London: Polonia. Iser, Wolfgang. 1971. "Indeterminacy and the Reader's Response in Prose Fiction." In Aspects ofNarrative, ed. J. Hillis Miller, 1-450. English Institute Essays 1971. New York: Columbia University Press. - - - . 1974. The Implied Reader: Patterns of Communication in Prose Fiction from Bunyan to Beckett. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. - - - . 1978. The Act ofReading: A Theory ofAesthetic Response. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. (German orig. 1976.) Ishiguro, Hide. 1981. "Contingent Truths and Possible Worlds." In Woolhouse 1981, 64-76. Issacharoff, Michael. 1970. ].-K Huysmans devant la critique en France (r874-r960). Paris: Klincksieck. - - - . 1987. "How Playscripts Refer: Some Preliminary Considerations." In On Referring in Literature, ed. Anna Whiteside and Michael Issacharoff, 84-94. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. lvin, A. A. 1970. Osnovanija logiki ocenok [Foundations of the Logic of Valuation]. Moscow: lzdatelstvo Moskovskogo universiteta. Izard, Caroll E. 1977. Human Emotions. New York: Plenum Press. - - - . 1979. "Emotions as Motivations: Approaches to the Study of Emotions as Related to Stress and Coping." In Nebraska Symposium

301

References on Motivation I978: Human Emotion, ed. R. A. Dienstbier, 163-200. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Jacquenod, Claudine. 1988. Contribution a une etude du concept de fiction. Bern: Lang. Jager, Georg. 1984. Die Leiden des alten und neuen Werther: Kommentare, Abbildungen, Materialien zu Goethes "Leiden des Jungen Werthers'' und Plenzdorfi "Neuen Leiden des Jungen W." Munich: Hanser. Jakobson, Roman. 1971. Selected Writings. Vol. 2, Word and Language. The Hague: Mouton.

- - - . 1987. "The Statue in Puskin's Poetic Mythology." In Language in Literature, ed. Krystyna Pomorska and Stephen Rudy, 318-67. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. (Czech orig. 1937.) Jankovic, Milan. 1966. "Hra s vypravenfm" [A Play with Narrating]. In Struktura a smysl literdrniho dila, ed. Milan Jankovic, Zdenek Pesat, and Felix Vodicka, 180-97. Prague: Ceskoslovensky spisovatel. Jauss, Hans Robert. 1978. ''Asthetische Erfahrung als Verjilngung des Vergangenen." In Sprache und Welterfahrung, ed. Jorg Zimmermann, 3or-28. Munich: Fink. Jefferson, Ann. 1980. The Nouveau Roman and the Poetics of Fiction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Jeffrey, Richard C. 1965. The Logic ofDecision. New York: McGraw-Hill. Jodelet, Denise. 1984. "The Representation of the Body and Its Transformations." In Farr and Moscovici 1984, 2u-38. Jones, John. 1983. Dostoevsky. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kalinowski, Georges. 1972. La Logique des normes. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France. - - - . 1985. Semiotique et philosophie. Paris: Hades-Benjamins. Kany6, Zoltan. 1980a. "Narrativik und 'Mogliche Welten.' " In Csuri 1980, 17-22. - - - . 19806. "Die Verwendung der Semiotik der 'Moglichen Welten' in der Analyse literarischer narrativer Texte." In Csuri 1980, 23-31. - - - . 1980c. "Semantik fur heimatlose Gegenstande: Die Bedeutung von Meinongs Gegestandtheorie fur die Theorie der Fiktionalitat." In Studia poetica, vol. 3. Kany6, 3=3-u4. Szeged: University of Szeged, Department of Comparative Literature. - - - , ed. 1984. Studia poetica. Vol. 5, Fictionality. Szeged: University of Szeged, Department of Comparative Literature. Kay, Harry. 1971. ''Accidents: Some Facts and Theories." In Psychology at Work, ed. Peter B. Warr, 121-45. Harmondsworth: Penguin.

302

References Kayser, Wolfgang. 1958. "Wer erzahlt den Roman?" In Vortragasreise: Studien zur Literatur, 82-ror. Bern: Fancke. Keenen, Edward L. 1971. "Two Kinds of Presupposition in Natural Language." In Studies in Linguistic Semantics, ed. Charles J. Fillmore and D. Terence Langendoen, 44-52. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston. Kempson, Ruth M. 1977. Semantic Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine. 1982. "Le Texte litteraire: Non-reference, auto-reference, OU reference fictionnelle?" Texte 1:27-49. - - - . 1986. L1mplicite. Paris: Colin. Kirk, G. S. 1970. Myth: Its Meaning and Function in Ancient and Other Cultures. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kirkham, Richard L. 1992. Theories of Truth: A Critical Introduction. Cambridge: MIT Press. Kleberg, Lars. 1984- "On the Border: Milan Kundera's The Book of Laughter and Forgetting." Scando-Slavica 30:57-72. Kripke, Saul A. 1963. "Semantical Considerations on Modal Logic." Acta Philosophica Fennica 16:83-94. (Rpt. in Zabeeh, Klemke, and Jacobson 1974, 803-14-) - - - . 1980. Naming and Necessity. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kristeva, Julia. 1969. Semiotike: Recherches pour une semana/,yse. Paris: Seuil. - - - . 1989. ''An Interview with Julia Kristeva." In O'Donnell and Davis 1989, 280-93. Krysinski, Wladimir. 1988. "Metafictional Structures in Slavic Literatures: Towards an Archeology ofMetafiction." In Postmodern Fiction in Europe and the Americas, ed. Theo D'haen and Jans Bertens, 6r82. Postmodern Studies r. Amsterdam: Rodopi. Kuhl, Julius, and Jurgen Beckmann, eds. 1985. Action Control· From Cognition to Behavior. Berlin: Springer. Kuhn, Thomas S. 1989. "Possible Worlds in History of Science." In Allen 1989, 9-32. Kundera, Milan. 1990. The Art ofthe Novel. 2d. ed. London: Faber & Faber. Kutschera, Franz von. 1976. Einfohrung in die intensionale Semantik. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lachmann, Renate. 1990. Gedachtnis und Literatur: Intertextualitat in der russischen Moderne. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp. Laforet, Michel. 1975. "Les Sensations olfactives dans A Rebours de J.-K.

References Huysmans." In Melanges Pierre Lambert consacres a Huysmans, 231-40. Paris: Nizet. Lambert, Karel, ed. 1969. The Logical Way ofDoing Things. New Haven: Yale University Press. Lanser, Susan Snaider. 1981. The Narrative Act: Point ofView in Prose Fiction. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lasswell, Harold D., Daniel Lerner, and Ithiel de Sola Pool. 1952. The Comparative Study of Symbols. Stanford: Stanford University Press, Hoover Institute Studies. (Abbreviated rpt. Prestige Press: A Comparative Study ofPolitical Symbols [Cambridge: MIT Press, 1970].) Leavis, F. R. 1970. "Dickens and Blake: Little Dorrit." In Dickens the Novelist, by F. R. Leavis and Q. D. Leavis, 213-76. London: Chatto & Windus. Le Grand, Eva. 1984- 'TEsthetique de la variation romanesque chez Kundera." L1nfini 5:56-64. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm. [1699] 1855. "Correspondence with John Bernoulli." In Mathematische Schriften, ed. C. J. Gerhardt, 3:574-75. Halle: Schmidt. (English trans. in Loemker 1969, 513-14.) - - - . [1679] 1857. "De libertate." In Nouvelle lettres et opuscules inedits de Leibniz, ed. A Foucher de Careil, 178-85. Paris: Durand. (English trans. in Loemker 1969, 263-66). - - - . [1686] 1879. "Remarques sur la lettre de M. Arnaud." In Leibniz 1875-90, 2:3r47. - - - . [1714] 1887. "Letter to Bourguet." In Leibniz 1875-90, 3=572-76. (English trans. in Loemker 1969, 661-63.) - - - . 1875-90. Die philosophischen Schriften. Ed. C. J. Gerhardt. 7 vols. Berlin. (Rpt. Hildesheim: Olms, 1960-61.) Levelt, Willem J. M. 1989. Speaking: From Intention to Articulation. Cambridge: MIT Press. Levin, Samuel R. 1978. "On Meaning and Truth in the Interpretation of Poetry." Poetics 7:339-50. Levy, JiH. 1963. "Teorie informace a literarnf proces" [Information Theory and the Literary Process]. Ceskd literatura n:281-308. - - - . 1983. Umeni pfekladu [The Art ofTranslation]. 2d ed. Prague: Panorama. (English trans. [part] in Semiotics ofArt: Prague School Contributions, ed. L. Matejka and I. R. Titunik, 218-26. [Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976].) Lewis, David. 1978. "Truth in Fiction." American Philosophical QuarterlJ 15=37-46.

References - - - . 1983. Philosopical Papers. Vol. I. New York: Oxford University Press. - - - . 1986. On the Plurality ofWorlds. Oxford: Blackwell. Liehm, Antonin J. 1980. "Milan Kundera: Czech Writer." In Czech Literature since I956: A Symposium, ed. William E. Harkins and Paul I. Trensky, 40-55. New York: Bohemica. Lillyman, William J., ed. 1983. Goethe's Narrative Fiction: The Irvine Goethe Symposium. Berlin: de Gruyter. Lindenfeld, David F. 1980. The Transformation of Positivism: Alexius Meinong and European Thought, I880-I920. Berkeley: University of .California Press. Linsky, Leonard. 1977. Names and Descriptions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. - - - . 1983. Oblique Contexts. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Lintvelt, Jaap. 1981. Essai de typologie narrative: Le "Point de vue. "Paris: Corti.. Livi, Frans;ois. 1972. J-K Huysmans 1'I. Rebours" et l'~sprit decadent. Brussels: La Renaissance de livre. Lloyd, Christopher. 1990. J-K Huysmans and the Fin-de siecle Novel Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. Lloyd, Genevieve. 1978. "Leibniz on Possible Individuals and Possible Worlds." Australasian Journal ofPhilosophy 56:126-42. Lodge, David. 1966. Language ofFiction: Essays in Criticism and Verbal Ana!Jsis ofthe English Novel London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. - - - . 1984. "Milan Kundera and the Idea of the Author in Modern Criticism." Critical QuarterlJ 26, no. 1/2:105-21. (Rpt. in After Bakhtin: Essays on Fiction and Criticism [London: Routledge, 1990].) Loemker, Leroy E., ed. and trans. 1969. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and Letters. 2d ed. Dordrecht: Reidel. Lord, Robert. 1970. Dostoevsky: Essays and Perspectives. Berkeley: University of California Press. Lord, Albert B. 1960. Singer of Tales. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Lorman, Jurij. 1990. Universe ofthe Mind: A Semiotic Theory of Culture. Trans. Ann Shukman. London: Tauris. Loux, Michael J. 1979a. Preface and "Introduction: Modality and Metaphysics." In Loux 19796, 9-n, 15-64. - - - , ed. 19796. The Possible and the Actual: Readings in the Metaphysics ofModality. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

References Loyd, Sally A., and Beth C. Emery. 1994. "Physically Aggressive Conflict in Romantic Relationships." In Cahn 1994, 2r46. Lukacs, Georg. [1936] 1964. "Die Leiden des jungen Werther." In Deutsche Literatur in zwei jahrhunderten, 53-68. Berlin: Luchterhand. Li.ithi, Max. 1976. Marchen. 6th ed. Stuttgart: Metzlersche Verlagsbuchhandlung. Lycan, William G. 1979. "The Trouble with Possible Worlds." In Loux 1979b, 274-316. - - - . 1984. Logical Form in Natural Language. Cambridge: MIT Press. - - - . 1994. Modaliry and Meaning. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Lyons, John. 1977. Semantics. 2 vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Lyons, William. 1980. Emotion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Macdonald, Margaret. 1954. "The Language of Fiction." The Aristotelian Sociery Proceedings (supp.) 28:165-84. · Macmurray, John. 1961. Persons in Relations. London: Faber. Magliano, Joseph P., and Arthur C. Graesser. 1991. ''A Three-Pronged Method for Studying Inference Generation in Literary Text." Poetics 20:193-232. Magnet, Myron. 1985. Dickens and the Social Order. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Maingon, Charles. 1977. L'Univers artistique de J-K Huysmans. Paris: Nizet. Maitre, Doreen. 1983. Literature and Possible Worlds. London: Pembridge Press. Malcolm, Norman. 1959. Dreaming. London: Routledge & Paul. Margolin, Uri. 1986. "The Doer and the Deed: Action as a Basis for Characterization in Narrative." Poetics Today 7:205-25. - - - . 1987. "Introducing and Sustaining Characters in Literary Narrative: A Set of Conditions." Sryle 21:ror24. - - - . 1990. "Individuals in Narrative Worlds: An Ontological Perspective." Poetics Today n:843-71. - - - . 1996. "Characters and Their Versions." In Mihailescu and Hamarneh 1996, n3-32. Martfnez-Bonati, Felix. 1973. "Die logische Struktur der Dichtung."

Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift for Literaturwissenschaft und Geistesgeschichte 47:185-200.

306

References - - - . 1976. "Erzahlstruktur und ontologische Schichtenlehre." In Haubrichs 1976, 1:175-83. - - - . 1981. Fictive Discourse and the Structures ofLiterature: A Phenomenological Approach. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Mates, B. 1968. "Leibniz on Possible Worlds." In Logic, Methodology, and Philosophy of Science, vol. 3, ed. B. van Rootsellar and J. F. Staal, 507-29. Amsterdam: North-Holland. - - - . 1986. The Philosophy ofLeibniz: Metaphysics and Language. New York: Oxford University Press. Mathesius, Vilem. 1947. "PHspevek k strukturalnimu rozboru zasoby slovni" [A Contribution to the Structural Analysis of the Vocabulary]. In CeJtina a obecnj jazykozpyt, 175-84. Prague: Melantrich. Mauss, Marcel. 1979. Sociology and Psychology: Essays. Trans. Ben Brewster. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Maybach, Heike. 1990. Der erzahlte Leser: Studien zur Rolle des Lesers in

Italo Calvinos Roman "Wenn ein Reisender in einer Winternacht" und in anderen Werken der Erzahlliteratur. Frankfurt am Main: Materialis Verlag. McCormick, Peter J. 1988. Fictions, Philosophies, and the Problems ofPoetics. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. - - - . 1990. Moderniry, Aesthetics, and the Bounds ofArt. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. McHale, Brian. 1987. Postmodernist Fiction. New York: Methuen. McLain, Richard L. 1974. "Semantics and Style: With the Example of Quintessential Hemingway." In Ernest Hemingway: Five Decades of Criticism, ed. Linda W Wagner, 155-62. East Lansing: Michigan State University Press. Meiland, Jack W 1970. The Nature ofIntention. London: Methuen. Meinong, Alexis. [1904] 1960. "On the Theory of Objects." In Realism and the Background ofPhenomenology, ed. R. M. Chisholm, 76-117. New York: Free Press. (German orig. 1904.) - - - . [1923] 1974. "Meinong's Ontology." Appendix 1 in Meinong, by Reinhardt Grossmann, 224-29. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, (German orig. 1923.) Melden, A. I. 1964. Free Action. 2d ed. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Mele, A. 1992. Springs ofAction: Understanding Intentional Behavior. New York: Oxford University Press.

References Mennecke, Arnim. 1991. Kolonia/es Bewusstsein in den Romanen J M Coetzees. Heidelberg: Winter. Merrell, Floyd. 1983. Pararealities: The Nature of Our Fictions and How We Know Them. Amsterdam: Benjamins. Merton, Robert K. 1957. Social Theory and Social Structure. Glencoe, Ill.: Free Press. Miall, David S. 1990. "Readers' Responses to Narrative: Evaluating, Relating, Anticipating." Poetics 19:32r39. Mihailescu, Calin. 1991. "Mind the Gap: Dystopia as Fiction." Style 25:2u-22. Mihailescu, Calin, and Walid Hamarneh, eds. 1996. Fiction Updated: Theories ofFictionality, Narratology, and Poetics. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Milgram, Stanley. 1984. "Cities as Social Representations." In Farr and Moscovici 1984, 289-309. Miller, George A., Eugene Galanter, and Karl H. Pribram. 1960. Plans and the Structure ofBehavior. New York: Holt. Miller, J. Hillis. 1965. Charles Dickens: The World of His Novels. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Miller, Richard B. 1990. "There Is Nothing Magical about Possible Worlds." Mind 99:453-57. Miller, Robin Feuer. 1981. Dostoevsky and "The Idiot':· Author, Narrator, and Reader. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Millet, Kate. 1970. Sexual Politics. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday. Molesworth, Charles. 1987. "Kundera and The Book:The Unsaid and the Unsayable." Salmagundi 73:65-83. Mondadori, Fabrizio. 1994. "Leibniz and the Doctrine oflnter-World Identity." In Woolhouse 1994, 1:256-89. Montague, Richard. 1974. Formal Philosophy. Ed. R.H. Thomason. New Haven: Yale University Press. Morgan, Tha.1s. 1989. "The Space oflntertextuality." In O'Donnell and Davis 1989, 239-79. Morrissette, Bruce. 1975. The Novels of Robbe-Grillet. Ithaca: Cornell University Press (French orig. 1963.) Moscovici, Serge. 1984- "The Phenomenon of Social Representations." In Farr and Moscovici 1984, 3-69. Moser, Walter. 1984. "The Factual in Fiction." Poetics Today 5:4n-28. Mukafovsky, Jan. 1948. Kapitoly z ceske poetiky [Chapters from Czech Poetics]. 3 vols. Prague: Svoboda. (English trans. [in part], The Word and

308

References Verbal Art: Selected Essays by Jan Mukafovskj, trans. and ed. John Burbank and Peter Steiner [New Haven: Yale University Press, 1977].) Nemcova Banerjee, Maria. 1989. "The Impossible Don Juan." Review of Contemporary Fiction 9, no. 2:3r45. Nesselroth, Peter W. 1996. "Naming Names in Telling Tales." In Mihailescu and Hamarneh 1996, 133-43. , Neu, Jerome. 1980. "Jealous Thoughts." In Rorty 1980, 425-63. Neuberg, Marc. 1993. Philosophie de l'action: Contribution critique a la theorie analytique de !'action. N.p.: Academie royale de Belgique. Nicholas, David W., and Tom Trabasso. 1980. "Toward a Taxonomy of Inferences for Story Comprehension." In Information Integration in Children, ed. Friedrich Wilkening, Johannes Becker, and Tom Trabasso, 24r65. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. Nicholson, Michael. 1991. "Negotiation, Agreement, and Conflict Resolution: The Role of Rational Approaches and Their Criticism." In Vayrynen 1991, 5r78. Nicolaisen, Peter. 1979. Ernest Hemingway: Studien zum Bild der erziihlten Welt. Neumiinster: Wachtholtz. Nissenbaum, Helen Fay. 1985. Emotion and Focus. Stanford: Center for the Study of Language and Information. Nolt, John Eric. 1984. Informal Logic: Possible Worlds and Imagination. New York: McGraw-Hill. - - - . 1986. "What Are Possible Worlds?" Mind 95:432-45. Novak, Maximillian. 1963. Defoe and the Nature ofMan. London: Oxford University Press. Novitz, David. 1987. Fiction, Knowledge, and Imagination. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. O'Connor, Teresa F. 1986. jean Rhys: The West Indian Novels. New York: New York University Press. Odmark, John, ed. 1979. Language, Literature, and Meaning l· Problems ofLiterary Theory. Amsterdam: Benjamins. O'Donnell, Patrick, and Robert Con Davis, eds. 1989. Intertextuality and Contemporary American Fiction. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Ogley, Roderick C. 1991. Conflict under the Microscope. Aldershot: Avebury. Olejniczak, Jozef. 1988. "Powiesc jako esej" [Story as Essay]. In Illg 1988, 15r67.

References Olson, Mancur. 1971. The Logic ofCollective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups. 2d ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Parkinson, G. H. R. 1995. "Philosophy and Logic." In The Cambridge Companion to Leibniz, ed. Nicholas Jolley, 199-223. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Parret, Herman. 1986. Les Passions: Essai sur la mise en discours de la subjectivite. Brussels: Mardaga. Parsons, Terence. 1980. Nonexistent Objects. New Haven: Yale University Press. - - - . 1982. "Nominalistic Theories of Fictional Objects." Poetics 11:311-29. Partee, Barbara H. 1989. "Possible Worlds in Model-Tµeoretic Semantics: A Linguistic Perspective." In Allen 1989, 93-123. Paterson, Janet M. 1994. Postmodernism and the Quebec Novel. Trans. David Homel and Charles Phillips. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. (French orig. 1990.) Pavel, Thomas G. 1975/76. "Possible Worlds in Literary Semantics." journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism 34:165-76. - - - . 1986. Fictional Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. - - - . 1990. "Narrative Tectonics." Poetics Today 11:349-64. Pears, David. 1984. Motivated Irrationality. Oxford:. Clarendon Press. Pelc, Jerzy. 1977. "Some Semiotic Considerations Concerning Intensional Expressions and Intentional Objects." Logique et Analyse 20:244-67. Pellerin, Gilles. 1985. "J. K. Huysmans: Gustave Moreau, Detail (1884)." Etudes .franraise 21, no. 1:31-44. Penner, Dick. 1989. Countries ofthe Mind: The Fiction off M Coetzee. New York: Greenwood Press. Pier, John. 1992. "Between Text and Paratext: Vladimir Nabokov's Pale Fire." Style 26:12-32. Plantinga, Alvin. 1974. The Nature ofNecessity. Oxford: Clarendon Press. - - - . 1977. "Transworld Identity or Worldbound Individuals." In Schwartz 19776, 245-66. - - - . 1979. ''Actualism and Possible Worlds." In Loux 19796, 253-73Politzer, Heinz. 1969. "The Messengers: Barnabas and Amalia." In Twentieth-Century Interpretations of the Castle, ed. Peter F. Neumeyer, 46-56. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Pollard, D. E. B. 1973. "Fiction and Semantics." Ratio 15:57-73-

310

References Pope, Kenneth S., and Jerome L. Singer. 1978a. "Introduction: The Flow of Human Experience." In Pope and Singer 19786, 1-6. - - - , eds. 19786. The Stream of Consciousness: Scientific Investigations into the Flow ofHuman Experience. New York: Plenum Press. Porn, Ingmar. 1970. The Logic ofPower. Oxford: Blackwell. - - - . 1977. Action Theory and Social Science. Dordrecht: Reidel. Partch, Stephen R. 1985. Literature's Silent Language: Nonverbal Communication. New York: Lang. Porter, R. C. 1981. Milan Kundera: A ¼ice from Central Europe. Aarhus: Arkona. Posner, Roland. 1972. Theorie des Kommentierens: Eine Grundlagenstudie zur Semantik und Pragmatik. Frankfurt am Main: Athenaum. Pozuelo Yvancos, Jose Marfa. 1993. Poetica de la ficcion. Madrid: Sintesis. Preminger, Alex, ed. 1974. Princeton Encyclopedia ofPoetry and Poetics. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Prince, Gerald. 1973. "Presupposition and Narrative Strategy." Centrum 1:23-31. - - - . 1982. Narratology: The Form and Functioning of Narrative. Berlin: Mouton. - - - . 1983. "Worlds with Style." Philosophy and Literature 7:59-66. - - - . 1992. Narrative as Theme. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Propp, Vladimir. 1928. Morfalogija skazki. Leningrad: Gosudarstvennyj institut istorii iskusstv. (Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott [The Hague: Mouton, 1958]. Rev. trans. Louis A. Wagner [Austin: University ofTexas Press, 1968].) Purtill, Richard L. 1978. "Telling the Tale." Canadian journal ofPhilosophy 8:343-49. Putilov, B. N. 1975. "Motiv kak sjuzetoobrazujuscij element" [Motif as an Element of Plot Formation]. In Tipologiceskije issledovanija po fol'kloru, ed. J.M. Meletinskij and S. J. Nechljudov, 141-55. Moscow: Nauka. Piltz, Peter. 1983. "Werthers Leiden an der Literatur." In Lillyman 1983, 55-68. Ramchand, Kenneth. 1990. "Wide Sargasso Sea." In Frickey 1990, 194-205. Ransom, John Crowe. 1938. The World's Body. New York: Scribner's Sons. Rapoport, Anatol. 1960. Fights, Games, and Debates. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.

3n

References - - - . 1970. "Conflict Resolution in the Light of Game Theory and Beyond." In Swingle 1970, 1-43. - - - . 1974. Conflict in Man-Made Environment. Harmondsworth:

Penguin. - - - . 1995. The Origins ofViolence: Approaches to the Study ofConflict.

New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers. Raven, Bertram H., and Arie W Kruglanski. 1970. "Conflict and Power." In Swingle 1970, 69-109. Reason, J. 1979. "Actions Not as Planned: The Price of Automatization." In Underwood and Stevens 1979, 1:6r89. Recanati, Franc;:ois. 1979. La Transparence et lenonciation: Pour introduire la pragmatique. Paris: Seuil. Redfield, James M. 1975. Nature and Culture in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hector. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rees, Martin J. 1989. "Our Universe and Others: The Limits of Space, Time, and Physics." In Allen 1989, 396-416. Rehbein, Jochen. 1977_- Komplexes Handeln: Elemente zur Handlungstheorie der Sprache. Stuttgart: Metzler. Reich-Ranicki, Marcel. 1982. "Der fonger im DDR-Rogen: Ulrich Plenzdorfs jedenfalls wichtiger Werther-Roman." In Brenner 19826, 262-69.

Reid, J.C. 1967. Charles Dickens: Little Dorritt. London: Arnold. Rescher, Nicholas. 1966. "Aspects of Action." In The Logic ofDecision and Action, ed. N. Rescher, 215-19. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. - - - . 1969. Introduction to Value Theory. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. - - - . 1975. A Theory ofPossibility: A Constructivistic and Conceptual-

ist Account ofPossible Individuals and Possible Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell. - - - . 1995. Luck: The Brilliant Randomness of Everyday Life. New

York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux. Rescher, Nicholas, and Robert Brandom. 1980. The Logic of Inconsis-

tency: A Study in Non-Standard Possible-World Semantics and Ontology. Oxford: Blackwell. Ricardou, Jean. 1973. Le Nouveau roman. Paris: Seuil. Richetti, John J. 1975. Defoe's Narratives: Situations and Structures. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Ricoeur, Paul. 1977. "Le Discours de !'action." In La Semantique de l'ac312

References tion, ed. Dorian Tiffeneau, 3-137. Paris: Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. - - - . 1984-88. Time and Narrative. 3 vols. Vols. 1 and 2 trans. K. McLaughlin ;u;_d D. Pellauer; vol. 3 trans. K. Blarney and D. Pellauer. Chicago: University of Chicago Press (French orig., Temps et recit, 3 vols., 1983-88.) Riffaterre, Michael. 1978. Semiotics ofPoetry. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. - - - . 1983. Text Production. Trans. T. Lyons. New York: Columbia University Press. (French orig. 1979.) - - - . 1990. Fictional Truth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Righter, William. 1963. Logic and Criticism. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Rigney, Ann. 1992. "The Point of Stories." Poetics Today 13:263-83. Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith. 1983. Narrative Fiction: Contemporary Poetics. London: Methuen. Rogers, Pat. 1979. Robinson Crusoe. London: Allen & Unwin. Ronen, Ruth. 1988. "Completing the Incompleteness of Fictional Entities." Poetics Today 9:497-514. - - - . 1990. "Possible Worlds in Literary Theory: A Game oflnterdisciplinarity." Semiotica 80:27r97. - - - . 1994. Possible Worlds in Literary Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Rorty, Amelie Oksenberg, ed. 1980. Explaining Emotions. Berkeley: University of California Press. Rorty, Richard. 1982. Consequences of Pragmatism (Essays: I972-I980). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Rotkin, Charlotte. 1989. Deception in Dickens' "Little Dorrit. "New York: Lang. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1762. Emile, ou de !'education. Quoted from Defoe: The Critical Heritage, ed. Pat Rogers. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1972. Rumelhart, David, and Donald A. Norman. 1982. "Simulating a Skilled Typist." Cognitive Science 6:1-32. Russell, Bertrand. [1905] 1974. "On Denoting." In Zabeeh, Klemke, and Jacobson 1974, 143-58. - - - . 1919. Introduction to Mathematical Philosophy. London: Allen & Unwin. 313

References - - - . 1937. A Critical Exposition of the Philosophy ofLeibniz. 2d ed. London: Allen & Unwin. - - - . [1940] 1970. An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth. Harmondsworth: Penguin. - - - . 1959. My Philosophical Development. London: Allen & Unwin. Rutherford, John. 1975. "Story, Character, Setting, and Narrative Mode in Galdos's El amigo Manso." In Style and Structure in Literature: Essays in the New Stylistics, ed. Roger Fowler, 177-212. Oxford: Blackwell. Ryan, Marie-Laure. 1980. "Fiction, Non-factuals, and the Principle of Minimal Departure." Poetics 9:403-22. - - - . 1984. "Fiction as a Logical, Ontological, and Illocutionary Issue." Style 18:121-39. - - - . 1991. Possible Worlds, Artificial Intelligence, and Narrative Theory. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Sanger, Jilrgen. 1978. Aspekte dekadenter Sensibilitat: J-K Huysmans' Werk von "Le Drageoir aux epices" bis zu '11 Rebours. "Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Santambrogio, Marco, and Patrizia Violi. 1988. Introduction to Meaning and Mental Representations, ed. Umberto Eco, Marco Santambrogio, and Patrizia Violi, 3-22. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Saussure, Ferdinand de. [1916] 1972. Cours de linguistique generate. Ed. Tullio de Mauro. Paris: Payor. ( Course in General Linguistics, trans. Wade Baskin [London: Owen, 1960].) Savan, David. 1983. "Toward a Refutation of Semiotic Idealism." Recherches Semiotiques/Semiotic Inquiry 3:1-8. Schank, Roger C. 1986. Explanation Patterns: Understanding Mechanically and Creatively. Hillsdale, N.J.: Erlbaum. Scherpe, Klaus R. 1970. Werther und Wertherwirkung: Zum Syndrom burgerlicher Gesellschaftsordnung im I8. ]ahrhundert. Bad Homburg: Gehlen. Schick, Frederic. 1991. Understanding Action: An Essay on Reasons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schirn, Mathias, ed. 1976. Studien zu Frege: Studies on Frege. 3 vols. Stuttgart: Frommann-Holzboog. Schmidt, S. J. 1984. "The Fiction Is That Reality Exists." Poetics Today 5=253-74. Schulz, Dieter. 1982. Suche und Abenteuer: Die "Quest" in der englischen und amerikanischen Erzahlkunst der Romantik. Heidelberg: Winter. 314

References Schwartz, Stephen P. 1977a. Introduction to Schwartz 1977b, 13-41. - - - , ed. 1977b. Naming, Necessity, and Natural Kinds. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Searle, John R. 1979. "The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse." In Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory ofSpeech Acts, 58-75. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.(Orig. in New Literary History 6 [1974/75]: 319-32.) - - - . 1983. Intentionality: An Essay in the Philosophy ofMind. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sebeok, Thomas A. 1974. Structure and Texture: Selected Essays in Cheremis Verbal Art. The Hague: Mouton. Segre, Cesare. 1979. "Se una notte d'inverno uno scrittore sognasse un aleph di dieci colori." Strumenti Critici 13, no. 2/3=177-244. Selbmann, Rolf. 1984. Der deutsche Bildungsroman. Stuttgart: Metzler. Shaffer, Jerome A. 1968. Philosophy of Mind. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Showalter, Elaine. 1979. "Guilt, Authority, and the Shadows of Little Dorrit." Nineteenth-Century Fiction 34, no. 1:20-40. Singer, Jerome L. 1978. "Experimental Studies of Daydreaming and the Stream ofThought." In Pope and Singer 1978b, 18r223. Sklovskij, Viktor. 1929. 0 teorii prozy. 2d ed. Moscow: Federacija. (Theory of Prose, trans. Benjamin Sher [Elmwood Park, Ill.: Dalkey Archive, 1990].) Slinin, J. A. 1967. "Teorija modal'nostej v sovremennoj logike" [Theory of Modalities in Contemporary Logic]. In Logiceskaja semantika i modal'naja logika, ed. P. V. Tavanec, u9-47. Moscow: Nauka. Sluga, Hans D. 1980. Gottlob Frege. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. - - - , ed. 1993. The Philosophy ofFrege. 4 vols. New York: Garland. Smith, Barry. 1979. "Roman Ingarden: Ontological Foundations for Literary Theory." In Odmark 1979, 373-90. Smith, Peter. 1984. Public and Private Value: Studies in the NineteenthCentury Novel Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Solomon, Robert C. 1976. The Passions. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor/ Doubleday. Spilka, Mark. 1963. Dickens and Kafka: A Mutual Interpretation. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Spitzberg, Brian H., Daniel}. Canary, and William R. Cupach. 1994. ''A Competence-Based Approach to the Study of Interpersonal Conflict." In Cahn 1994, 183-202. 315

References Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorti. 1991. "Theory in the Margin: Coetzee's Foe Reading Defoe's Crusoe/Roxana." In Consequences of Theory: Selected Papers from the English Institute, I987-I988, ed. Jonathan Arac and Barbara Johnson, 154-80. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Staley, Thomas F. 1979. jean Rhys: A Critical Study. Austin: University of Texas Press. Stalnaker, Robert C. 1976. "Possible Worlds." Nous 10:65-75. - - - . 1984. Inquiry. Cambridge: MIT Press. Stankiewicz, Edward. 1989. "The Emotive Function of Language: An Overview." In For a Semiotics ofEmotion, ed. Walter A. Koch, 73-85. Bochum: Brockmeyer. Stanzel, F. K. 1984. A Theory ofNarrative. Trans. Charlotte Goedsche. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (German orig. 1979.) Staub, Ervin, ed. 1980. Personality: Basic Aspects and Current Research. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Stein, Nancy L. 1982. "The Definition of a Story." journal ofPragmatics 6:48r507. Steiner, Peter, and Wendy Steiner. 1979. "The Axes of Poetic Language." In Odmark 1979, 35-70. Steinmetz, Horst. 1977. Suspensive Interpretation: Am Beispiel Franz Kajkas. Gottingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. Stoddard, Sally. 1991. Text and Texture: Patterns of Cohesion. Norwood, N.J.: Ablex. Stolz, Benjamin A., I. R. Titunik, and Lubomfr Dolezel, eds. 1984. Language and Literary Theory: In Honor ofLadislav Matejka. Papers in Slavic Philology 5. Ann Arbor: Michigan Slavic Contributions. Storr, Anthony. 1988. Solitude. London: Flamingo. Straaten, Zak van, ed. 1980. Philosophical Subjects: Essays Presented to P F. Strawson. Oxford: Clarendon. Strawson, P. F. 1952. Introduction to Logical Theory. London: Methuen. - - - . 1959. Individuals: An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics. London: Methuen. - - - . 1980. "P. F. Strawson Replies." In van Straaten 1980, 260-96. - - - . 1992. Analysis and Metaphysics: An Introduction to Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Sturrock,John. 1969. The French New Novel.· Claude Simon, Michel Butor, Alain Robbe-Grillet. London: Oxford University Press. Suleiman, Susan Rubin. 1983. Authoritarian Fictions: The Ideological Novel as a Literary Genre. New York: Columbia University Press. 316

References Swales, Martin. 1978. The German Bildungsroman from Wieland to Hesse. Princeton: Princeton University Press. - - - . 1987. Goethe: The Sorrows of Young Werther. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Swingle, Paul, ed. 1970. The Structure of Conflict. New York: Academic Press. Tammi, Pekka. 1985. Problems of Nabokov's Poetics: A Narratological Analysis. Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica. Tanner, Tony. 1979. Adultery in the Novel.· Contract and Tramgression. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press. Thompson, Stith. 1951. The Folktale. New York: Dryden. Thorpe, Michael. 1990." 'The Other Side': Wide Sargasso Sea and Jane Eyre." In Frickey 1990, 178-85. Thurley, Geoffrey. 1976. The Dickem Myth: Its Genesis and Structure. St. Lucia: University of Queensland Press. Tichy, Pavel. 1971. "An Approach to Intensional Analysis." Nous 5:273-97. Tillyard, E. M. W. 1969. "Defoe." In Ellis 1969, 62-78. Titunik, Irwin R. 1977. "Das Problem des skaz: Kritik und Theorie." In Haubrichs 1977, 2:114-40. Todorov, Tzvetan. 1970. Introduction a la litterature fantastique. Paris: Seuil. (The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard Howard [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975].) - - - . 1971. Poetique de la prose. Paris: Seuil. (The Poetics ofProse, trans. Richard Howard [Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1977].) - - - . 1975. "Connaissance du vide." Nouvelle revue de psychanalyse n:145-54. Tomasevskij, Boris. 1928. Teorija literatury: Poetika [Theory of Literature: Poetics]. 4th ed. Moscow: Gosudarstvennoje izdatel'stvo. Traill, Nancy H. 1991. "Fictional Worlds of the Fantastic." Style 25:196-210. - - - . 1996. Possible Worlds ofthe Fantastic: The Rise ofthe Paranormal in Literature. Toronto: University ofToronto Press. Trojan, Felix. 1924. "Wege zu einer vergleichenden Wissenschaft von der dichterischen Komposition." In Vom Geiste neuer Literaturforschung: Festschrift for Oskar Walzel, ed. J. Wahle and V. Klemperer, 90-96. Wildpark-Potsdam: Akademische Verlagsgeselschaft Athenaion. Trudgian, Helene. 1934. L'Esthetique de J-K Huysmans. Paris: Conard.

317

References Underwood, Geoffrey, and Robin Stevens, eds. 1979. Aspects of Consciousness. 2 vols. London: Academic Press. Urmson, J. 0. 1979. "Performative Utterances." In Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy ofLanguage, ed. Peter A. French, Theodore E. Uehling Jr., and Howard K. Wettstein, 260-67. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Vaget, Hans. 1983. "Goethe the Novelist: On the Coherence of His Fiction." In Lillyman 1983, 1-37. Van Ghent, Dorothy. 1950. "The Dickens World: A View from Todger's." Sewanee Review 58:419-38. - - - . 1953. The English Novel· Form and Function. New York: Harper &Row. Vayrynen, Raimo, ed. 199L New Directions in Conflict Theory: Conflict Resolution and Conflict Transformation. London: Sage Publications. Velleman, J. David. 1989. Practical Reflection. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Vernon, Magdalen D. 1969. Human Motivation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Vinogradov, V. V. 1930. 0 chudozestvennoj proze [On Artistic Prose]. Moscow-Leningrad. Vodicka, Felix. 1942. "Literarni'. historie, jeji'.yroblemy a ukoly'' [Literary History, Its Problems and Its Tasks]. In Cteni ojazyce a poesii, ed. Bohuslav Havranek and Jan Mukafovsky, 309-400. Prague: Druzstevni'. prace. (English trans. [part] in Semiotics ofArt: Prague School Contributions, ed. L. Matejka and I. R.Titunik, 197-208 [Cambridge: MIT Press, 1976].) - - - . 1948. Pocdtky krdsne prozy novoceske [The Beginnings of Czech Artistic Prose]. Prague: Melantrich. Volosinov, V. N. 1930. Marksizm i filosofija jazyka. Leningrad: n.p. (Marxism and the Philosophy ofLanguage, trans. L. Matejka and J. R. Titunik [New York: Seminar Press, 1973].) Walton, Douglas N. 1980. "Omitting, Refraining, and Letting Happen."

American Philosophical Quarterly 17:319-26. Walton, Kendall L. 1978/79. "How Remote Are Fictional Worlds from the Real World?" journal ofAesthetics and Art Criticism 37=n-23. - - - . 1984. "Do We Need Fictional Entities? Notes toward a Theory."

Aesthetics: Proceedings ofthe Eighth International Wittgenstein Symposium. Ed. Rudolf Haller, 179-92. Vienna: Holder.

References - - - . 1990. Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations ofthe Repre-

sentational Arts. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Wang, Binjung. 1991. Rezeptionsgeschichte des Romans "Die Leiden des jungen Werther" von Johann Wolfgang Goethe in Deutsch/and seit I945. Frankfurt am Main: Lang. Wapnewski, Peter. 1982. "Zweihundert Jahre Werthers Leiden oder: Dem war nicht zu helfen." In Brenner 19826, 324-43. Warnock, G. J. 1963. "Truth and Correspondence." In Knowledge and Experience, ed. C. D. Rollins, u-20. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press. In Zabeeh, Klemke, and Jacobson 1974, 733-42. Wasiolek, Edward. 1967. Introduction to The Notebooks for "The Idiot," ed. Edward Wasiolek, 1-20. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Watt, Ian. 1963. The Rise ofthe Novel: Studies in Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding. Harmondsworth: Penguin. Waugh, Patricia. 1984. Meta.fiction: The Theory and Practice ofSelf-Conscious Fiction. London: Methuen. Weimann, Robert. 1982. "Goethe in der Figuren-perspektive." In Brenner 19826, 155-73. Weinryb, Elazar. 1980. "Omissions and Responsibility." Philosophical Quarterly 30, no. n8:1-18. Wells, Elizabeth J. 1969. "A Statistical Analysis of the Prose Style of Ernest Hemingway: 'Big Two-Hearted River.'" In Benson 1975, 129-35. Welt, Klara. 1988. "Szesnascie takt6w nieskoncwnosci" [Sixteen Bars of Infinity]. In Illg 1988, 188-96. Whittemore, Robert C., ed. 1979. Studies in Action Theory. Tulane Studies in Philosophy, vol. 28. New Orleans: Tulane University. Widdershoven, Guy A. M. 1984. "Handlungstheorie und Gesellschaftstheorie." In Rationales Handeln und Gesellschaftstheorie, ed. Willem van Reijen and Karl-Otto Apel, 183-200. Bochum: Germinal. Wierzbicka, Anna. 1991. Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: The Semantics ofHuman Interaction. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Williams, C. J. F. 1981. What Is Existence? Oxford: Clarendon Press. Wirrer, Jan. 1982. "Learning to Follow the Fiction Convention." Poetics n:371-91.

Wolman, Benjamin B. 1969. The Unconscious Mind: The Meaning of Freudian Psychology. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. Wolterstorff, Nicholas. 1980. Works and Worlds ofArt. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

319

References - - - . 1989. "Discussion ofLubomi'.r Dolezel's Paper, 'Possible Worlds and Literary Fictions.' " In Allen 1989, 243-49. Woods, John Hayden. 1974. The Logic ofFiction: A Philosophical Sounding ofDeviant Logic. The Hague: Mouton. - - - . 1978a. "Meinongean Theories of Fictional Objects.'' journal of Literary Semantics 7, no. 2: 65-69. - - - . 19786. "Can the Tale Be Told?" Canadian Journal ofPhilosophy 8:351-54. - - - . 1982. ''Animadversions and Open Questions: Reference, Inference, and Truth in Fiction.'' Poetics n:553-62. Woodward, K. 1975. "Passivity and Passion in Little Dorrit.'' Dickensian 71:140-48. Woolhouse, R. S., ed. 1981. Leibniz, Metaphysics, and Philosophy ofScience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, Georg H. von. 1963a. The Logic ofPreference. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. - - - . 19636. Norm and Action. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. - - - . 1963c. The Varieties of Goodness. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. - - - . 1968. An Essay in Deontic Logic and the General Theory ofAction. Amsterdam: North-Holland. - - - . 1983. Practical Reason. Vol. 1 of Philosophical Papers. Oxford: Blackwell. Yagisawa, Takashi. 1988. "Beyond Possible Worlds.'' Philosophical Studies 53=175-204. Young, Philip. 1966. Ernest Hemingway: A Reconsideration. University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press. Zabeeh, Farhang, E. D. Klemke, and Arthur Jacobson, eds. 1974. Readings in Semantics. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Zholkovsky, Alexander. 1984. Themes and Texts: Toward a Poetics ofExpressiveness. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Zimmerman, Michael J. 1984. An Essay on Human Action. New York: Lang.

320

I

Subject Index

Authors discussed in the text are listed below; names of secondary sources are listed in the name index. Accessibility, 234n. 36; physical, 20, 129, 186-87, 235n. 38; semiotic, 20-22 accident, 60-61, 244nn. 14-16, 25m. 17; agential, 60, 244nn. 14&15; instrumental, 60-61; interactional, 99-IOo; in Little Dorrit, 84-86, 250n. 15 act, 57, 24rnn. 2&3; mental, 32, 72-73, 247nn. 33&34; physical, 98; physically impossible, 159; semiotic, 98. See also speech act; writing, act of action, 31, 32, 34, 55-56, 61-62, 96; in "Big Two-Hearted River," 43, 44, 45; capacity, rr5, rr6, 117, rr8; description, 26, 175, 242n. 6; destructive, 125; durative, 57, 61; evaluation of, 26; freedom of, 91, 97, m-12, 256n. 23, 258n. 7; God's, 130; in inference, 176; instrumental, 57; and intention, 57-59, 243nn. 9&10; and interaction, 61-62; intransitive, 56, I09; iterative, 43, 44, 45, 57; macro-, 57, 242n. 7; and modality, 120-24; momentary, 57; and motivation, 63-70; negative, 62; in Petersburg, 195-96; physical, 48, 56, 73, I09; and power, I04, rr3; productive, 32, 39, 56-57; as propositional predicate, 34; protective, 38, 59; in A Rebours, 48; in Robinson Crusoe, 38; routine, 45, 58, 239n. 14, 243n. IO; self-destructive, 39, 77-78, 189; transitive, 56, 98, I09. See also action mode; erotics; omission; social acting

action mode, 70-72, 71 (schema 1); and communication, 99. See also akratic acting; impulsive acting; interaction; irrational acting; rational acting action theory, 14, 35, 55-56, 57-58, 70, 73, I08, rr3-14, 241nn. 2&3, 242n. 8, 253n. 2 activity, 48, 57, 61, 63, 65; aesthetic, 15, 48-50, 227n. 1; cognitive, 23m. 21; consumer, 43; creative, 14; mental, 47; productive, 23, 39-42; speech, 154; textual, 24, 235n. 4r. See also erotics; social acting actual world, 2, 6-7, 9, IO, 13, 16, 19, 23m. 22; and fictional world, 20-21, 23, 149, 183-84, 220, 232n. 26, 267n. 3; laws of, 19, rr5; and modalities, rr4, rr5; and representation, 24, 26. See also encyclopedia; mimesis; text, imaging; world actualism, 13, 24 agent, 14, 33, 55-56, 57, 175, 190, 242n. 6; animal as, 59; auxiliary, 48; cognitive set of, 64; Crusoe as, 38-41; free, 71, I06; inanimate object as, rr6; independent, I06, I09; influencing, I07; in Kafka's fictional world, 192-93, 196; in Kundera's fictional world, 89; in Little Dorrit, 81, 82; Nick Adams as, 43-44; in Petersburg, 191-92, 196; and responsibility, 62; subordinate, 106-7. See also impulsive agent; irrational agent; rational agent

321

Subject Index agential constellation, 75-76, 82, 97-98, 253n. 3; and accident, 85, 99, 100, 251n. 17; and compossibility, 223, 225; and function of naming, 140; and power, 103; reader in, 167; in rewrite, 210, 213-14, 226 agential control, 59-61, 73, 80, 97, 105-6, II0, 243n. 12; in "Big TwoHearted River," 46; in The Idiot, 7r78, 79, 80, 81, 248n. 5; in impulsive acting, 71-72; in Little Dorrit, 86; in rational acting, 71; in A Rebours, 52-53, 240n. 22; in Robinson Crusoe, 40 akratic: acting, 70, 72, 78, 80, 99, 246n. 30; agent, 70 alethic modality, II4, 210, 212; in dyadic world, n5-17; in hybrid world, 188; and person's capacity, II8-19. See also mythological world alien: alechic, II9-20; axiological, 124-25; deontic, 122-23; epistemic, 128 Allen, Woody: "The Kugelmass Episode," 278n. 36 allusion: and implicit meaning, 173; and intercextuality, 201, 226 analytic philosophy, 1-2; and action theory, 55, 97, 24m. 2, 244n. 13, 253n. 2 animal, 43, 44, 58-59, II6-17, 239n. 13; in hybrid world, 188, 189, 270n. 4 artifact, 32, 37, 39, 49 artwork, 49, 51, 53, 54, 201 authentication, 145-68, 198, 208, 218-20, 263n. 7, 264n. n; dis-, n7-18, 150; dyadic, 148-52, 264n. 13; force, 146, 147, 265n. 16; function, 143, 147, 264U. 13; graded, 152-59; and impossible world, 163-65; in metaficcion, 166-67; subversion of, 160-63. See also narrative, self-disclosing and self-voiding author, 23, 27, 28, 139, 143, 147, 214; and accessibility, 20-21; anti-, 168; fictional, 218-19, 220, 221-22; 277n. 31; and incompleteness, 169, 170; in literary communication, 202-5; in mecafiction, 167, 168, 266n. 25; and narra-

322

tor, 262n. 5, 264U. 12; and pretense, II; in tansduccion, 205, 224 authorial error, 149, 238n. 6, 263n. 9 authoritative narrative, 149-51, 152, 263n. 8; and fictional fact, 149, 154; and firstperson narrative, 156; and impossible world, 163, 164. See also third-person narrative autobiography, 25, 157-58, 252n. 6 axiological modality, II4, 123-24, 257n. r, 258n. II; in, dyadic world, 129; and quest, 124 Belyj, Andrej, Petersburg, 189-98, 27onn. 5&6, 27m. 8 Bildungsroman, 127, 259n. 15 biological: event, 60, 78, 244n. 12; process, 56, 73 Borges, Jorge, "The Garden of Forking Paths," 164, 266n. 22 Bronte, Charlotte, Jane Eyre, 213-14, 216-17, 274n. 21 Bronze Horseman, 197 Calvino, Icalo, Ifon a Winters Night a Traveller, 166-68, 266nn. 26&27, 267nn. 28&29 Carroll, Lewis, A/ices Adventures in Wonderland, 131-32, 260n. 20 case grammar, 34, 243n. II Cervantes, Miguel de, Don Quixote, 148-49, 150, 263nn. 7&8 characters' discourse. See fictional person, discourse coercion, 89, 104, no. See also power Coetzee, J.M., Foe, 217-22, 224, 225, 276n. 29,277nn.30-33 cognitive psychology, 55, 64, 242n. 8, 244fi. 15, 269n. 12 commentary, 26-27, 162, 179, 208, 209, 236n. 43. See also imaging digression communication, 32, 98-99, 106, 220, 228n. 6, 253n. 5, 269n. 12; between fictional persons, 18, 127, 131, 166, 208, 270n. 6; cognitive motivation in, 108; and implicitness, 172; literary, 162, 202-3, 203 (schema 6&7), 205;

Subject Index and power, 103; and pretense, II; quasi-, 41-42; cransworld, 16, 131 comparative study, 33, 36, 270n. 5 compossibility, 19-20, 180, 234n. 35; in postmodernist rewrite, 22r24, 225, 226, 278n. 37. conflict, 12, 79, 80, 107-10, 124, 197, 255nn. 15-18; with God, 129-30; inner, 109; motivational, 69-70, 246n. 30 Constant, Benjamin, Adolphe, 155-56, 176, 183, 253n. 5 contemplation, 40-41, 42, 47, 50, 72-73 context: and implicit meaning, 172, 173; intensional, 14, 135-36; motif in, 35 contradiction, 69; in commentaries, 26; and impossible world, 19, n6, 163-65, 221-22, 224, 232n. 26. See also authorial error control: in literary communication, 21, 205; in modern myth, 193-97; over emotion, 66, 67, 68; political, 90-91, 93-94; and power, 103, 107, II2. See also agential control conventions, 5,

120;

narrative, 132, 149,

151, 154, 156-57, 159, 218-19; social, 25, 83; speech act, ro, 269n. 12 cooperation: in interaction, 106; with nature force, 38, 60, 238n. 4 co-text, 173, 268n. 8 counterfactual: history, 14; statement, 14, 45, 56; world, 180 counterpart, 6, 17-18, 21, II5, 167, 168, 233n. 29, 278n. 37; in postmodernist rewrite, 214, 221, 225-26; relation, 17, 224, 233n. 28 cross-world journey, 131-32 culture, 38-39, 69, II0, n7, 120, 123, 129, 170, 210; and emotion, 246n. 27; and encyclopedia, 177; and modern myth, 198 Deception, 128, 25m. 21. See also epistemic modality decision making, 73, 245n. 21 definite description, 139-40, 142, 195, 249n. 9, 262n. 9. See also person, naming of

Defoe, Daniel: Robinson Crusoe, 3r42, 140, 217, 220, 222, 237nn. 2&3, 238nn. 4-9; Roxana, or The Fortunate Mistress, 219-20 degradation, II?, 131 deontic modality, II4, 120-23, 210-n, 258n. ro; 273n. 15; and dyadic world, 129, 131. See also alien, deontic dialogue, 99, 148; in first-person narrative, 154, 156; interior, 109; and polyphony, 275n. 27 Dickens, Charles, 240n. 21; Little Dorrit, 81-88, 126, 249nn. 9-12, 25onn. 13-16, 25rnn. 17-22, 252n. 23 disnarraced, 151 divinity. See God Dostoevsky, F. M., 249nn. 6-8; Crime and Punishment, 122; The Idiot, 74-81, 175, 176, 248nn. 1-5, 25m. 21 dream, 40, 47, 52, 73, 240n. 22, 248n. 35; as disauthenticacing device, 117, 260n. 20, 277n. 34; as intermediate world, 117-18; prolepcic, II? drive, 63-64, 69, 245n. 19; and akratic acting, 70, 72; in conflict, 107; and emotion, 66, 101, 246n. 23; in erotics, 89, 91, 104-5, 254n. 12; and impulsive acting, 71-72, 77; in interaction, 100; in policies, 89, 91 duel, 44, 45, 46, 47, 109, 239n. 13; verbal, 255n. 16 Ebert, Adolph, 54 emotion, 65-69, 73, 245n. 22, 246nn. 24&25; arid action mode, 72, 247n. 30; of animal, 58; in "Big Two-Hearted River," 45-46, 47; collective, 101, 128; display of, 68, 99, 246nn. 27&28; and drive, 66, IOI, 246n. 23; dysphoric, 67; in erotics, 105; euphoric, 67; in The Idiot, 76; in Kundera's world, 92, 94; in Little Dorrit, 86-87; as motivation, 65, 100, 108; in A Rebours, 50-51, 52; in Werther, 2II. See also passion emotional relation, 76, 106-7, 128, 245n. 22;

in erotics,

104;

as motivation,

101

Subject Index empty term, 2-3, 227n. 3 encyclopedia, 177, 269nn. 12&15; actual world, 177, 178, 180, 181; fictional, 177-81; impossible world, 180-81; in inference, 176-77, 195; reader's, 178, 181, 222-23; and recovery of implicit meaning, 178-79, 181, 183 enthymeme, 177, 269n. 13 epistemic modality, n4, 126-28, 253n. 6; and Bildungsroman, 127; and communication, 127; and deception, 127-28; in dyadic world, 129; and quest, 126-27; and story with a secret, 126, 259n. 14. See also alien, epistemic erotics, 88-95, 104-5, 255n. 13 ersatz-sentence. See paraphrase event, 55-56, 24m. 3; and action, 55, 58; bizarre, 179, 187-88, 189; expressive, 68-69; mental, 32, 57, 73, 99, 242n, 8, 247n. 34, 248n. 4; as propositional predicate, 34; supernatural, n6, n7, 130, 197-98. See also nature event; process extension, 36, 135-37, 142, 26onn. 1&3; and intension, 138; and transduction, 202, 205, 214, 225 extensional: entity, 140, 202; language, 136; metalanguage, 136, 143; motif structuring, 34-35; representation, 35, 136, 139, 140, 143; semantics, 137. See also fictional world, extensional structuring of Failure, 39, 40, 41, 45; of authentication, 161; in interaction, 99-100 fantastic, the, 19, 162, 260n. 18; authentication of, 197-98; fictional encyclopedia of, 178 felicity conditions, 146; of authentication, 146-47, 169; breach of, 160, 161 fiction making, 2, 227n. 1; and authentication, 148, 160, 162, 218-19; and impossible world, 164, 165, 166; and metafiction, 166, 267n. 29; in transduction, 206; and verisimilitude, 17 fiction operator. See formal theory of fictionality

324

fictional domain, 46, 128, 140, 253n. 3; determinate, 182; factual, 150, 151-52, 153; indeterminate, 182-83; natural, 128-29; subjectivized, 153; supernatural, 128-29, 131, 187, 197-98, 270n. 1; virtual, 150-52, 153, 155-56 fictional entity, 3, 4, 6-7, 9, IO, 12, 16, 18, 22, 233n. 32; existence of, 145, 147, 152; and fictional world, 15 fictional existence, 125, 145-46; in impossible world, 163; as intensional phenomenon, 147; modes of, 152; subversion of, 163 fictional fact, 78, 127, 148-49, 150, 154, 169, 172, 263n. 7; authentication of 146, 151, 153, 263n. 8, 268n. 5; determinate, 182; and failure of authentication, 160, 163; and first-person narrative, 154-55, 156; indeterminate, 182-83; relative, 153 fictional person, IO, 16-17, 18, n5, 178, 216, 220, 225, 230n. 16, 232n. 27; discourse, 147, 148-49, 150-51, 152-53, 154, 156, 157. See also person fictional sentence, 1, 3, 4, 10; truth valuation of, 2r28, 146 fictional term, 1, 3, 4, 6, 227n. 4; reference of, 16 fictional text, 6, 16, 24-28, 139, 140, 141, 145, 159, 233n. 32; and autobiography, 157-58; in intertextuality, 53-54; as performative, 146-47, 262n. 3; truth conditions of, 26, 146 fictional truth, 19, 146, 157, 218, 219, 229n. 9. See also authentication fictional virtual, 150, 153-54, 156; authentication of, 150-51 fictional world, 16-24, 26, 27, 23m. 24, 235n. 39; .and actual world, 53-54; aesthetics of, 151-52; and animal, 58-59; of "Big Two-Hearted River," 43-48; communication in, 98-99; dyadic, 23, 128-29; extensional structuring of, n314, 139, 143, 169, 205, 213; and fictional entity 15; of first-person narrative, 154; of Foe, 217-22; heterogeneous, 23, 128; hybrid, 187-89, 270n. 4; of The Idiot,

Subject Index 74-81, 248n. 5, 249n. 6; and impossible world, 163-65, 221, 222-26; and incompleteness, 22-23, 169, 170; intensional structuring of, 139-43, 171, 182-84; Kundera's, 88-95; of Little Dorrit, 81-88, 249nn. 10&12, 250n. 15; of metafiction, 162-63, 166-68; modal constraints in, n3-32; of modern myth, 185-98; natural, n517, 257n. 4; of The New Sufferings, 20r13; of 98. 6, 180-81; as possible world, 16-22, 232n. 25; of postmodlernist rewrite, 206, 222-26, 278n. 37; of A Rebours, 48-54; of Robinson Crusoe, 3r42; of skaz, 162; of Star Turn, 157-58; supernatural, n5-18, 130; in transduction, 202-5, 272n. 6; truth in, 28; visible/ invisible, 187, 189-98, 270n. 6, 27m. 10; of Wide Sargasso Sea, 213-17. See also mythological world; world first-person narrative (Ich-form), 41, 152, 208, 214-16, 238nn. 8&9, 272n. 9; conventionalized, 156-59; and narrator's knowledge, 155; natural, 156; personal, 152, 154-59, 264n. 16; and second-person narrative, 265n. 16; and skaz, 161, 265n. 20. See also text after death Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary, 27-28, 153, 202 formal theory of fictionality, 10, 22-23, 230n. 15 Forster, E. M., A Passage to India, 128, 259n. 16 Games, 105, 108; language, 160; of make-believe, n-12; of pretense, II; and skaz, 162; speech act, 132; theory of, no, 255n. 18 gap:"in fictional world, 47, 169-71, 172, 184, 273n. 17; and rewrite, 207, 218; and saturation function, 181-82; truth-value, 228n. 5 Garcia Marquez, Gabriel, Love in the Time ofCholera, 177-78, 269n. 14 God, 41, 42, n6, n7, 130, 212-13, 238n.

7, 27m. 10; conflict with, 129; performative act of, 130, 149, 277n. 32 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang: The Sufferings ofYoung Werther, 207-13, 273nn. 13, 15, 17-19; Die Wahlverwandtschaften, 184; Withem Meister's Apprenticeship, 127 Gogol, N. V.: "The Nose," 162; "The Overcoat," 161-62 Gourmont, Rene de, 54 group, 32, 74, 96-97, no-12, 255nn. 19&20, 256n. 24; conflict, 107, 108; and encyclopedia, 177; and modality, 123, 129, 257n. 6; and power, 103; and social representations, 101-2, 128, 254n. 8. See also agential constellation; social acting Hasek, Jaroslav, The Good Soldier Svejk, 122-23 Hemingway, Ernest, 254n. n; "Big TwoHearted River," 43-48, 239nn. 13&14; ''A Clean Well-Lighted Place," 172, 175, 183, 268n. 5 Henry, 0., "Roads of Destiny," 163 history, 14, 227n. 4; carnivalization of, 158; in fictional world, 20, 86, 90, 93-95, 157-58, 19r98, 207; literary, 54; reception, 26 Homer: Iliad, 129-30; Odyssey, 131, 227n. 4 Hrabal, Bohumil, Closely Watched Trains, 159 Huysmans, J.-K., A Rebours, 48-54, 24onn. 17&18, 20-22, 249n, 23 hypothetical focalization, 151 Imaging digression, 27, 42, 47, 53-54, 77, 85, 254n. n; metanarrative as, 27 implicit: intertextuality, 54, 201, 202; meaning, 38, 171-77, 181, 183, 223, 259n. 14, 268nn. 6-8, 269nn. n&12; texture, 182, 183, 187, 190, 210. See also enthymeme; inference impulsive: acting 71-72, 7r78, 79, 81, 105, 247n. 31; agent, 105-6

325

Subject Index inference, 174, 175-76; cognitive factors in, 176-77; encyclopedia in, 178-79, 195; of fictional fact, 183; and implicit meaning, 174; and presupposition, 174, 177, 268n. IO institution, 32, 103, 198; in The Castle, 192-94; in Little Dorrit, 81-82, 249nn. ro&1I; and person, 11I-12, 122-23, 127, 255n. 21, 256n. 23; in Petersburg, 191-92, 194-95, 196; in The Trial, 176, 192-94, 196, 249n. II instrument, 44, 57, 1I8, 243n. II; and accident, 60-61; subordinate person as, 106 intension, 135-36, 137-39, 142, 260n. r, 26rnn. 4&5, 262n. 9; and extension, 138; and fictional existence, 147, 152, 154, 160; and intertextuality, 201-2; and translation, 205, 26m. 7 intensional: context, 14, 136; function, 137, 139-42, 141 (shema 2), 142 (schema 3), 143, 215; logic, ro; motif structure, 36; semantics, 36, 138; synonymy, 137; world structuring, 139, 140-41, 142, 143, 151, 205, 210, 215-16, 278n. 40. See also authentication function; saturation function; texture intention, 32, 38, 45, 57-59, 243nn. 9&10; and accident, 60-61, 84-85, roo; and akratic acting, 70; of animal, 58-59; in communication, 269n, 12; and emotion, 66, 67, 68; and insanity, 72; of institution, III; and intension, 135; in interaction, 96; and irrational acting, 72; and motivation, 63; negative, 45; and omission, 62; and power, 103-4, 106-7; in practical reasoning, 64; shift of, 58, 61, 244n. 15; and social process, 1I2 interaction, 18, 32, 96-1Io, 253n. 2; accident in, 85, 99-100; literary communication as, 203-5; in metafiction, 167; modes of, 105-10; motivation of, 100-103; in mythological world, 129, 131; and narrative, 97; peremptory,

326

106; and power, 103-4; quasi-, 41, 44, 59; and social acting, III. See also communication; erotics

interpretation: ideological, 273n. 15; of implicit meaning, 173, 183, 268n. 7; of intertextual meaning, 201, 277n. 33; literary, 136, 138, 173, 176, 237n. 46; mimetic, 6-8, ro, 229n. II; pseudomimetic, 8-9; of rewrite, 222-23; semantic, 14, 233n. 32, 266n. 21 intertextuality, 199-202, 27rnn. 1-4, 272n. 5; and metafiction, 162; in The New Sufferings, 208-9, 272n. 9; of A Rebours, 53-54; and transduction, 202, 209; in ~rther, 273n. 13 irrational: acting, 72, 78, 80, 105, 247n. 32; agent, 106, 176; communication, 99 Journal, 41; and first-person narrative, 156 Joyce, James: Dubliners, 172

Kafka, Franz, 187, 198, 249n. II, 268n. 4, 270n. 5, 27rnn. roⅈ "The Cares of a Family Man," 189; The Castle, 192-94, 270n. 6, 27rnn. 7&9; ''A Country Doctor" 188-89; A Crossbreed," 188, 270n. 2; ''A Hunger Artist," 171-72; "The Hunter Gracchus," 189; "Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk," 270n. 4; "The Judgment," 189; "The Metamorphosis," 188, 270n. 3; ''A Report for an Academy," 189; The Trial, 142, 175-76, 190, 192-94, 195-96, 27m. 9 Kaiser, Georg, Napoleon in New Orleans, 17, 233n. 31 Kundera, Milan, 88, 90, 252nn. 24-27;

The Book ofLaughter and Forgetting, 93-95; Laughable Loves, 90-93 Leibniz-Russell law, 9, 229n. 13 Lermontov, M. J., A Hero of Our Time, 124-25 Le Sage, Rene, Le Diable boiteux, 131

Subject Index Lewis, Sinclair, Babbitt, 124, 125 life history, 56; alternative courses of, 86-87; emotions in, 69; and intentionality, 60, roo; in modern myth, 193; solitary's, 48 Mental act, 32, 72-73, 98, 247nn. 33&34; event, 32, 57, 73, 248n. 4; faculty, 71, 73; force, 52, 73; image, 73, 102; life, 32, 58, 60; -of Akakij Akakijevic, 161;-of Des Esseintes, 48-52; -of gods, 117; -of Kundera's fictional persons, 89; -of Nick Adams, 43, 46, 47-48, 239n. 14; -of Robinson Crusoe, 40-42; map, 102, 178, 269n. 15; power, 103; process, 46, 73, II2, 247n. 34, 248n. 35; property, 32, 58, 176; state, 32. See also intention; motivation

metafiction, 162, 220, 266n. 26; authentication in, 162-63; and impossible world, 166-68, 221-22, 266n. 25 mimesis. See semantics of fictionality modality, II3-15, II4 (table 2); codexal, II8; and dyadic world, 128-29, 257nn. 1-3, 6; subjective, II8. See also alethic modality; axiological modality; deontic modality; epidemic modality modern myth, 185-98, 186 (schema 5), 260n. 18, 27rnn. ro&II monologue, 148; and first-person narrative, 154, 155-56; interior, 155-56, 161, 265n. 17 motif, 33-34, 35 (table r), 136; cognitive role of, 35; dynamic, 34; in folklore study, 33-34; paraphrase, 34-35; static, 34; structure, 34; texture, 35-36; type, 34; typology of, 34 motivation, 55, 63-70, 244n. 18; and action mode, 70-72; cluster, 69, 70; cognitive, 64-65, 71, 253n. 6; conflict in, 69-70, 212, 246n. 30; drive as, 63-64, 77, 245n. 19, 247n. 31; emotional, 65-69, 77, 245n. 23; of erotics, 89-90, 92, 104-5, 254nn. 10&12; of

interaction, roo-IIo; interpersonal relations as, ror, 128; power as, 103-4; of social acting, III; social representations as, 101-3 motive, 70, 244n. 18 mythological world, 128-32, 140, 185, 260n. 18. See also modern myth Narrative, 31, 230n. 14; fictional, 26, 248n. 35; historical, 25; metalanguage for, 136; mode, 138, 152, 159, 26m. 8, 263n. 6, 270n. 4; non-fictional, 25, 26; realistic, 170; romantic, 170; selfdisclosing, 162, 166, 267n. 29; selfvoiding, 160-62, 163, 185; text, 147, 148, 163, 166, 263n. 6; world, 23, 31-33, 55, 97, 103, II3, 257n. 3. See also authoritative narrative; firstperson narrative; story; third-person narrative nature, 31; in "BigTwo-Hearted River," 43, 46-47, 239n. 13, 240n. 15; laws of, 32, II4, 1I6, 230n. 19; in A Rebours, 48, 49; in Robinson Crusoe, 38-39, 238n. 7 nature event, 32, 38, 44, 52-53, 59-60, 78, 81, 238n. 7, 243nn. II&12; and accident, 61; and insanity, 72; and mental event, 73; and social process, II2 nature force, 32, 59-60, 243n. II; in The Idiot, 78; mythologization of, II6; as propositional predicate, 34; in A Rebours, 52-53 Nisard, Desire, 54 nonexistent, r, 3, 56-57, 227nn. 2&4; and fictional entity, 3, 25, 232n. 25; and language, 165 nonstandard logic, 181, 228n. 5, 266n. 21 norms, 112, n3, 120; absolute, 122; change of, 121; contradictory, 121, 258n. 9; by convention, 120; literary, 149, 160, 206; and person, 121-22; and power, 103, 123; promulgated, 120-21, 258 n. 8; violation of, 121. See also deontic modality

32 7

Subject Index Object, 32; actual, 232n. 25; animal as, 59; complete, 171, 267n. r; and destructive acting, 57; of emotion, 66, 69, 72, 246n. 24; and extension, 136, 260n. r; fictional, 46, 53, 54, 267n. 3; impossible, 3, II7, 164-65; as instrument, 57; personification of, II6; possible; 232n. 25; and productive acting, 56, 57; as propositional argument, 34; semiotic, 15, 23-24, 202, 235n. 40; and transitive acting, 56; valorization of, 125. See also artifact omission, 45, 61, 62; and agent's responsibility, 62; in communication, 99; in interaction, 80, 98 ostension, 20 Paraphrase, 27, 143; author of, 28; heresy of, 138; motif, 34-35; truth-valuation of, 28, 237n. 46 particulars, 229n. ro; actual, 6-7; fictional, r, 3, 6-7, 8, 9, IO, 16, 229n. II, 232n. 25; possible, 13, 15 passion, 68, 69, 2II, 246n .. 26; and akracic acting, 70, 72, 246n. 30; in conflict, 255n. 18; crime of, 80-81, 128; erotic, 89, 104-5, 2II-12; forbidden, 122; and impulsive acting, 77, 79, 80; political, 89, 92; and will, 66 performative. See speech act person, 32, 242n. 8; and accident, 60-61, 84-85, roo; actual, 16, 17, 20, II5, 220, 233n, 32; as agent, 33, 40, 55, 56, 242n. 6; alechic endowment of, n8-19; and animal, 44,117; cognitive (epistemic) set of, 102, 126, 151, 245n. 21, 253n. 6; in communication, 98, 99, 127; and control of acting, 71-72, 80-81; and control of biological events, 243n. 12; and control of mental life, 73, 2n; and emotion, 66-67, 68, 69; and God, 130; historical, 6, 17, 225, 278n. 39; as instrument, 106; and intentionality, 58; in interaction, 98; in interpersonal relations, 96, ror, 124; in metaficcion, 166-68; and modal restrictions, n3, 120, 123, 124, 257n. 6; naming of, 18,

139-42, 215, 278n. 39; and nature force, 59-60; nonexistent, 25; possible, 13, 16; and power, 103-4; as propositional argument, 34; and responsibility, 86; and social acting, m; and social control, 82, 90-91, 96-97, II2, 210-n, 256n. 23; and social representations, 102-3; supernatural, 117, II8; and cransworld identity, 17-18, 225, 226, 275n. 26, 278n. 40. See also agential constellation; fictional person physical: action, 38, 43, 48, 56, 70, 73, 98, 109, 131, 240n. 18; appearance, 40, 130, 131; capacity, n8, n9; environment, 51; event, 60, 217; interaction, 98, 131-32; power, 103; property, 32; state, 53, 242n. 8; violence, 79-80, 108. See also accessibility plan, 40, 65, 73; in communication, 98-99; in erotics, 104; in policies, 89. See also rational acting Plato, 6 Plenzdorf, Ulrich, The New Sufferings of Young W, 207-13, 272nn. 8-12, 273nn. 14&16 poetic language, 4; and intensional meaning, 138, 26m. 6; Prague school theory of, 229n. 9; Saussurean theory of, 5; self-referentiality of, 5, 228n. 8; and truth-valuation, 4 poiesis, 23, 218 politics, 88-95, 104, 207, 252n. 26, 272n. 7, 273n. 16; of fiction making, 206, 217 possibilism, 13 possible: action, 45; counterpart, n5, 225-26, 233n. 29, 274n. 22, 278n. 38; entity, 146; state, 56; state of affairs, 13, 15. See also world possible-worlds framework, 13-15, 23m. 21, 234n. 34; in action theory, 56, 62, 64-65; in fictional semantics, 12-24, 138, 23m. 24, 232n. 26; in intensional semantics, 137. See also world, possible postmodernist criticism, 206; fiction, 160, 177, 187, 225-26, 252n. 26, 26m. 8, 265n. 19, 272n. 9; irony, 206;

Subject Index mecaficcion, 162; rewrite, 206-26, 272n. 5,272n.12,276n. 29 power, 89-92, 93-95, 103-4, 245n. 19, 256nn. 23&26; emotional, 87; in erotics, 104-5, 255n. 13; inscicucional, 82, 87, IIr-12, 121; in interacting, 106-10; in modern myth, 192, 193-96; in mythological world, 129-30, 186-87 practical reasoning, 40, 44, 48, 64, 77, 89, 240n. 20; in erotics, 104; in interaction, 105; and irrational acting, 72; as mental act, 73; and person's cognitive sec, 126 pragmatics of fictionality, 2, ro, 12, 230n. 18; Fregean, ro-n; of make-believe, II-12; of pretense, II, 23onn. 16&17, 236n. 45; Russellian, ro-II Prague school, 33, 229n. 9 predicament, 121, 258n. 9 presupposition, 174, 175-77, 268n. ro, 269n. n; of fictional person, 178 process, 112; biological, 56, 60, 73; mental, 46, 73, II2, 247n. 31, 248n. 35; nature, 59, 112; social, n2 proper name, 16, 139; and alias, 226, 233n. 31; fictional, 4, 278n. 38; intension of, 140, 262n. 9; as rigid designator, 18, 140, 225-26, 233n. 30; and transworld identity, 167, 278n. 39. See also person, naming of propositional form, 34. See also motif prototype, 225; hisrorical, 6; in possibleworlds semantics, 16-17; in mimetic semantics, 6-7, 9; in pseudomimesis, 9 Proust, Marcel, Du cfJte de chez Swann, 156-57, 265n. 18 pure-sense language, 4, 228n. 8 Quantifier, 34, 42; and modal operaror, II4 quest, 124, 196, 257n. 2; epistemic, 126-27 Rational: acting, 39-40, 70, 71, 72, 105, 212, 253n. I, 255n, 18; activity, 2II; agent, 39-40, 82, 106, 108; commu-

nicacion, 98-99 reader, 2, 28, 184, 235n. 37, 236n. 43; encyclopedia of, 178, 181; and fictional world, 20, 21-22, 24, 139, 143, 154, 202, 234n. 33, 235nn. 38&39, 263nn. 8 & 9; and implicit meaning, 170-71, 175-76, 177-78, 183, 214, 216, 267nn. 2&3, 268n. 4; implied, 42, 266n. 26; in literary communication, 202-5; in literary transduction, 205; in metafiction, 167, 168, 266n. 25, 267nn. 28&29; and modern myth, 196; and paraphrase, 28, 136; and postmodernist rewrite, 216, 222-23, 278n. 39 realeme, 21, 157, 235n. 41, 269n. 14 realism: literary, 170, 250n. 15; philosophical, 2, 13 reference, 3, 135, 260n. 2; deictic, 178, 268n. ro; domain of, 2, 14, 26; fictional, r, 2-3, 4, 6, 16, 26, 227n. 3, 230n. 15; frame of, 21, 268n. ro; pretended, II; self-, 5, 228n. 8, 229n. 9; and sense, 3-4, 5, 135, 141; and signifier, 26m. 4; singular, 139-40, 262n. 9. See also extension Rhys, Jean, Wide Sargasso Sea, 213-17, 222, 274nn. 20&21, 275nn. 23-27, 278n. 35 rigid designation, 18, 140, 226, 23m. 23, 233n. 30, 262n. 9; in mecaficcion, 167; in postmodernist rewrite, 225-26. See also proper name Robbe-Grillec, Alain, La Maison de rendez-vous, 164-65, 266 Robinsoniade, 217, 276n. 28 Sade, Marquis de, 89, 255n. 13 saturation: fictional-world, 169-70; function, 143, 181-84, 182 (schema 4); and modern myth, 187, 190 scandal, 78-80, 249n. 7 Schulz, Bruno, "Sanatorium under the Sign of the Hourglass," 179-80 script, 21, 45, 65, 94; in erotics, 91, 104, 254n. ro; and plan, 65 semantic representation, 34-35, 136.

329

Subject Index See also paraphrase semantics of fictionality, 2-IO; Fregean, 3-4, 5, 26m. 4; mimetic, 5-IO, r6, r8, 23, 90, 147, 171, 218, 222, 229n. II; 230n. r6, 23m. 25, 235n. 41, 249n. IO, 263n. 7, 267n. 3, 270n. 3, 27m. II; possible worlds, 12-24, 23m. 24; pseudomimetic, 8-9, 229nn. II&12, 238; Russellian, 2-3, 4, 5, 9-IO, 227nn. 2-4, 232n. 25; Saussurean, 5, 228n. 7, 229n. 9, 26m. 4 sense, 3-4, 26m. 5, 262n. 9; of fictional terms, 4; and intension, 135, 141; and reference, 4, 5, 228n. 8; and signified, 5, 26m. 4; and signifier, 5 sensory perception, 46, 47, 49, 53, II9, 240n. 19; synesthetic, 49-50 sexual fiction, I05, 254n. 12. See also erotics Shakespeare, William, Othella, 127-28 sign, 5, 98, 221-22, 237n. 3; and implicit meaning, 223, 268n. 9; material object as, 125; nonverbal, 99, 177; pictorial, 75, 248n. 3; and semiotic act, 32; and signified, 5; and signifier, 5, 223; and user, IO; verbal, 75; and world, 2. See also emotion, display of silence. See omission, in communication skaz, 161-62, 265n. 20 social acting, 32, IIo-12, 257n. 2; and cooperation, I06; paralysis of, 89; and plan, 65. See also politics; process, social social representations, 8, 26, 83-84, 87, IOr-2, III, 128, 253n. 7; and erotics, I04-5; and person, I02-:"J, II2, 126, 2II. See also encyclopedia society, 81-82; and alienation, 122-23, 191, 2II; and codexal modality, 257n. 6; in Little Dorrit, 81-84, 249nn. 9&10, 12, 250n. 13; and person, 86, 90-91, 96-97, 215, 253n. 2; and rebel, 84, 250n. 14, 25m. 21; in A Rebours, 51, 52. See also institution; politics Socrates, 6 solitude, 40, 237n. r; escape into, 86; and God, 41; intentional, 48; and

330

nature, 43; and writing, 42 speech act, 32, 132; of authoritative narrative, 149; in conflict, I09; contextless, 149; conventions, IO, 269n. 12; and emotion, 69; and fictionality, IO-II; imaging, 146; and interaction, 98; intransitive, 239n. 12; narrator's, 154, 263n. 7; performative, 99, 130, 146-47, 149, 160-61, 162-63; and truth valuation, 228n. 6. See also communication; felicity conditions state, 32; change of, 32, 38, 57, 24m. 3, 257n. 2; emotional, 69; end, 44, 56, 58, 60, 64, 112; and event, 55-56; initial, 56, 58, 60, 64; mental, 32, 70, 155, r6r, 242n. 8; possible, 151; as propositional predicate, 34 Stendhal, Le Rouge et le Noir, 122 story, 31, 55, 143, 23m. 25, 237n. 46; and agent, 33; and agential constellation, 97; alethic, II9-20; animal, 59, II6r7, 270n. 4; atomic, II5; axiological, 124-25; and communication, 98; and conflict, no; contradiction in, 164; cycle, 253n. 3; deontic, 121-23, 257n. 2, 258n. 9; epistemic, 126-28; erotic, 104-5; of fiction making, 162, 167, r68,266nn. 24&27,267n.29;andinteraction, 74, 96, 97; of the mind, 96; and modality, II3-r4; mythological, 129-32, 257n. 5; and narrative world, 23, 31; one-person, 237n. r; with a secret, 126-27; setting of, 171-72, 175, 178, 183; summary, 136; in transduction, 206-7, 213, 217, 226, 278n. 38; variations of, 89 stream-of-consciousness, 73, 247n. 34 syllogism: and enthymeme, 269n. 13; practical, 64, 70 synthesia. See sensory perception Test, r2r. See also deontic modality text: constructing, 24, 26, 27-28, 235n. 41; finite, 169; historical, 53-54; imaging, 24, 26, 27, 28, 235n. 41; literary, 41-42, 137, 138, 172-73; natural, 159; nonnatural, 156, 159; production, 41,

Subject Index 42, 200, 205; in transduction, 205, 276n. 28. See also fictional text; intertextuality; narrative text text after death, 159, 208, 213, 265n. 19. See also first-person narrative text theory, 20, 138; cognitive, 268n. ro; and implicit meaning, 172, 173, 269n. 12 texture, 35-36; explicit, 169, 171, 172, 173-74, 176, 181-82; and fictionalworld structuring, 143, 169, 182, 195-96; implicit, 172, 175-76, 181-82, 183, 190, 268n. 5; and intension, 13738; and intensional function, 139, 182; and intertextuality, 201-2, 208-IO; narrative, 147-48, 149, 152-53, r6r, 163, 164-65, r66, 263n. 6, 266n. 24; regularity of, 139-41, 143, 145, 182, 26m. 8; and semiotic object, 202; and transworld identity, 226; zero, 16970, 171, 181-82, 267n. 2, 273n. 17 theory of descriptions, 3, IO third-person narrative (Er-form), 148-49, 152-54, 156, 159, r6r; subjectivized, 152-53. See also authoritative narrative transduction, 202-5, 204 (schema 8), 272n. 6, 276n. 28; and postmodernist rewrite, 206, 209-II; and translation, 205, 26m. 7 transworld identity, 17-18, 224, 232n. 27, 234n. 34, 278nn. 38&39; in metafiction, r6r68; in postmodernist rewrite, 225-26 Trollope, Anthony: The Eustace Diamonds, 263n. 8; Phineas Redux, 149 truth conditions: of authoritative narrative, 149, 263n. 7; of autobiography,

157; of fictional person discourse, 127, 150, 264Il. IO; of fictional text, r, 24, 25, 26, 28, 146-47; in formal theory of fiction, 230n. 15; in Fregean semantics, 4, 228nn. 5&6; of imaging digression, 27; of imaging text, 24, 25; of paraphrase, 28, 237n. 46; in pragmatics of fiction, II, 230n. r6; in Russellian semantics, 3. See also authentication trying, 61-62 Wells, H. G., "The Country of the Blind," II9-20 Wertheriade, 207,217, 276n. 28 Williams, Nigel, Star Turn, 157-58 world, 32-33; alternative, r6, 222; boundary, 17, 20, 21, 131, 220; complete, 171, 230n. 19, 23m. 22; and extension, 136; general order of, 19, 23; and intension, 141; intermediate, 117; and language, 5, 228n. 8; logically impossible, 19, II6; 163-64, r8r, 222-24; as macrostructure, 19, II3, 234n. 35; and modality, II3, II5-r6, 120, 123-24, 126; and performative, 146, 160-61, 262n. r; and person, 56-57, 60, 73, I02; physically impossible, II5-r6; physically possible, II5; possible, 12-15, 31, 56, 90, 160, 177, 222, 230n. 19, 23mn. 22&25, 234n. 35; and reference, 3, 260n. 2; and representation, 2, IO; small, 15, 20, 233m. 23; and text, 24, 235n. 41. See also actual world; fictional world writing, 219, 235n. 41, 262n. 2, 277nn. 32&33; act of, 28, 41, 42, I06, 143, 156, 159, 165-66, 168, 203, 217

331

I

Author Index

Abelson, Robert P., 65 Abrahams, Roger D., 255n. r6 Adams, John-K., IO, 13, 14, 23m. 22 Ajzen, leek, 57 Allen, Sture, 14 Allwood, Jens, 34, 135, 137 Alston, William P., 246n. 28 Amossy, Ruth, 201 Andersson, Lars-Gunnar, 34, 135, 137 Anscombe, G. E. M., 64 Apter, M. J., 57, 67 Aquila, Richard E., 243n. 9 Aquist, Lennart, n4 Arie-Gaifman, Hana, 258n. IO Aristotle, 25, 31, 64, n4, 228n. 6, 242n. 8, 244n. 14, 246n. 29, 269n. 13 Ashline, William L., 278n. 37 Attfield, Robin, 258n. II Attwell, David, 276n. 29 Audi, Robert, 71, 246n. 30 Auletta, Gennaro, 20 Aune, Bruce, 65 Austin, J. L., 99, 146, 147, 151, r6r, 228n. 6, 244n. 13, 247n. 31, 262n. r Averill, James R., 245n. 23, 246n. 26 Bachtin, Michail, 80, 99, 249n. 6, 263n. 6 Baker, Sheridan, 239n. IO Bal, Mieke, 31, 236n. 44, 263n. 6, 264n. 15 Bally, Charles, 263n. 6 Banfield, Ann, 263n. 6, 265n. 20 Barbey d'Aurevilly, Jules, 49

Barnes, Hazel, II?, 130 Barthes, Roland, r8, IOI, 126, 199, 236n. 42,262n.2,274Il. 19 Bartsch, Renate, 243n. n Baumgarten, A.G., 23m. 24 Bayley, John, I05 Beardsley, Monroe, II, 57, 243n. IO Beicken, Peter U., 193 Bell, Ian, 238n. 7 Bellert, Irena, 174 Bell-Villada, Gene H., 269n. 14 Ben-Amos, Dan, 33 Benjamin, Edwin B., 155, 238n. 7 Ben-Porat, Ziva, 201 Benthem, John van, 136 Berger, Peter L., IOI, I02, 253n. 2, 255n. 2I, 256n. 25 Berlyne, D. E., 247n. 34 Bernstein, Richard J., 57, 24m. 2 Biling, Peter, no Birch, David, 63, 245n. 19 Birjukov, B. V., 26m. 5 Blessin, Stefan, 207, 273n. 13, 274n. r8 Blewett, David, 237n. 3 Bodmer, J. J., 23m. 24 Bolles, Robert C., I04 Booth, Wayne C., 264n. 12 Boulding, Kenneth E., I07 Bradley, Raymond, 13, 14, n5, n6, 174, 23m. 22 Brand, Glen, 252n. 25 Brand, Myles, 65, 242n. 8, 243n. 9, 245n. 21

333

Author Index Brandom, Robert, 22, 164, 23m. 22 Breitinger, J. J ., 23m. 24 Bremond, Claude, 33, II7, 242n. 8 Brennenstuhl, Waltraud, 24m. 3 Brenner, Peter J ., 209, 272n. 8 Brooke-Rose, Christine, 162, 164 Brooks, Cleanth, 138 Brown, D. G., 247n. 33 Brown, Gregory, 20 Brunner, Henrietta, 24m. 23 Buckley, Jerome, 259n. 15 Calinescu, Matei, 259n. 14 Campbell, P. G., 57, 244fi. 15 Canary, Daniel]., 108 Carey, John, 249n. 12 Carl, Wolfgang, 4 Carnap, Rudolf, 260n. I Cairoll, John S., 245n. 21 Carusi, Annamaiia, 276n. 29 Ceaid, Jean, 24m. 23 Chafe, W L., 34; 243n. II Chan, Leonaid K. K., 128 Charles, David, 64, 242n. 8, 246n. 29 Charles, Michel, 176 Charney, Maurice, 254n. II Chastain, Chailes, 277n. 3 Chateaux, Dominique, 237n. 46 Chatman, Seymour, 175, 263n. 6, 266n. 22 Chisholm, Roderick M., 23m. 20, 235n. 40, 243n. 9 Christensen, Inger, 162 Chvatfk, Kvetoslav, 252n. 25 Claik, Leslie F., 172 Clayton, Jay, 200, 27m. I Cohn, Dorrit, II, 25, 109, 233n. 29 Coninck, J. L. de, 24m. 23 Coste, Didier, 15, 21 Cotrupi, Nella, 166, 266n. 26 Court-Perez, Franc;:oise, 240n. 22, 24m. 23 Coval, S. C., 57, 244fi. 15 Cresswell, M. J., 13, 14, 15 Crittenden, Chailes, 22, 23, 227n. 4, 230n. 17, 234n. 33, 235n. 39, 237n. 46 Crozier, Michael, III, 245n. 21, 256nn. 23&24

334

Culler, Jonathan, 33, 175, 200, 27m. 3 Cupach, William R., 108 Currie, Gregory, II Curtius, E. R., 263n. 6 D'Agostino, F. B., 20 Dali!, Osten, 34, 135, 137 Dallenbach, Lucien, 170 Dalton, Elizabeth, 76 Dambska, Izydora, 227n. 3 Danto, Arthur, 61, 66, II8, II9, 242n. 8, 243n.12,244n. 17,247n.33 Daval, Roger, 65, 241n. 2 Davidson, Donald, 57, 58, 65, 69, 70, 72, 97, 175, 242n. 6 Dawes, Robyn M., 245n. 21 Deci, Edwaid L., 64 Defalco, Robert, 239n. 14 Dennett, Daniel C., 242n. 8, 248n. 35 De Rivera, Joseph, 67 de Sola Pool, Ithiel, 97 de Sousa, Ronald, 65, 66, 67, 246n. 24, 246n. 30 Deursch, Morton, 106, 107, 108, 255nn. 15&19, 259n. 12 Dijk, Teun A. van, 15, 34, 57, 98, 172, 175, 268n. 10, 269n. 12 Dolezel, Lubomir, 4, 6, 15, 31, 33, 44, 98, 138, 139, 142, 148, 153, 170, 228n. 6, 229n. 9, 23m. 24, 237n. 46, 253n. 4, 258n. IO, 263n. 6, 264nn. 12, 14, 16 Donagan, Alan, 58, 65, 242n. 8, 243n. 10, 246n. 30, 247n. 33 Douglas, Mary, 269n. 16 Dovey, Teresa, 276n. 29 Ducrot, Oswald, 172, 173, 228n. 7, 26m.4 Dummett, Michael, 4, 139, 260n. 2 Eagle, Herbert, 252n. 26 Eco, Umberto, 15, 98, 165, 172, 173, 177, 184, 23m. 21, 234n. 36, 269n. 12 Ehrmann, Jacques, 258n. 9 Ejchenbaum, Boris, 27, 265n. 20 Ekman, Paul, 68 Eliot, T. S., 69

Author Index Else, Gerald Frank, 244n. 14 Emery, Beth C., 108, 255n. 15 Eng, J. van der, 248n. 3, 249n. 6 Engel, Ingrid, 207 Epstein, Seymour, 67 Evans, Gaieth, 4, II, 228n. 6, 228n. 8 Evans, Phil, 68, 245n. 20 Even-Zohai, Itamai, 21 Ewin, R. E., 106 Fairley, Irene, 235n. 37 Fair, Robert M., 101 Fiddian, Robin, 269n. 14 Fillmore, ChailesJ., 34 Flaker, Aleksandar, 272n. 9 Flanagan, Owen J., 242n. 8 Flaschka, Horst, 208 Flora, Joseph M., 125, 239nn. rn&II, 14 Fludernik, Monika, 264Il. 16 Foley, Baibaia, 21 Follesdal, Dagfinn, II4, 258n. 9 Foucault, Michel, 255n. 13 Fraassen, Bas. C. van, 174, 228n. 5, 266n. 21 Frankfurter, Hairy G., 247n. 34 Frege, Gottlob, 26, 135, 141, 228nn. 5&6, 260n. 2, 26m. 5 Freundlieb, Dieter, 235n. 41 Friedberg, Erhaid, III, II2, 245n. 21, 256n. 24 Friedman, Ellen G., 214, 216, 223, 256n. 23, 274n. 21 Friedman, Norman, 237n. I Frisch, Joseph C., 260n. 2 Frye, Northrop, 83, 85, 249n. 12, 25mn. 18&19 Fuchs, Catherine, 135 Fumaioli, Marc, 49, 24m. 23 Gabriel, Gottfried, 4, II, 177 Gagnon, John H., 254n. IO Galanter, Eugene, 71 Gallagher, Susan V., 276n. 29, 277n. 31 Galperin, P. J., 247n. 33 Gaiber, Frederick, 124 Gazdai, Gerald, 7 4

Geach, Peter, 247n. 33 Genette, Geraid, 25, 26, 31, 57, 156, 164, 224, 263n. 6, 265n. 18, 266n. 25, 274n.20,276nn.27&28,278n.37 Genot, Geraid, 33, 98 Gilbert, Sandra M., 214, 275n. 23 Goodman, Nelson, 235n. 41 Gorr, Michael, 62 Graesser, Arthur, C., 172, 268n. IO, 269n. 12 Green, 0. H., 62 Greenspan, Patricia S., 69 Greimas, A. J., III, II4, II8, 136, 236n. 42,257n. 2,274n.20 Grether, David M., 71 Grice, Paul H., 99, rn6, 269n. 12 Grimshaw, Allen D., 98 Grossman, Leonid, 249n. 6 Grossman, Reinhaidt, 227n. 4, 26m. 4 Gubai, Susan, 214, 275n. 23 Guenthner, Franz, 136 Haack,Susan,228n. 5,266n. 21 Habermas, J iirgen, 253n. 2 Halliday, M.A., 34, 243n. II Hamaineh, Walid, 264n. II Hamilton, David L., 101 Hamon, Philippe, 262n. 9 Harman, Gilbert, 34, 58 Hasan, Ruqaiya, 268n. 9 Heintz, John, 22 Heller, Erich, 194 Hemmerechts, Kristien, 274n. 20, 275n.26 Herman, David, 151, 264n. 16 Herzberger, Hans G., 228n. 5 Heuvel, Pierre vanden, 99, 172 Hilpinen, Risto, II4, 257n. 6, 258n. 9 Hily-Mane, Genevieve, 44 Hintikka, Jaakko, 13, 14, 15, 17, 64, 72, II4, 266n. 24, 274n. 22 Hintikka, Merrill B., II4, 274n. 22 Hirst, Paul, 102 Holenstein, Elmar, 228n. 6 Holloway, John, 25m. 17 Holthusen, Johannes, 76

335

Author Index Horowitz, Mardi J., 247n. 31 Horsley, Lee, 259n. 16 House, Humphry, 87, 249n. ro, 25rnn. 20&22 Howell, Robert, 22 Hrushovski, Benjamin, 21 Huddleston, R., 34, 243n. II Hutcheon, Linda, 157, 162, 199, 200, 206, 223, 234n. 33, 265n. r9, 272n. 7, 277n. 31 lngarden, Roman, 24, 171 Iser, Wolfgang, 21, 170, 171, 262n. 2, 267n. 2 Ishiguro, Hide, 16 Issacharoff, Michael, 49, 232n. 27, 24m. 23 Ivin, A. A., u4 Izard, Caroll E., 64, 66, 67, 68, 104, 246nn. 23&27

Jacquenod, Claudine, ro, 12 Jager, Georg, 207 Jakobson, Roman, u6, 229n. 9 Jankovic, Milan, 258n. ro Jauss, Hans Robert, 206, 272n. 12 Jefferson, Ann, 266n. 23 Jeffrey, Richard C., 71 Jodelet, Denise, 102, 254n. 8 Jones, John, 248n. r Kalinowski, Georges, 13, u4 Kany6, Zoltan, 15, 235n. 40 Kay, Harry, 60 Kayser, Wolfgang, 262n. 5 Keenan, Edward L., 174 Kempson, Ruth M., 260n, 2, 262n. 9 Kerbrat-Orecchioni, Catherine, 172, 173, 177,183, 228n. 8, 268nn. 7&10, 269n. 12 Kintsch, Walter, 172, 268n. ro, 269n. 12 Kirk, G. S., u5, 131, 136, 137, 260n. 19, 270n. I Kirkham, Richard L., 230n. 19, 262n. 4, 264n. IO Kleberg, Lars, 252n. 25 Kripke, Saul A., 12, 13, 14, 15, r8, 23m. 23, 232n. 27 Kristeva, Julia, 199, 26m. 6, 272n. 5

336

Kruglanski, Arie W, 255n. 15 Krysinski, Wladimir, 162 Kuhl, Julius, 69 Kuhn, Thomas S., 230n. 19 Kutschera, Franz von, 136, 260n. 3 Lachmann, Renate, 200 Laforet, Michel, 49 Lambert, Karel, 266n. 21 Lanser, Susan Snaider, 263n. 6 Lasswell, Harold D., 97 Le Grand, Eva, 252n. 25 Leavis, F. R., 84, 25m. 17 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 12, 13, 14, 19, 20, 163, 23m. 24, 232n. 26, 234n. 34 Lerner, Daniel, 97 Levelt, Willem]. M., 98, 99 Levin, Samuel, 4 Levy, Jiri, 205 Lewis, David, 13, 17, 22, 233n. 28 Liehm, Antonin J., 252n. 27 Lindenfeld, David F., r Linsky, Leonard, 135, 262n. 9 Lintvelt, Jaap, 263n. 6 Livi, Fran~ois, 54 Lloyd, Christopher, 24onn. 17&22 Lloyd, Genevieve, 14 Lodge, David, 217, 252n. 26 Loemker, Leroy E., 19, 20, 232n. 26 Lord, Albert B., 109 Lord, Robert, 249 Lotman, Jurij, 249n. 7 Loux, Michael]., 14 Loyd, Sally A., ro8, 255n. 15 Luckmann, Thomas, ror, 102, 253n. 2, 255n. 21, 256n. 25 Lukacs, Georg, 273n. 15 Liithi, Max, 33 Lycan, William G., 13,165,174, 230n. r6, 235n. 40, 262n. r, 278n. 38 Lyons, John, 135, 174 Lyons, William, 65, 66 Macdonald, Margaret, 233n. 32 Macmurray, John, 96, 255n. 20 Magliano, Joseph P., 172, 268n. IO, 269n. 12

Author Index Magnet, Myron, 249n. u Maingon, Charles, 24m. 23 Maitre, Doreen, 15 Malcolm, Norman, 248n. 35 Margolin, Uri, 22, 176, 224, 276n. 28 Martinez-Bonati, Felix, 150, 158, 183, 184, 230n. 14, 263n. 7 Mates, B., 13 Mathesius, Vilem, 26m. 5 Mauss, Marcel, 242n. 5 Maybach, Heike, 267n. 28 McCormick, Peter J., ro, 23m. 24, 235n. 40 McHale, Brian, 21, 162, 164, 168, 225, 264n.r6,265n. 19,266n. 22,272n. 6, 278n. 39 McLain, Richard L., 239n. 14 Meiland, Jack W, 243n. 9 Meinong, Alexis, 227n. 2, 235n. 40 Melden, A. I., 244n. 18 Mele, A., 57, 242n. 7 Mennecke, Arnim, 276n. 29, 277n. 34 Merrell, Floyd, 25, 235n. 40 Merton, Robert K., 122 Mia!!, David S., 235n. 37 Mihailescu, Calin, 22 Milgram, Stanley, 102 Miller, George, 71 Miller, J. Hillis, 82, 84, 87, 249nn. u&12, 25m. 21 Miller, Richard B., 13 Miller, Robin Feuer, 75 Millett, Kate, 104 Molesworth, Charles, 252n. 25 Mondadori, Fabrizio, 17 Montague, Richard, 137 Morgan, Thais, 27rnn. 1&2 Morissette, Bruce, 264Il. r6 Moscovici, Serge, ror, 253n. 7 Moser, Walter, 21 Mukafovsky, Jan, 33, 99, 139, 229n. 9 Nemcova Banerjee, Maria, 252n. 27 Nesselroth, Peter, 278nn. 36&38 Neu, Jerome, 67 Neuberg, Marc, 58, 63 Nicholas, David W, 268n. ro

Nicholson, Michael, 255 Nicolaisen, Peter, 239n. 13, 240n. 15 Nissenbaum, Helen Fay, ror Nolt, John Eric, 12, 13, u6 Norman, Donald A., 244n. 15 Novak, Maximillian, 237n. 2 Novitz, David, 21 O'Connor, Teresa F., 216, 274n. 21 Ogley, Roderick C., ro8 Olejniczak, Josef, 252n. 26 Olson, Mancur, no, 255n. 19 Parkinson, G. H. R., 234n. 34 Parret, Herman, 67, 246n. 26 Parsons, Terence, 17, 22, 230n. 14, 235n. 40,263n.9,267n.r Partee, Barbara, 137 Paterson, Janet M., 162 Pavel, Thomas G., 5, 12, 15, 23, ror, 170, 233n. 30, 235n. 40, 237n. 46 Payne, John W, 245n. 21 Pears, David, 71, 247n. 32 Pelc, Jeczy, 136, 228n. 5, 233n. 32 Pellerin, Gilles, 50 Penner, Dick, 222, 276n. 29 Pier, John, 162 Plantinga, Alvin, 13, 19, 227n. r, 232n. 25, 237n. 46 Plato, 263n. 6 Politzer, Heinz, 194 Pollard, D. E. B., u, 233n. 32 Pope, Kenneth S., 247n. 34, 250n. 13 Porn, Ingmar, 97, 103, 104, ur, 253n. r, 258n. 8 Portch, Stephen R., 68, 99 Porter, R. C., 252n. 24 Posner, Roland, 27 Pozuelo, Yvancos, Jose Marfa, 235n. 40 Preminger, Alex, 201 Pribram, Karl H., 71 Prince, Gerald, 31, 149, 151, 172, 175, 269n. II Propp, Vladimir, u4, 121, 136, 257n. 2 Purtill, Richard L., 237n. 46 Putilov, B. N., 33 Piltz, Peter, 273n. 13, 274n. 19·

337

Author Index Quintilian, 268n. 6, 269n. 13 Ramchand, Kenneth, 275n. 26 Ransom, John Crowe, 35 Rapoport, Anatol, 97, 101, 108, 109, no, 242n. 8, 246n. 23, 255n. 16 Raven, Bertram H., 255n. 15 Reason, J., 60, 244n. 15 Recanati, Franc;:ois, 269n. 12 Redfield, James M., n7, 257n. 5 Rees, Martin]., 14 Rehbein, Jochen, 62, 98, 106, 244n. 15 Reich-Ranicki, Marcel, 272n. 12 Reid, J.C., 82, 84, 249n. 12 Rescher, Nicholas, 13, 14, 17, 19, 20, 22, 26, 60, II4, n5, n6, 164, 23m. 22, 234n. 35, 244n. 16, 250n. 15 Ricardou, Jean, 266n. 23 Richetti, John J ., 238n. 4 Ricoeur, Paul, 25, 68, 244fl. 18, 247n. 33 Riffaterre, Michael, 173, 200, 228n. 8, 229n. 9, 27m. 4 Righter, William, 35 Rigney, Ann, 25 Rimmon-Kenan, Shlomith, 31,158 Rogers, Pat, 237n. 3 Ronen, Ruth, 22, 23m. 25, 233n. 29 Rorty, Richard, 235n. 41 Rothstein, Eric, 200, 27m. 1 Rotkin, Charlotte, 25m. 2 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 39, 273n. 15 Rumelhart, David, 244n. 15 Russell, Bertrand, 19, 234n. 35 Rutherford, John, 126 Ryan, Marie-Laure, 15, 152, 170, 260n. 17 Sanger, J iirgen, 48 Santambrogio, Marco, 262n. 9 Savan, David, 235n. 41 Schank, Roger C., 181 Scherpe, Klaus R., 273n. 15 Schick, Frederic, 64, 246n. 30 Schirn, Mathias, 4 Schmidt, S. J., 235n. 41 Schulz, Dieter, 124, 179, 180, 181 Schwartz, Stephen P., 233n. 30

338

Searle, John R., II, 57, 146, 236n. 45, 237n. 46, 242n. 8 Sebeok, Thomas A., 35 Segre, Cesare, 167, 168 Selbmann, Rolf, 127 Shaffer, Jerome A., 242n. 8, 244fi. 12 Showalter, Elaine, 249n. 12 Simon, William, 254n. 10 Singer, Jerome L., 247n. 34 Sklovskij, Viktor, 126, 197, 25m. 18, 253n. 3 Slinin, J. A., 13 Sluga, Hans D., 4 Smith, Barry, 25, 267n. 3 Smith, Peter, 25m. 22 Solomon, Robert C., 246n. 25 Spika, Mark, 249n. II Spitzberg, Brian H., 108 Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorti, 222, 277n. 33 Staley, Thomas F., 275n. 24 Stalnaker, Robert C., 13, 14 Stankiewicz, Edward, 246n. 28 Stanzel, F. K., 263n. 6, 265n. 19 Stein, Nancy L., 31 Steiner, Peter, 139 Steiner, Wendy, 139 Steinmetz, Horst, 270n. 3 Sroddard, Sally, 35 Srorr, Anthony, 40, 69, 237n. 1, 256n. 23 Strawson, P. F., 1, 8, 102, 174, 229n. IO, 240n. 19, 242n. 8 Sturrock, John, 266n. 24 Suleiman, Susan, 127, 278n. 39 Swales, Martin, 127, 207, 273n. 16 Swartz, Norman, 13, 14, n5, n6, 174, 23m. 22 Tammi, Pekka, 265n. 19, 266n. 22 Tanner, Tony, 122 Thompson, Stith, 33 Thorpe, Michael, 275nn. 23&26, 278n. 35 Thurley, Geoffrey, 82, 249n. 12 Tichy, Pavel, 137 Tillyard, E. M., 237n. 3 Titunik, Irwin, 265n. 20

Author Index Todorov, Tzvetan, 26, 99, II6, 127, 228n. 7, 253n. 5, 26m. 4 Tomasevskij, Boris, 33, 34, 136 Trabasso, Tom, 268n. IO Traill, Nancy H., 19, II8, 214, 260n. 18 Trojan, Felix, 255n. 17 Trudgian, Helene, 50 Urmson,J. 0., 146 Vaget, Hans, 273n. 15 Van Ghent, Dorothy, 23m. 24, 250n. 15 Velleman, J. David, 65 Vennemann, Theo, 243n. II Vernon, Magdalen D., 68, 102, 107, no, 245n. 19, 254n. II Veroff, Joseph, 63, 245n. 19 Vinogradov, V. V., 263n. 6 Violi, Patrizia, 262n. 9 Vodicka, Felix, 33, 27m. 2 Volosinov, V. N., 263n. 6 Walton, Douglas N., 62 Walton, Kendall L., II, 12, 16, 227n. 1, 235n. 38 Wang, Binjung, 273n. 16 Wapnewski, Peter, 272n. IO Warnock, G. J., 146

Wasiolek, Edward, 248n. 2 Watt, Ian, 238n. 7 Waugh, Patricia, 162 Weimann, Robert, 209 Weinryb, Elazar, 62 Wells, Elizabeth]., 239n.14 Welt, Klara, 102, 252n. 27 Widdershoven, Guy A. M., 256n. 22 Wierzbicka, Anna, 98, 230n. 18 Williams, C. J. F., 24, 157, 158 Wirrer, Jan, 230n. 15 Wolff, Christian, 23m. 24 Wolman, Benjamin B., 247n. 31 Woltersdorff, Nicholas, 10, 15, 22, 232n. 25 Woods,.John Hayden, IO, 230n. 15, 235n. 40,237n.46,262n.5 Woolley, Penny, 102 Wright, Georg von, 13, 14, 55, 56, 57, 61, 62, 64, 97, 102, 104, III, 114, 120, 121, 123, 24mn. 2&3, 257n. 2, 258nn. 7, 9, II Yagisawa, Takashi, 15 Young, Philip, 239n. 10 Zholkovsky, Alexander, 23m. 24 Zimmerman, Michael]., 62, 242n. 4

339

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Dolezel, Lubomfr. Heterocosmica : fiction and possible worlds / Lubomfr Dolezel. p.

cm.-(Parallax : re-visions of culturre and society)

Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-8018-5749-X (alk. paper) r. Fiction-History and criticism.

2. Criticism. I. Title.

II. Series: Parallax (Baltimore, Md.) PN3335.D65 1998 809.3-dc21

97-28537 CIP