Lubomír Doležel

Lubomir Dolezel

"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." -- from the author's Preface The standard contrast between fiction and reality, notes Lubomr Dolezel, obscures an array of problems that have beset philosophers and literary critics for centuries. Commentators usually admit that fiction conveys some kind of truth -- the truth of the story of Faust, for instance. They acknowledge that fiction usually bears some kind of relation to reality -- for example, the London of Dickens. But both the status of the truth and the nature of the relationship have baffled, frustrated, or repelled a long line of thinkers. In Heterocosmica, Lubomr Dolezel offers nothing less than a complete theory of literary fiction based on the idea of possible worlds. Beginning with a discussion of the extant semantics and pragmatics of fictionality -- by Leibniz, Russell, Frege, Searle, Auerbach, and others -- he relates them to literature, literary theory, and narratology. He also investigates theories of action, intention, and literary communication to develop a system of concepts that allows him to offer perceptive reinterpretations of a host of classical, modern, and postmodern fictional narratives--from Defoe through Dickens, Dostoevsky, Huysmans, Bely, and Kafka to Hemingway, Kundera, Rhys, Plenzdorf, and Coetzee. By careful attention to philosophical inquiry into possible worlds, especially Saul Kripke's and Jaakko Hintikka's, and through long familiarity with literary theory, Dolezel brings us anunprecedented examination of the notion of fictional worlds. "This remarkable book sums up the life's work of one of the most serious, original, and balanced literary thinkers in North America. Focusing on the fictional universes projected by literary texts and the discursive means of achieving fictional effects, Lubomr Dolezel's Heterocosmica provides a general theory of literary meaning. The result is a highly distinguished contribution to the field of literary theory." -- Thomas Pavel, Princeton University

Fiction and Possible Worlds

Heterocosmica

In this study of the study of the linguistic approach to narrative structures, the author examines the question of point of view in fiction, drawing examples from Czech literature. He applies the methods of structural linguistics and literary studies as developed by the Prague Linguistic School, and the modern methodology of semiotics and text theory. This approach, widely used in Czechoslovakia and elsewhere in Europe, is not as well known as it should be in the English-speaking world. The essays may be read without any knowledge of the Czech language or Czech literary history. All Czech examples and materials are translated into English, preserving traits of the original texts which are relevant for structural analysis; the original Czech of all examples appears in an appendix. While the examples serve as documentation for theoretical statements, they also serve to familiarize the English-speaking reader with some of the major works of Czech fiction, especially those of Komenský (Comenius), Rais Ĉapek, Vanĉura, Pujmanová, Olbrachtm and Kundera. These works demonstrate the continuous bond between Czech fiction and European literary traditions, and offer original and profound insights into the cultural, social, and political experience of the Czech nation. Of particular interest to specialists in Slavic studies, general linguistics, poetics and text theory, and to students of general and comparative literature, Narrative Modes in Czech Literature deals with a significant problem of poetics and makes an original, constructive contribution to the theory of literature in the English language.

Lubomir Dolezel

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