# Fictionality Literature I · Introduction to Literary Theory · https://tryals.app/learn/literature-i/fictionality ## Not Lying, Not Reporting "Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever, and rich", there is no Emma Woodhouse. Austen wrote a false sentence and no one has ever accused her of dishonesty. What exactly is the difference between fiction and a lie? ### Searle: pretended illocutionary acts John Searle's answer, in "The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse" (1975), is the standard one. A serious assertion commits the speaker to the truth of what is said, to having evidence, and to believing it. The author of fiction performs **pretended** assertions, non-deceptive pseudo-performances, and *pretended* is the crucial word: - A **lie** is a real assertion made with intent to deceive. - A **fiction** is a pretended assertion made with no intent to deceive, because the pretence is mutually known. So the count of sentences in a novel that commit their author to the truth of what they say is **zero**. Not few, none. It is not that the author is asserting something loosely; the illocutionary force is suspended, and that suspension is what makes the whole thing possible. Nothing in the text marks it: Searle's further claim is that there is no textual property that identifies fiction, which is why hoaxes work and why paratext, a title page saying *a novel*, carries so much weight. ### The reader's side of the contract Coleridge named the reader's half in 1817: *that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith*. Two words in that phrase are usually dropped and both matter. **Willing**: it is granted, not induced. **For the moment**: it is bounded. The contract is what makes internal error possible. A reader who objects that dragons do not exist has misunderstood the contract; a reader who objects that the dragon had two heads in chapter three and three in chapter nine has not, the second is a breach, the first is not. ### Possible worlds and minimal departure If a fiction sets up a world, how much of that world does the text have to specify? Marie-Laure Ryan's **principle of minimal departure** answers: readers construe the fictional world as being **as close to the actual world as the text allows**, changing only what is explicitly stated or entailed. The consequence is quantitative. If a story specifies four departures from actuality, the reader carries over everything else, of a hundred background facts, ninety-six survive intact. This is why fantasy needs so little exposition: state that dragons exist and the reader supplies gravity, mortality, weather and the fact that people get hungry, all unbidden. It also explains a common failure, a world that departs on too many axes at once leaves the reader with nothing carried over and nothing to stand on. ### The paradox of feeling Colin Radford asked in 1975 how we can be moved by the fate of someone we know does not exist. Three positions on the table: we are momentarily deceived (implausible, we do not call the police); the emotions are a different kind, "quasi-emotions" (Walton); or emotions do not require belief in existence, only vivid representation. The problem is unresolved, and it is a good example of a literary question that is genuinely philosophical. > **Common pitfall:** thinking fiction is defined by falsity. Most sentences in most novels are perfectly true, of London, of grief, of how a market works. What makes a text fiction is not the truth value of its sentences but the **suspension of the author's commitment** to them, and a novel packed with accurate detail is no less fictional for it. ## Practice questions 8 of this lesson's 13 practice questions, with answers. The full set is in the app. ### 1. Match each term from the theory of fiction to what it names. **Answer:** - Peritext → The framing matter inside the volume - Epitext → Interviews, letters and reviews outside the volume - Pretended assertion → A claim made with the commitment suspended - Minimal departure → The rule that unstated facts match the actual world **Why:** The four terms cover the two halves of the transaction: the frame that tells you a text is fiction, and the conventions that make the fictional world usable once you have accepted it. Neither half is visible in the sentences themselves, which is Searle’s point. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/fictionality/match-each-term-from-the-theory-of-fiction-to-what-it-names ### 2. On Searle's account, what separates fiction from lying is the absence of an intention to deceive. **Answer:** True **Why:** **True.** The words alone cannot distinguish them, an identical sentence can be a lie in a witness box and fiction on a page. The difference lies in the act being performed, and in the pretence being shared rather than concealed. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/fictionality/on-searles-account-what-separates-fiction-from-lying-is-the-absence ### 3. Why does the principle of minimal departure explain why fantasy needs little exposition? A. Because shared genre conventions allow audiences to deduce unwritten setting rules effortlessly B. Because readers willingly suspend disbelief and ignore logical gaps in unfamiliar worldbuilding C. Because pretended assertions exempt the author from having to substantiate secondary world facts D. Because readers import everything the text does not contradict, so only departures need stating **Answer:** D. Because readers import everything the text does not contradict, so only departures need stating **Why:** Because the actual world is the **default**. Say a dragon lands in a field and the reader supplies the field, the grass, the weather, gravity, hunger and mortality without being told. The text spends its words only on the departures, and a world that departs on too many axes at once leaves the reader nothing to carry over. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/fictionality/why-does-the-principle-of-minimal-departure-explain-why-fantasy-needs ### 4. Coleridge argues that readers engage in a 'willing suspension of disbelief for the moment'. What follows from the bounded, contractual nature of this stance when evaluating inconsistencies in a fantasy text? A. Emotional investment ceases whenever factual errors appear B. Any supernatural element invalidates the fictional contract C. The reader is required to abandon real-world logic completely D. Internal narrative contradictions break the agreed convention **Answer:** D. Internal narrative contradictions break the agreed convention **Why:** The contract excuses departures from empirical reality (like dragons existing) but binds the narrative to internal consistency. Conflating world-building premises with narrative coherence confuses generic suspension with structural contradiction. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/fictionality/coleridge-argues-that-readers-engage-in-a-willing-suspension-of ### 5. Arrange the stages of the fictional contract as the reader enters it. **Answer:** 1. The paratext signals that the text is fiction 2. The reader grants the suspension of disbelief 3. The text specifies its departures from the actual world 4. The reader imports everything not contradicted 5. Internal inconsistencies now count as errors **Why:** The last step is the interesting one. Granting the contract does not suspend judgement, it *relocates* it. Objecting that dragons do not exist is a misunderstanding of the frame; objecting that the dragon changed its number of heads is a legitimate complaint about the work. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/fictionality/arrange-the-stages-of-the-fictional-contract-as-the-reader-enters-it ### 6. Genette divides the paratext into the peritext, which surrounds the text within the volume, and the epitext, which lies outside it. How many divisions is that? **Answer:** 2 **Why:** **Two.** Peritext is the title page, cover, preface and notes; epitext is interviews, letters and reviews. Both do the framing that Searle's argument requires but that no sentence of the novel can perform, the word "novel" under the title is the clearest single instruction a reader receives. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/fictionality/genette-divides-the-paratext-into-the-peritext-which-surrounds-the ### 7. Of the background facts in a fictional world — gravity, mortality, weather, hunger — roughly what percentage does a typical novel state explicitly? **Answer:** 5 (within ±6) **Why:** A very small percentage, perhaps five. Nearly the entire furniture of a fictional world arrives by minimal departure, unstated and unnoticed. A writer's real decisions are about which few facts to overwrite, and each one costs exposition that the carried-over background does not. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/fictionality/of-the-background-facts-in-a-fictional-world-gravity-mortality ### 8. Most of the sentences in a realist novel are, taken individually, true statements about the world. **Answer:** True **Why:** **True**, and it is why defining fiction by falsity fails. A novel can be dense with accurate observation and remains fiction because the author's commitment to its assertions is suspended, not because the assertions are false. Page: https://tryals.app/practice/literature-i/fictionality/most-of-the-sentences-in-a-realist-novel-are-taken-individually