Even if it is willfully false (as is the case if it is a lie), what determines its truth or its untruth is not its (hidden) pragmatic intention, but that which is in fact the case. Is the Bible Fact or Fiction? Hamburger, at least in the first edition of her book (1957), contends that, contrary to pretense, fiction is narratorless, a view sharply opposed to mainstream narratology according to which the narrator (not necessarily personified) is a structural element of any narration, be it factual or fictional, first-person or third-person. Whereas, fictitious has more of a negative connotation. (a) Studying the “pathologies of fiction”—the different ways fictions can “go wrong”—would shed considerable light on the conditions under which fictions function “normally.” Some psychological studies suggest that these pathologies, operating on a sub-personal level, might be more common than a fiction-friendly attitude would have it. Fact or fiction explained CHERNOBYL has become a worldwide hit with HBO and Sky viewers as it tells the story of the 1986 nuclear disaster. Unfortunately, mimesis, like fictio, is far from being a unified notion. Based On A True Story: How Hollywood Mixes Fact And Fiction To Reimagine History Ben Affleck, Russell Crowe, and Mel Gibson should not be your main sources of historical instruction. (2010). Historically (at least in Western culture), the key concept for analyzing and describing fiction in the sense of artistic and, more specifically, narrative fiction has not been the Latin concept of fictio, but the Greek concept of mimesis. In the light of this pragmatic definition, what distinguishes fictional narrative from factual narrative is not that the former is referentially void and the latter referentially full. The fact that the evolution of third-person fiction has given rise to techniques for neutralizing the enunciative anchoring of sentences could be interpreted as a symptom of the fact that narration as such induces this type of phenomenological immersion. Secondly, historical persons and descriptions of their real historical actions figure prominently in fictional texts, as in historical novels that often contain a fair amount of factual information. Now, this type of fiction, as Hume himself explicitly stated, is quite different from fiction in the artistic field. Thus a narrative in which every sentence is true (referentially) and which nevertheless pretends to be a fiction would not be easily accepted as a fiction. The relationship between narratology (Jan Christoph Meister → Narratology) and theory of fiction long remained inexistent, in part because classical narratology rarely addressed the question of the fact/fiction difference. Show students an introductory video about facts and opinions, like the videoo "Fact or Opinion for Kids" (see related media). It’s the rarest mode of narration in literature. Counterfactual fictions seem on the face of it easy to manage, at least in terms of possible worlds semantic models. Afterword and Appendix w/quotes from www.patriotsquestion911.org. This is the case for example of the subgenre of counterfactual novels which, like counterfactual history (see Ferguson ed. If we take a broad historical and intercultural outlook, it appears that heterodiegetic fictions without any element of formal mimesis in third-person factual narrative are relatively rare except in some 19th-century fiction and, more frequently, in the 20th-century fiction. This is one of the most common questions I get asked as an archaeologist and it is one for which I have yet to find a good answer. Does narrative fiction induce immersion through mimetic primers feigning descriptive utterances, or simply through a perspectively organized mentally centered and phenomenologically saturated presentation of a universe? This question is for testing whether you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions. Most advocates of semantic definitions of the fact/fiction dichotomy give a positive answer to this question: the proper name “Napoleon,” when used in a novel, does not refer to the real Napoleon but to some fictional counterpart (e.g. It could therefore be hypothesized that they are the result of deep-level linguistic rearrangements due to cognitive-representational pressures stemming from the immersive process of mental simulation. Walton is surely right, but Searle’s interest lies primarily in the canonical public status of narrative fiction, and most of the time narrative texts which publicly function as props in a game of make-believe or as playful pretenses are intended to function in this way and, more importantly, have been specifically designed to do so. For the fact/fiction problem, only one is of interest: according to Aristotle, mimesis is a specific form of cognition. According to modal fictionalism, it differs from other possible worlds because it is the only one which is also actual, whereas according to the modal realism defended by Lewis, it differs from other possible worlds (which are as real as “our” world) only by the contingent fact that we happen to live in it. According to her theory, the specific grammar of the novel consists in a double phenomenon: elimination of the first person except in inner direct speech coinciding with the construction of a special third-person pronoun (called “the E-level shifter” by Banfield). But the fact that discourse in general, and narrative discourse in particular, are constructions does not by itself disqualify ontological realism or the distinction between fact and fiction. Among the anomalies defining the novel understood this way, Banfield puts particular emphasis on the specific use of deictics and free indirect discourse. So the difference is the following: in the case of theoretical fictions, fictionality is due to the fact that the ontological status (theoretical terms/real entities) of the entities is indeterminate; in the case of artistic fictions, fictionality is due to the fact that the entities are not inferentially linked to real-world existential propositions (although they are of course in general inferentially linked to real-world beliefs and evaluations). One could object to this common-sense assertion that not all societies produce fictional narratives and that often the socially most important narratives, notably myths, cannot be accounted for in terms of the dichotomy between fact and fiction. For instance, historical fiction is a genre which sets fictional accounts of events within a historically accurate setting. Fact vs Fiction. The Validity of the Fact/Fiction Opposition, Fact and Fiction, Narrative and Non-narrative, The Semantic Definition of the Fact/Fiction Difference, The Pragmatic Status of Narrative Fiction: Imagination and Playful Pretense, Simulation, Immersion and the Fact/Fiction Divide. The term fiction has also often been used to designate willful acts of deception intended to be misleading or to produce false beliefs. The textual passages which Banfield calls “pure narration,” and which correspond to Plato’s haple diegesis, are a case in point. The conditions for satisfying the criteria of factual narrative are semantic: a factual narrative is either true or false. Furthermore, if we look at the history of narrative fiction, the systematic use of internal (variable) focalization is fairly recent (as Banfield and Hamburger acknowledge). In other words, its “felicity conditions” are tied primarily to its immersion-inducing effectiveness and to its capacity for producing an aesthetically and hermeneutically satisfying experience of its mimetic and artifactual properties. This is especially true of free indirect discourse and grammatical anomalies of spatial and temporal deictics. It could be argued, however, that Searle’s theory operates at two levels: a definition of verbal narrative fiction in terms of pretended speech acts, and a general definition of fiction in terms of intended playful pretense. Syntactic definitions of the distinction between factual and fictional narrative commend themselves by their promise of economy: if it were possible to distinguish factual and fictional narrative on purely syntactic grounds, there would be no need to take a position as far as semantic problems are concerned, be they epistemological or ontological. Walker’s story is about resilience, innovation, and entrepreneurship. fictional narratives in freely occurring conversation suggest ... picture description than past tense event narration per se McCabe et al. It is important to distinguish the question of the structural function of intentionality from that of the communication of that intentionality. Of course , for Kate Hamburger (1957) , who excludes the f person novel from the domain of fiction, this divergence can op only between two types of impersonal narrative. It emphasizes the ontological status of represented entities and/or the truth value status of the proposition or the sequence of propositions which assert these entities. In a novel, a new point of view need not correspond to a new referent of the first person and hence to a new text. On the side of the writer, these deviating practices are in fact the grammatical third- person transcription of the imaginative simulation of “fictive I-origins” (Fotis Jannidis → Character). This means that artistic fictions, contrary to cognitive fictions, should not produce real-world beliefs (even if in fact they sometimes do: fiction has its own pathologies). First, not every verbal utterance is narrative, nor is every referential utterance narrative. Story A story has some basic features like setting, plot, characters, and sequence of events in a logical manner, etc. In the case of fictional simulation, however, the agents and actions are invented in and through the process of simulation. Electrons and other elementary particles have been called “fictions” in this sense. Fiction is made up, you need to use your imagination when you are writing it. The poststructuralist criticism of the fact/fiction dichotomy has pointed out that every (narrative) representation is a human construction, and more precisely that it is a model projected onto reality. To our best knowledge, the answer to this question has to do with the processes of immersive simulation induced by narrative and maximized by fictional narrative. In fact, he only claims that syntactical markers of fictionality are neither necessary (a fictional text can be textually indistinguishable from a factual counterpart) nor sufficient (a factual text may use fictional techniques). In science, the term is sometimes applied to theoretical entities postulated to account for observational regularities which otherwise would be unexplainable. Positive ending. Fact is defined as a piece of information about a circumstance that existed or events that have occurred. Definition. Genette ([1991] 1993: chap. 30,00 € / $42.00 / £23.00. Factual narrative is a species of referential representation, just as fictional narrative is a species of non-factual representation. If we take a broad historical and intercultural outlook, it appears that heterodiegetic fictions without any element of formal mimesis of third-person factual narrative are relatively rare except in some 19th-century fiction and, more frequently, in the 20th-century fiction. To rule out ontological realism, it would be necessary to show independently that the constructive nature of discourse in general or of narrative in particular makes them fictional or at least implies a “fictionalizing” dynamics. For example, in “The Wizard of Oz,” a portion of the story occurs inside Dorothy’s mind which is embedded within her “home” life in Kansas. the ability to explain and predict the intentional behaviors and reactions of others. La serie televisiva segue l’ascesa della famiglia Borgia ai vertici della chiesa cattolica romana e le loro lotte per mantenere il … David Hammer. It would then be possible to arrive at a purely “formal” definition of the two domains. Finally, as far as myth is concerned, it is clearly considered a type of factual discourse: people adhere to it as serious discourse referring to something real (this is also the case of the Bible; see Sternberg 1985, 1990). What is at stake here is in fact the question of the target domain of narrative immersion: does the reader or spectator immerge into a (fictional) world, or into a narrative act depicting a world? Genette (1991: chap. The principle of “minimal departure” (Lewis 1973; Ryan 1991) suggests a positive answer, but the holism of the possible worlds approach (each possible world being complete) suggests a negative answer. The best-known theories that seek to define fiction on a syntactic level have been elaborated by Hamburger (1957) and Banfield (1982). What's the difference between journalism and fiction, and why should you care? As Currie and Ravenscroft (2002) have shown, both options are open, depending on the structure of the text. The difficulty of getting a clear picture of the distinction between factual and fictional narrative results in part from a long history of shifting uses of the term “fiction.” The sense which is most current today—that of a representation portraying an imaginary/invented universe or world—is not its original nor its historically most prominent domain of reference. Factual Narration", http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/article/fictional-vs-factual-narration. ... Schaeffer, J.-M. (2009). Indeed, fiction, and its species narrative fiction, are best understood as a specific way of producing and using mental representations and semiotic devices, be they verbal or not. The term fictional refers to something that is related to fiction, i.e. A blend of historical fact and fiction has been used in various forms since narrative began with sagas and epic poems. Finally, simulation theories may also help to achieve a better understanding of the grammatical deviations or anomalies of internal focalization in heterodiegetic fictional narrative as studied by Hamburger and Banfield. The difference between factual and fictional narrative as far as simulation is concerned could thus be explained by the fact that once narrative is liberated from the epistemic constraints of truth value, the real aim of the immersive process becomes how to maximize it. & Patrick D. Murphy, eds. (b) Comparative work on various fictional “devices”—mental, verbal, visual, “actantial”—is necessary, because fiction is still too often identified with verbal fiction, and verbal fiction with fiction incarnated in a narrative act (oral or written). Actually, simulation is a very broad concept which encompasses much more than fiction. The semantic definition of the distinction between factual and fictional narrative is the most classical one. (SBS) Source: SBS The story of Lucas’ supposed connection first flourished on the streets, and was widely spread in a 2000 New York magazine article by Mark Jacobson. the ability to explain and predict the intentional behaviors and reactions of others. Factual narrative is a species of referential representation, just as fictional narrative is a species of non-factual representation. Counterfactual fictions give rise to an analogous problem: it seems counterintuitive to say that in an autofiction, for example, proper names lose their referential power, since the point of autofiction is precisely the idea that fictional assertions apply to an existing person (the author himself). This would imply that the pair fact/fiction is logically heterogeneous. From JFK to Gladiator, here are the "true" films that took the most creative liberties. This does not imply that there is no distinction between fact and fiction, but that what counts as a fact may be relative to a specific “truth program.”. Here again, the situation is quite different from fictional entities in the context of narrative fiction: such entities do not operate in real-world commitments. Basically it can be said that if every fiction results from a process of mental simulation, the opposite is not the case, i.e. Fictional (narrative) simulation is not only off-line representational activity (as is every simulation), but also a pragmatically encapsulated activity of simulation. But this fourth definition is better seen as a consequence of the pragmatic definition of fiction. Does it lose its truth value when it is integrated into a novel? When writers use their imagination to describe historical events or incorporate real scenarios or characters into fictional stories, the lines between fiction and nonfiction become blurred. The assumption of simulation theories is that the competence of mind reading makes it possible to put oneself imaginatively “into someone else’s shoes.” It is true that mind reading has a strong narrative component, as the “mind reader” immerses himself in scenarios and scripts. Even so, this does not necessarily mean that a semantic definition of fiction is workable. Here are a few ways the "Snowden" movie exaggerates Snowden's story: Fictional tends to be used in talking about fiction in the sense of creative writing: Alice in Wonderland is a fictional character created by the mathematician Charles Dodgson. However, there is no consensus as to the rationale of this opposition. 2), while accepting Searle’s definition of fiction as a series of non-serious utterances, proposed to amend it by distinguishing two levels of illocution: a literal level—the level of the pretended speech acts—concealing a figural or indirect level that transmits a serious speech act (a declaration or a demand) which declares fictionally that such and such an event occurred, or, alternatively, invites the reader to imagine the content transmitted by the pretended speech acts (see Crittenden 1991: 45–52; Zipfel 2001: 185–95). But even if it may be true that fictional narrative as a socially recognized practice is not an interculturally universal fact, all human communities seem to distinguish between actions and discourses that are meant to be taken “seriously” and others whose status is different: they are recognized as “playful pretense” or as “make-believe.” Furthermore, developmental psychology and comparative ethnology have shown that the distinction between representations having truth claims and “make-believe” representations is crucial in the ontogenetic development of the cognitive structure of the infant psyche and that this phenomenon is transcultural (see Goldman & Emmison 1995; Goldman 1998). Speaking about stories and myths, he distinguishes between: (a) a pure story (haple diegesis), in which the poet speaks in his own name (as in dithyrambs) without pretending to be someone else; (b) a story by mimesis (imitation), in which the poet speaks through his characters (as in tragedy and comedy), meaning that he pretends to be someone else; (c) a mixed form combining the two previous forms (as in epic poetry, where pure narration is mixed with characters’ discourse). Hitler winning World War II). This special shifter suspends the “one text / one speaker” rule that governs discourse outside of fiction and which is grounded in the principle that deictics shift referent with each new E (each new speaker). So the difference is the following: in the case of theoretical fictions, fictionality is due to the fact that the ontological status (theoretical terms/real entities) of the entities is indeterminate; in the case of narrative fictions, fictionality is due to the fact that the entities are not inferentially linked to real-world existential propositions. This is a “reductionist” move which underestimates the importance of theater, i.e. Most advocates of semantic definitions of the fact/fiction dichotomy give a positive answer to this question: the proper name Napoleon, when used in the novel, does not refer to the real Napoleon but to some fictional counterpart (e.g. This does not amount to saying that semantic criteria are irrelevant, for the idea that there is a semantic difference between fact and fiction certainly is part of our conception of fiction. Hamburger, at least in the first edition of her book ([1957] 1973), contends that, contrary to pretense, fiction is narratorless, a view sharply opposed to mainstream narratology according to which the narrator (not necessarily personified) is a structural element of any narration, be it factual or fictional, first-person or third-person. The opposition between fictional entities and theoretical entities is found in Schaeffer ("Quelles vérités" 21-22 and "Fictional vs. Structure and Style. They invite an analysis of fictional narrative in terms of direct simulation of imaginary universes presented perspectively and (on the side of the reader) in terms of immersion (see Ryan 2001: 89–171). Simulation and playful pretense are basic human capacities whose roots are situated in mental simulation, a partly sub-personal process (Dokic & Proust 2002: intro., vii). Fictional vs. Fiction. On the side of the reader, they activate an immersive dynamics: the reader “slips into” the characters, experiencing the fictional world as it is seen perspectively by the characters from within or sometimes, as Banfield suggests, from a point of view that remains “empty” (in terms of a specific “I”). (eds. For example, in myth and its corresponding reality, people can be endowed with powers nobody would imagine them having in everyday life. Fictional (narrative) simulation is not only off-line representational activity (as is every simulation), but also a pragmatically encapsulated activity of simulation. The symptoms of fictionality (see Schmid 2005: 37–46) analyzed by Hamburger and Banfield all share the same characteristic: they use a third-person grammatical perspective to present a first-person mental (perceptual, etc.) Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story, to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot (the series of events). Action and to prevent automated spam submissions referentially constrained and can not be reduced to narrative reference have!, there ’ s not a single or right answer to this is. Fed into real-world feedback loops term has usually been linked to the readers from one the. The grandson of Peter the Great messes with the family tree a bit, fiction! Bamberg, 1994, pp read both as fiction and Narratology have been called “fictions” in day! Move which underestimates the importance of theater, i.e type of fiction, as Hume explicitly... 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