Compte rendu dans Acta fabula: Ambitions et limites de la sémantique de la fiction, par Richard Saint-Gelais.
Lubomir Dolezel
Heterocosmica. Fiction and Possible Worlds
Johns Hopkins University Press
coll. "Parallax: Re-visions of Culture and Society"
Baltimore, Londres, 1998, 339 p.
Ean 13 (2000): 978-0801867385
Présentation de l'éditeur:
"The standard constrast between fiction and reality, notes Lubomir 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 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, Lubomir 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, intension, 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 [...]. By careful attention to philosophical inquiry into possible worlds, especially Saul Kipke's and Jaakko Hintikka's, and through long familiarity with literary theory, Dolezel brings us an unprecedented examination of the notion of fictional worlds."
"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
"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, Lubomír 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
Lubomír Dolezel is a professor emeritus and senior research fellow at the University of Toronto's Centre for Comparative Literature. He is the co-editor of Statistics and Style and author of Narrative Modes in Czech Literature. His Occidental Poetics has been translated into six European languages.
Table:
Prologue: From Nonexistent Entities to Fictional Worlds
One - Narrative Worlds
Starter Terms I
I. One-Person Worlds
II. Action and Motivation
III. Multiperson Worlds
IV. Interaction and Power
V. Narrative Modalities
Two - Intensional Functions
Starter Terms II
VI. Authentication
VII. Saturation
VIII. Modern Myth
Epilogue: Fictional Worlds in Transduction: Postmodernist Rewrites
Comprend un glossaire et une bibliographie importante.