Fiction

1. Fiction What is Fiction? ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

2. We read books to find out who we are. What other people, real or imaginary, do and think and feel, or have done and thought and felt; or might do and think and feel, is an essential guide to our understanding of what we ourselves are and may become. A person who had never known another human being could not be introspective any more than a terrier can, or a horse; he might (improbably) keep himself alive, but he could not know anything about himself, no matter how long he lived with himself. And a person who had never listened to nor read a tale or myth or parable or story, would remain ignorant of his emotional and spiritual heights and depths, would not know quite fully what it is to be human. For the story from Rumpelstiltskin to War and Peace is one of the basic tools invented by the mind of man, for the purpose of gaining understanding. There have been great societies that did not use the wheel, but there have been no societies that did not tell stories. Ursula K. LeGuin, The Language of the Night What is Fiction? ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

3. Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it. . . . it brings about consent and reconciliation with things as they are, and . . . we may even trust it to contain eventually by implication that last word which we expect from the day of judgment. Hannah Arendt What is Fiction? ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

4. I found by pretending that things had happened which in fact had not, and that people existed who didn't, I could achieve a lovely truth which actuality obscures—especially when I learned to abandon myth and pattern my fabrications on actual people and events. John Barth, Lost in the Funhouse What is Fiction? ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

5. The final belief is to believe in a fiction, which you know to be a fiction, there being nothing else. The exquisite truth is to know that it is a fiction and that you believe in it willingly. Wallace Stevens, "Adagia" What is Fiction? ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

6. Parmenides said, "one cannot think of what is not"; we are at the other extreme, and say what can be thought of must certainly be a fiction. Nietzsche, The Will to Power What is Fiction? ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

7. The storytelling side of science is not just peripheral, and not just pedagogy, but the very point of it all. Science properly done is one of the humanities, as a fine physics teacher once said. The point of science is to help us to understand what we are and how we got here, and for this we need the great stories: the tale of how, once upon a time, there was a Big Bang, the Darwinian epic of the evolution of life on Earth and now the story we are just beginning to learn to tell: the amazing adventure of the primate autobiographers who finally taught themselves how to tell the story of the amazing adventure of the primate autobiographers. Daniel Dennett, The Mind's "I" What is Fiction? ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

8. Fiction’s Manifestations • mythology ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

9. Fiction’s Manifestations • fairy tales: wonder tale involving marvelous elements and occurrences, though not necessarily about fairies. The term embraces such popular folktales (Märchen) as “Cinderella” and “Puss-in-Boots” and art fairy tales (Kunstmärchen) of later invention, such as The Happy Prince (1888), by the Irish writer Oscar Wilde. It is often difficult to distinguish between tales of literary and oral origin, because folktales have received literary treatment from early times, and, conversely, literary tales have found their way back into the oral tradition. [Encyclopedia Britannica] ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

10. Fiction’s Manifestations • fairy tales ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

11. Fiction’s Manifestations • the short story: a work of fiction that can be read in one sitting and usually deals with a single, significant event and its aftermath ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

12. Fiction’s Manifestations • the novella: a longer narrative, readable only in a substantial time commitment, involving more than one significant character and events. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

13. Fiction’s Manifestations • the novel: a work of fiction of substantial length with numerous characters, who ordinarily undergo substantial change(s) over a long period of time (often weeks and months if not years). Originating in the 18th Century. • Watt on the origin of the novel: • The printing press • The need for a middle class and leisure time • Early suspicions about reading fiction • The novel as a big book ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

14. Epiphany James Joyce (pictured), the great Irish writer, believed that epiphanies are the essence of the short story ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

15. Point of View (POV) POV: The perspective from which a narrative—short story, novella, novel--is told. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

16. First Person: The narrator tells his or her own version of a story in which he or she is involved in some way. First person fictions always raise the possibility of an unreliable narrator: a storyteller who is not completely honest, either on purpose or out of ignorance, about the incidents, motivation, or significance of the narrative. Unreliable narratives require the reader to suspect that the narrator himself/herself is perhaps more important, more worthy of investigation, than the tale. Wayne Booth POV ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

17. ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery] Third Person Omniscient: A POV in which an all-knowing storyteller, with access to the consciousness of numerous (perhaps all) characters in the narrative and, in some cases, a comprehensive understanding of past, present, and future, tells the tale. Harry Crews (1935-2012) POV

18. Third Person Central Intelligence (aka Third Person Limited): A POV in which the storyteller’s access to the consciousness of characters in the narrative is ordinarily limited to one major character, and the events in the story, and their significance, are understood with that character’s knowledge and from his/her perspective. POV ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

19. Fiction Terms character ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

20. Fiction Terms climax ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

21. Fiction Terms conflict ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

22. Fiction Terms denouement ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

23. Fiction Terms epistolary ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

24. Fiction Terms frame tale ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

25. Fiction Terms narrative ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

26. Fiction Terms narrator/narratee ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

27. Fiction Terms persona ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

28. Fiction Terms plot ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

29. Fiction Terms setting ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]

30. Fiction Terms stream of consciousness ENGL 2030: Experience of Literature—Fiction [Lavery]