Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Worlds (Parallax: Re-visions of Culture & Society) - Hardcover

Dolezel

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 080185749X ISBN 13: 9780801857492

Publisher: John Hopkins University Press, 1998

Synopsis

Acknowledging that fiction usually bears some kind of relation to reality - for example, the London of Dickens, this text offers a 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 - it relates them to literature, literary theory and narratology. The text also investigates theories of action, intention and literary communication to develop a system of concepts that allows an reinterpretation 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.

About this title

Review

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 )

Edition details

• Publisher: John Hopkins University Press
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 080185749X
• ISBN 13: 9780801857492
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 260