Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics
Mimesis and Possible Worlds Author(s): Lubomír Doležel Source: Poetics Today, Vol. 9, No. 3, Aspects of Literary Theory (1988), pp. 475-496 Published by: Duke University Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1772728 . Accessed: 21/10/2011 04:24 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact
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Mimesisand PossibleWorlds Lubomir Dolezel Comparative Literature, Toronto
I. MimeticSemantics From its origins, i.e., the writings of Plato and Aristotle, Occidental aesthetic thinking has been dominated by the idea of mimesis: Fictions (fictional objects) are derived from reality, they are imitations/representations of actually existing entities. During its long reign, the idea has been interpreted in many different ways and, consequently, the term "mimesis" has accumulated several distinct meanings.' Undoubtedly, these ambiguities can be resolved only by a careful theoretical and semantic analysis of the concept.2 My paper is intended to contribute to this analysis by constructing or reconstructing the theory of mimesis which underlies the praxis of modern mimetic criticism. This approach will prove useful for my specific and restricted purpose: to offer a critique of the popular mimetic phraseology and to propose a promising alternative to mimetic theories of fictionality. Historians of all kinds have been involved in the search for actual 1. The most substantial reflections on "mimesis" can be found in commentaries on the foundational texts (cf. Else 1957: 12-39, 125-35; Dupont-Roc and Lallot 1980: 144-63; Zimbrich 1984). Ricoeur discovered in Aristotle's Poetics three meanings of "mimesis" (in the broad sense of "mimetic activity") (Ricoeur 1984: 45ff.; 5487). Spariosu has traced the concept to its pre-Socratic origins and concludes that there is "a functional distinction between non-imitative or pre-Platonic and imitative or Platonic mimesis" (Spariosu 1984: i). In this paper, I will repeat the common sin of modern times and neglect the pre-Platonic meaning. 2. Such an analysis is not advanced but rather hampered by shifting the focus of reflection from "mimesis" to "realism," an evasive move taken by many critics. Poetics Today 9:3 (1988). Copyright ? 1988 by The Porter Institute for Poetics and Semiotics. ccc 0333-5372/88/$2.50.
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counterparts of fictional persons, events, places. Let me quote reports about three recent discoveries: (a) The British historian Geoffrey Ashe (in association with Debrett's Peerage) published a book titled TheDiscoveryof King Arthur(1985) in which he claims to have identified the "original Arthur" in a fifth-century High King of the Britons called Riothamus. (b) In Robin Hood: An Historical Enquiry (1985), the legal historian John G. Bellamy continues the centuries-long efforts to apprehend the notorious outlaw. He finds a nineteenth-century hypothesis attractive according to which the prototype of Robin Hood was a valet to Edward II named Robert Hode. Historical prototypes of several other characters of the ballads are also identified. (c) In January 1985, Albert Boime, professor of art history at UCLA, presented a paper to the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society3 in which he claimed that the night sky of van Gogh's famous painting "Starry Night" corresponds to the astronomical facts of June 19, 1889, when the painting was executed (at 4 a.m. local time, to be exact). The prominent swirl in the painting was identified by Prof. Boime as a comet. This is the only liberty van Gogh took with the object of his mimesis; there was no comet in the sky of Provence on the critical night. Pursuing the matter, Boime concluded that the swirl derives from pictures of comets published in a 1881 issue of Harper'sWeekly,a magazine regularly read by van Gogh during that period. Van Gogh's swirl is thus explained as a second-degree mimetic representation, an imitation of a picture of a comet. Critics apply the same method as historians when they interpret fictional objects as representations of entities of the actual world. The theoretical assumption underlying this method can be expressed as a function which shall be called mimeticfunction: Fictional particular P/f/ representsactual particularP/a/.4
Mimetic criticism follows this function by matching a legendary character with a historical individual, a portrait with a real man, a fictional event with an actual occurrence, a fictional scene with a state of nature. Let us emphasize that the mimetic function is the core of a semantic 3. I summarize Boime's findings on the basis of a newspaper account. 4. The concept "particular" was specified by Strawson. A particular is an entity which can be identified by "individuating facts" (or "logically individuating descriptions"), i.e., facts (or descriptions) which are true of one and only one entity. The basic individuating fact of material bodies is spatio-temporal location (Strawson, 1959 esp. 9-30).
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theory, a theory of fictional reference. From the aestheticpoint of view, the mimetic function is neutral; it does not say whether the knowledge of the prototype enhances or hinders our aesthetic appreciation of a work of art. Mimetic semantics "works"if a particular prototype of the fictional entity can be found in the actual world (Tostoy's Napoleon-historical Napoleon, a fictional story-an actual event). The real test of this semantics comes when we not only do not know who or what the prototype is but, more importantly, do not even know where to look for it. Where are the actual individuals represented by Hamlet, Julien Sorel, Raskolnikov? It would obviously be absurd to claim that, say, the fictional Raskolnikov is a representation of an actual young man who lived in St. Petersburg around the middle of the nineteenth century. No historical search, however meticulous, would produce such an individual. The impossibility of discovering an actual particular behind every fictional representation has forced mimetic criticism into an interpretive detour: Fictional particularsare claimed to represent actual universals-psychological types, social groups, existential or historical conditions. The mimetic function is radically altered into a universalist version: Fictional particular P/f/ representsactual universalU/al.
This interpretive function characterizes the mainstream of mimetic criticism from Aristotle to Auerbach. The critical practice of Eric Auerbach's
Mimesis. The Representation of Reality in Western Literature
(German original, 1946; English trans., 1957), a book which more than any other restored the status of mimetic criticism after the modernist onslaught, is a rich source of examples of the universalist interpretation of fictional particulars: Not only Sancho but also Don Quijoteappearas persons representativeof contemporarySpanishlife.... Sancho is a peasant from La Mancha,and Don Quijote ... a little countrysquirewho has lost his mind. (342f.) We are confronted in their boredom[the boredomof de la Mole'sguests in Stendhal'sLe rougeet le noir]by a politicaland ideologicalphenomenon of the Restaurationperiod. (456) The novel [MadameBovary]is the representationof an entire human existence which has no issue. (488) There are passages in it [Zola's Germinal] which . . . depict with exemplary.
clarity and simplicity,the situation and awakeningof the fourth estate. (512)
If fictional particulars are taken as representations of actual universals, mimetic criticism becomes a "language without particulars" (Strawson 1959: 214-25). It is logically equivalent to well-known systems of universalist hermeneutics, such as Augustinian (with the inter-
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pretant of "divine history") or Hegelian ("type" as interpretant). The specific interpretant of Auerbach's universalist semantics is secular history, especially the changing forms of "everyday life." Through the application of the universalist mimetic function, literary fictions are transformed into categorized instances of actual history. Auerbachian criticism is a universalist interpretation of history based on fictions.5 The dubious epistemological foundation of this interpretive practice becomes especially obvious if we note that an Auerbachian critic performs a double operation. First, he selects an interpretive system (ideological, psychological, sociological, etc.) and transcribes reality into its abstract categories; second, he matches the fictional particulars with the postulated interpretive categories. Since one and the same person performs both the categorization of reality and the matching of fictional individuals, we should not be surprised by the high ratio of "success" of universalist interpretations. In Auerbachian criticism, fictional particulars, reduced to actual universals, disappear from semantic interpretations. Not surprisingly, many critics and theoreticians have been dissatisfied with such a semantics. What appeals to us, what we love or hate, in artistic representations are concrete fictional persons in specific spatial and temporal settings, linked by peculiar relationships and engaged in unique struggles, quests, victories and frustrations.6 Without denying the significance of universalist interpretations for certain purposes of general and comparative literary studies, we must state emphatically that a semantics of fictionality which cannot accommodate the concept of fictional particular is seriously defective. Is it possible for mimetic criticism to avoid translating fictional particulars into actual universals? The answer is provided, in a surprising twist, by another best seller of mimetic criticism, Ian Watt's The Rise of the Novel (1957). To be sure Watt, who is explicitly indebted to Auerbach, practices universalist semantics (see, for example, his interpreta5. Here is a typical passage from Mimesis which flagrantly blends fictional and historical categories: "If we ask what it was that released the powerful inner movement in the people of the Russian works of the nineteenth century, the answer must be as follows: In the first place, the infiltration of modern European and especially of German and French forms-of life and thought .... The process of coming to terms [die Auseinandersetzung] was dramatic and confused. Observing as it is reflected [spiegelt] in Tolstoi and Dostoevski we clearly grasp the savage, tempestuous, and uncompromising nature of Russian acceptance or rejection of European culture (sic!) [Wesen]" (465ff.; 523ff.). 6. According to Martinez-Bonati, "a world of individuals" is "the fundamental compass of narrative." "That the symbolic meaning or the general truth of what is represented may occassionally transcend this compass in ultimate significance Cervantes' Don Quixote must not be allowed to obscure this basic phenomenon.... is not basically a type or symbol, but an individual" (Martinez-Bonati 1981: 24).
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tion of Robinson Crusoe as a cross-breed between homoeconomicusand Puritan). The core of his interpretive method is, however, revealed in formulations of the following kind:7 Defoe ... portraysthe personalrelationshipsof MollFlanders. (111) We are given [by Richardson]a highly detailed descriptionof Grandison Hall. (26) Fielding lets us into Blifil'smind. (263) We have not been taken [by Fielding]close enough to Tom'smind. (274) Obviously, these interpretations preserve fictional particulars (Moll Flanders's personal relationships, Grandison Hall, Blifil's mind, Tom's consciousness) but do not match them with actual entities (particular or universal). The statements of Watt's criticism are not instances of the mimetic function. Rather, they identify the source of representation, specifically the author. We are told who portrays, gives us a description of, lets us into, or keeps us out of, the mind of a fictional particular. A new interpretive function obtains: Actual sourceS/al represents(i.e. providestherepresentation)offictional particular P/f/.
Owing to an insidious semantic shift of the predicate, mimetic function is replaced by a pseudomimetic function. I speak about pseudomimesis because the statements of a Wattian critic seem to express the mimetic relationship while, in fact, they do not. They do not derive fictional particulars from actual prototypes. Rather, they presuppose that fictional particulars somehow pre-exist the act of representation. There are (somewhere) Moll's personal relationships, Grandison Hall, Blifil's mind and Tom's consciousness and Defoe, Richardson, and Fielding, having privileged access to them, report on them, describe them, withhold information about them or share their knowledge with the reader. A fiction writer describes, studies, presents fictional characters just as a historian does with historical personalities. In the Wattian perspective, the fiction writer is a historian of fictional realms. Pseudomimetic interpretations seem to dominate the practice of contemporary mimetic criticism. In the most popular version of this criticism, a text-theoretical term replaces the name of the author in the position of the S/a/ argument. This kind of pseudomimesis is characteristic of the interpretive practice of Dorrit Cohn's well-known book Transparent Minds (1978). Cohn's is a study of mimesis as a textual pro7. I am concentrating on Watt's fictional semantics, leaving aside the dominant topic of his book, i.e., the mimetic history of literary fictions. It should be mentioned, however, that the principles of his mimetic history are no more than a projection of the principles of mimetic semantics onto the time axis.
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cess, as a phenomenon occurring between literary texts and fictional entities. The source of representation is specified in terms of narrative genres or modes, narrative discourse types, stylistic devices: Aschenbach'smind [in Deathin Veniceis] rendered largely by means of psycho-narration. (26) This story [Musil's"Die Vollendung der Liebe"]portrays the mind of a woman.... (41) The narratedmonologue is a choice mediumfor revealinga fictionalmind suspended in an instant present. (126) Chronologicalmonologue ... directlyquotes past thoughtsand memories. (253)8
By focusing on the relationship between the literary text and the fictional world, Cohn has advanced contemporary fictional semantics. At the same time, her book reminds us that a text-theoretically based narratology does not provide an automatic escape from pseudomimesis. It does not make any difference whether the "describing," "portraying," "exploring" of fictional entities is assigned to an author or to a textual device or to a narrator. In all its variants, pseudomimesis is based on the presupposition that fictional realms in general and fictional minds in particular exist independent of the act of representation, awaiting their discovery and description.9 Pseudomimesis precludes the formulation and study of the fundamental question of fictional semantics: How do fictional worlds come into being? Our analysis of the interpretive practice of three prominent critics leads to the conclusion that mimesis as a theory of fictionality is trapped in a double bind. If it insists on explaining all fictional objects as representations of actual entities, it is forced into a universalist frame of reference; fictional particulars are semantically interpreted by being eliminated. If fictional particulars are preserved, they are not explained as representations of actual entities; they are taken as preexistent and a source of representation is assumed to have recovered them. Neither universalist semantics, nor pseudomimesis succeed in their attempt to transcend the proper scope of mimetic theory given by the original mimetic function. These interpretive strategies either substantially alter (in the case of the universalist function) or make vacuous (in the case of the pseudomimetic function) the idea of mimetic representation. To transcend the restrictions of mimetic theory, we must search for a radically different semantics of fictionality. 8. The narrative device as a source of representation is often replaced by the anthropomorphic "narrator":"Within the confines of third-person fiction . . . a narrator's magic power allows him to see into sleeping minds quite as readily as into waking ones" (52). "Hamsun's narrator [in Hunger] leaves his 'strange and fantastic mood' intact, merely recording it with ... seismographicaccuracy"(156). 9. In this respect, pseudomimesis can be said to hark back to Leibnizian metaphysics (see here page 488).
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II. Possible-WorldsSemantics non-mimetic semantics of fictionality was guided by for a search My the realization that the difficulties of mimetic theory arise from its tying fictions exclusively to the actual world. All fictions, including the most fantastic ones, are interpreted as referring to one and only one "universe of discourse," the actual world. The mimetic function is a formula for integrating fictions into the actual world. Mimetic semantics is situated within a one-world model frame. A radical alternative to mimesis will be a fictional semantics defined within a multiple-world model frame. Mimetic semantics will be replaced by possible-worldssemanticsof fictionality.10 The development of a fictional semantics based in the multipleworlds frame is stimulated by a vital trend in contemporary logical and philosophical semantics. Ever since Kripke (1963) suggested the "classical" Leibnizian concept as interpretant of an axiomatic set-theoretic model of logical modalities, the entire system of formal logic has been reinterpreted on the assumption that "our actual world is surrounded by an infinity of other possible worlds" (Bradley and Swartz 1979: 2).11 During the 1970's initial attempts were made to formulate possibleworlds approaches to literary fictions (van Dijk 1974/75; Pavel 1975/ 76; Eco 1979; Dolezel 1979; cf. also Kanyo 1984).12 10. I am leaving aside Russell's well-known semantics, which treats expressions referring to fictional entities as "empty terms" (Russell 1905; 1919). Russell's theory of fictional reference is located within the one-world model frame and, therefore, is exposed to the same difficulties as mimetic semantics. There is also no need to discuss here the view that fictional texts are "self-referential" nor the various pragmatic accounts that explain fictionality as a speech-act convention. Although these proposals have become popular in contemporary literary and philosophical semantics, we must agree in principle with the criticism of these approaches expressed, respectively, by Kerbrat-Orecchioni (1982) and Cohen (1980: 162ff.). 11. It should be noted that, as a formal model, the possible-worlds frame does not require any ontological commitment. Pointing specifically to Hintikka's and Kripke's proposals, a Soviet logician has emphasized that they should be taken "simply as mathematical models of the corresponding logical calculi, without any philosophical interpretation" (Slinin 1967: 137). Outside of formal logic, however, the model cannot preserve ontological innocence. The ontological split has been recognized by Adams who distinguished between the "actualist" and the "possibilist" versions of possible-worlds semantics. Possibilism treats all possible worlds as ontologically uniform; in actualism (a version of ontological realism), the actual world has a privilege of empirical existence while the other worlds are its possible alternates (Adams 1974). It seems that the actualist position is inscribed in Kripke's original model structure where one set (G) is singled out from the set of sets K (Kripke 1963: 804). 12. It is symptomatic that, during the domination of the one-world model, a Leibnizian possible-worlds semantics of fictionality, outlined in the eighteenth century by Baumgarten, Breitinger and Bodmer (cf. Abrams 1953: 278ff.; Doleiel forthcoming), was practically forgotten.
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The possible-worlds model frame offers a new foundation for fictional semantics by providing an interpretation of the concept of fictional world. It must be emphasized, however, that a comprehensive theory of literary fictions will not emerge from a mechanical appropriation of the conceptual system of possible-worlds semantics. Fictional worlds of literature have a specific character by being embodied in literary texts and by functioning as cultural artifacts. A comprehensive theory of literary fictions will arise from a fusion of possible-worlds semantics with text theory. I want to prepare the ground for such a fusion by taking possible-worlds semantics both as a theoretical foundation of the semantics of fictionality and as a theoretical background against which the specific properties of literary fictions can be grasped. Let me first formulate three fundamental theses of fictional semantics which can be derived from the possible-worlds model frame: 1. Fictionalworldsare sets of possible states of affairs. The most important feature of the possible-worlds model is its legitimation of nonactualized possibles (individuals, attributes, events, states of affairs, etc.) (cf. Bradley and Swartz 1974: 7ff.). A fictional semantics derived from this model will accept the concept of fictional particular without difficulties. While Hamlet is not an actual man, he is a possible individual inhabiting the fictional world of Shakespeare's play. Rather than being deleted in the process of semantic interpretation, fictional particulars can be described and specified in their diverse properties and aspects. If fictional particulars are interpreted as non-actualized possibles, the difference between fictional and actual persons, events, places, etc. becomes obvious. Everybody would agree that fictional characters cannot meet, interact, communicate, with actual people (cf. Walton 1978/79: 17). In the fictional semantics of the one-world model frame, however, this distinction is often blurred on the account of shared proper names. Possible-worlds semantics correctly insists that fictional individuals cannot be identified with actual individuals of the same name (cf. Ishiguro 1981: 75). Tolstoy's Napoleon or Dickens's London are not identical with the historical Napoleon or the geographical London. Fictional individuals are not dependent for their existence and properties on actual prototypes. It is irrelevant for the fictional Robin Hood whether a historical Robin Hood existed or not. To be sure, a relationship between the historical Napoleon and all the possible fictional Napoleons has to be postulated; this relationship, however, reaches over world boundaries and requires cross-worldidentification.'3 13. Hintikka's "individuation function" is a formal tool of cross-identification. It "picks out from several possible worlds a member of their domains as the 'embodiment' of that individual in this possible world or perhaps rather as the role which that individual plays under a given course of events" (Hintikka 1975: 30).
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The identity of fictional individuals is protected by the boundary between the actual and the possible worlds. As non-actualized possibles, all fictional entities are ontologically homogeneous. Tolstoy's Napoleon is no less fictional than his Pierre Bezuchov and Dickens's London is no more actual than Lewis's Wonderland. The principle of ontological homogeneity is a necessary condition of the coexistence and compossibility of fictional particulars; it explains why fictional individuals can interact and communicate with one another. A naive view which presents fictional individuals as a mixed bag of "real" people and "purely fictitious" characters is explicitly refuted.'4 Ontological homogeneity epitomizes the sovereignty of fictional worlds. 2. Theset of fictionalworldsis unlimitedand maximallyvaried. If fictional worlds are interpreted as possible worlds, literature is not restricted to the imitations of the actual world. "The possible is wider than the actual" (Russell 1937 [1900]: 66; cf. Plantinga 1977: 245). To be sure, possible-worlds semantics does not exclude from its scope fictional worlds similar or analogous to the actual world; at the same time, it has no trouble including the most fantastic worlds, far removed from, or contradictory to, "reality."The whole gamut of possible fictions is covered by one and the same semantics. There is no justification for a double semantics of fictionality, one for fictions of the "realistic" type and another one for "fantastic" fictions. The worlds of realistic literature are no less fictional than the worlds of fairy-tale or science fiction.'5 It is well-known that Leibniz imposed a restriction on possible worlds but this is a purely logical one: Possible worlds have to be free of contradictions (Leibniz 1875: III, 574; Loemker 1956: II, 833). Worlds that imply contradictions are impossible, unthinkable, "empty."Do we have to accept this restriction in fictional semantics? I will deal with this question in the last section of this paper. At the moment, I shall only note that, even if the possible-worlds model is restricted to the Leibnizian universe, it provides a much larger space for literary fictions than the one-world model frame.16 14. The "mixed-bag" conception requires a double semantics for fictional texts, one for sentences about Pierre Bezuchov, another one for sentences about Napoleon (cf. Pollard 1973: 61; Pelc 1977: 266). In reading fictional texts, we are expected to switch constantly from one mode of interpretation to another. 15. It has been observed that the same principle is valid from the point of view of the reader: "For the reader it is not easier to create and believe in the welldocumented world of Zola than it is for him to imagine hobbits or elves; the imaginative leap into the novel's world of time and space must be made in both cases" (Hutcheon 1980: 78). 16. It might, in fact, appear that the possible-worlds model frame is so broad as to be of little interest for empirical study. We should recall, however, that, for a
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While imposing a logical restriction on possible worlds, Leibniz left open the variety of their designs. He stipulated different "laws" ("general order") for different possible worlds. The laws of nature are just a special case of possible orders, valid in the actual and the "physically possible" worlds (cf. Bradley and Swartz 1979: 6).17 A general order determines a possible world by operating as a constraint on admissibility: only such possible entities are admitted into the world as comply with its general order. Thus, the set of all possibles is split into "many different combinations of compossibles" (Leibniz 1875: III, 572-76; Loemker 1956: II, 1075ff.). In this perspective, a fictional world appears as a set of compossible fictional particulars characterized by its own global, macrostructual organization. Structure and specificity are complementary aspects of the worlds' individuation. The macrostructural conception of fictional worlds has proved most fruitful for literary semantics (cf. Dolezel 1985). Here, I cannot go into the identification of the diverse global constraints which can be imposed on fictional worlds nor the description of the resulting variety of world structures. I shall just give one illustrative example. It has been pointed out that modalitites (modal systems) can operate as macrogenerators of fictional worlds (Greimas 1966; 1970; Dolezel 1976). By considering alethic modalities (the system of possibility, impossibility and necessity) in this role, we can generate not only the well-known natural and supernatural worlds but also the up-to-now unnoticed hybrid world.18 This example indicates how "fictional world" defined as macrostructure of compossible fictional particulars becomes an operational concept of literary analysis. 3. Fictional worlds are accessible from the actual world. Possible-worlds semantics legitimates the sovereignty of fictional worlds vis-a-vis the actual world; at the same time, however, its notion of accessibility offers an explanation of our contacts with fictional worlds. The access remajority of semantic problems, a restricted set of relevant possible worlds can be determined (cf. Hintikka 1975: 83). 17. "Worldsmay differ from the actual world not only in number and quantity [of their elements] but in quality. Other worlds might have other laws of motion .... Every causal law, in fact, (though not Causality itself) might have been different" (Russell 1937 [1900]: 68). 18. It has been proposed (Dolezel 1984) that the world of some of Kafka'sfictions (e.g., "The Metamorphosis"or "ACountry Doctor") is a hybrid world. It is interesting to note in this connection Austin'sopinion recorded by Berlin. When asked if the hero of "The Metamorphosis"should be spoken of "as a man with the body of a cockroach, or as a cockroach with the memories and consciousness of man," Austin replied: "Neither ... In such cases we should not know what to say. This is when we say 'words fail us', and mean this literally. We should need a new word. The old one just would not fit" (Berlin 1973: 11). Austin did not notice that the old word hybridfits this new case of problematicidentity.
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quires crossing of world boundaries, transit from the realm of actual existents into the realm of fictional possibles. Under this condition, physical access is impossible. Fictional worlds are accessible from the actual world only through semioticchannels by means of information processing. The actual world participates in the formation of fictional worlds by providing models of its structure (including the author's experience), by anchoring the fictional story to a historical event (Wolterstorff 1980: 189), by transmitting "brute facts" or cultural "realemes" (Even-Zohar 1980), etc. In these information-transfers, the actual-world "material" enters the structuring of fictional worlds. Literary scholars have studied intensively the participation of "reality" in the genesis of fictions. Possible-worlds semantics makes us aware that the actual material has to undergo a substantial transformation at the world boundary: it has to be converted into non-actual possibles, with all the ontological, logical and semantical consequences. We have already noted this conversion in the special case of fictional individuals; actual-world (historical) persons are allowed to enter a fictional world only if they assume the status of possible alternates. In the reception of fictional worlds, access is provided through literary texts which are read and interpreted by actual readers. The reading and interpretation involves many different procedures and depends on many variables, e.g., the type of reader, his style of reading, the purpose of his reading, etc. The details of the access procedures will be revealed only by studying actual reading and interpretation activities. Here, let us just note that, thanks to semiotic mediation, an actual reader can "observe" fictional worlds and make them a source of his experience, just as he observes and experientially appropriates the actual world.19 The need of semiotic mediation in the access to fictional worlds explains why fictional semantics has to resist all attempts at "decentering," "alienating" and by-passing the literary text. A theory of reading which annihilates the literary text blows up the main bridge between actual readers and the universe of fictions. The reader of such a theory isolated in his narcissistic self-processing is condemned to lead 19. Using the example of dramatic performance, Wolterstorffclaims: "To regard us as watching the dramatis personae-that is just confusion. ... It is not the case that I saw Hedda shoot herself, since in that world [of the drama] I don't even exist, and so can't see Hedda .... What I can see is someone playing the role of Hedda" (Wolterstorff 1980: 11Iff.). Wolterstorffdenies the actual spectator access to fictional worlds precisely because he does not recognize actors as semiotic mediators. Walton, also ignoring semiotic mediation, has to make the implausible assumption that the reader/spectator is both actual and fictional (Walton 1978/79: 21ff.).
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the most primitive mode of existence, existence without imaginary possible alternatives. When speaking about semiotic textual mediation, we already invoke a specific feature of literary fictions which points outside possibleworlds semantics. I do not claim to have exhausted the theoretical potentials of this model but it does seem that, at this point, we have reached the limits of its usefulness. III.Specific Featuresof FictionalWorlds of Literature I suggested earlier that the possible-worlds model frame is appropriate for providing the foundations of the theory of literary fictions but that it cannot substitute for such a theory. If we do not want to turn the possible-worlds model into a collection of theoretically useless metaphors, we must perceive the limits of its explanatory power with respect to cultural artifacts. Specific features of fictional worlds of literature cannot be derived from the possible-worlds model of formal semantics; yet they can be identified only against the background of this model frame. I shall indicate only three such features: 1. Fictionalworldsof literatureare incomplete.This property of fictional worlds has been widely recognized (Lewis 1978: 42; Heintz 1979: 90ff.; Howell 1979: 134ff.; Parsons 1980: 182-85; Wolterstorff 1980: 131-34). Incompleteness is a manifestation of the specific character of literary fictions since the possible worlds of the model frame (including the actual world) are assumed to be complete ("Carnapian") logical structures. The property of incompleteness implies that many conceivable statements about literary fictional worlds are undecidable. Using the popular issue of the number of Lady Macbeth's children as his example, Wolterstorff has succinctly justified this interpretive principle: "We shall never know how many children had Lady Macbeth in the worlds of Macbeth. That is not because to know this would require knowledge beyond the capacity of human beings. It is because there is nothing of the sort to know" (Wolterstorff 1980: 133; cf. Heintz 1979: 94).20 If incompleteness is a logical "deficiency" of fictional worlds, it is an important factor of their aesthetic efficiency. Empty domains are constituents of the fictional world's structure no less than "filled" domains. The distribution of filled and empty domains is governed by aesthetic principles, i.e., by a writer's style, by period or genre conventions, etc. Several recent studies in literary semantics have revealed the aesthetic significance of incompleteness. Thus, for example, I have indicated 20. According to Lewis, answers to such "silly questions" as "what is Inspector Lestrade's blood type" would doubtless fall into the category of neither true nor false statements (Lewis 1978: 43).
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(Dolezel 1980a) how the incompleteness of fictional characters reflects the stylistic principles of Romantic narrative; specifically, the focus on a physical detail surrounded by emptiness provides the impetus for a symbolic reading of this detail. Pavel has observed that "authors and cultures have the choice to minimize or to maximize" the "unavoidable incompleteness" of fictional worlds; he has suggested that cultures and periods of a "stable world view" will tend to minimize the incompleteness, while periods of "transition and conflict" tend to maximize it (Pavel 1983: 51ff.). Ryan (1984) offers a triadic typology of fictional worlds on the same foundation; her proposal is especially stimulating in demonstrating how the types can be generated in a graduate emptying of the domains of the complete world "model." Ryan's most complete world, the world of realistic fiction, has been a puzzle to fictional semantics. Now we are beginning to realize that its realitylike completeness is nothing more than an illusion "destined precisely to camouflage [its] blanks" (Dallenbach 1984: 201). Realistic fictional worlds do not differ from other fictional worlds in kind but only in degree of semantic saturation.21 2. Many fictionalworldsof literatureare not semanticallyhomogeneous.We have claimed that fictional worlds are formed by macrostructural constraints which determine the set of their compossible constituents. At the same time, however, we can easily discover that many fictional worlds manifest a complex inner semantic structuring. Such worlds are sets of semantically diversified domains integrated into a structural whole by the formative macroconstraints. The lack of semantic homogeneity is especially prominent in the fictional worlds of narrative literature. A prime example of the semantic partitioning of narrative worlds is provided by agential domains. Every fictional agent forms his own domain constituted by his property set, his relation network, his belief set, his action scope, etc. (cf. Pavel 1980). If there is just one agent in the world-as in Hemingway's story "Big Two-Hearted River"this agent's domain is equivalent to the fictional world. In the more common case of multi-agent worlds, the fictional world is a set of agential domains held together by the macrostructural conditions of the agents' compossibility. I have already mentioned that modalities represent an important formative macroconstraint of narrative worlds. Modal structuring yields a variety of homogeneous, as well as unhomogeneous, narrative 21. If the "filling-in of gaps," postulated by phenomenological theories of reading (cf. Iser 1978), applies to the empty domains, it is a reductionist procedure. Fictional-world structures, richly diversified in their incompleteness, are reduced to a uniform structure of the complete (Carnapian)world.
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worlds. Thus, for example, the world of realistic fiction is an alethically homogeneous, i.e., natural (physically possible) world; on the opposite pole, an alethically homogeneous supernatural (physically impossible) world (the world of deities, demons, etc.) can be conceived. A mythological world, however, is a semantically unhomogeneous structure constituted by the coexistence of natural and supernatural domains. The domains are divided by sharp boundaries but, at the same time, are linked by the possibility of cross-boundary contacts. The case of the mythological world demonstrates that semantic unhomogeneity is a primordial feature of narrative-world formation. A fictional world of narrative has to be a complex set of diversified domains to accommodate many different possible individuals, states of affairs, events, actions, etc. This semantic complexity leads some critics to view narrative fictional worlds as miniature models of the actual world. Such a view, however, is misleading. Semantic complexity is a prime manifestation of the structural self-sufficiency of fictional worlds. 3. Fictionalworldsof literatureare constructsof textualactivity.Having characterized fictional worlds as sets of non-actualized possibles, we have identified their general ontological base. We have left unspecified the characteristics which differentiate fictional entities from other nonactualized possibles. Hamlet is a different kind of possible individual from the present king of France.22 We have to assume that a special operation is needed to transmute non-actual possibles into fictional entities, to assign fictional existence to possible worlds. The first, Leibnizian version of the possible-worlds semantics of fictionality has suggested one solution to this problem. According to this view, possible worlds acquire fictional existence by being discovered (cf. Dolezel forthcoming). This explanation is based on Leibniz's assumption that all possible worlds have a transcendental existence (in the divine mind) (cf. Stalnaker 1976: 65). Thanks to the power of his imagination, the poet gains a privileged access to these worlds, as the scientist using his microscope gains access to the invisible microworld. Existing as non-actualized possibles in transcendental obscurity, fictional worlds are publicly displayed in poet's descriptions. Contemporary thinking about the origins of possible worlds is not bound by the metaphysical assumptions of Leibniz's philosophy. Possible worlds are not discovered in some remote, invisible or transcendent 22. The difference is revealed by Linski's "test": "Though we can ask whether Mr. Pickwick was married or not, we cannot sensibly ask whether the present king of France is bald or not" (Linski 1962: 231; cf. Woods 1974: 14). Of course, nothing could prevent the present king of France from becoming a fictional individual if he were transferred from logical examples into fictional texts.
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depositories but are constructedby human minds and hands. This explanation has been explicitly given by Kripke: "One stipulates possible worlds, one does not discover them by powerful microscopes" (Kripke 1972: 267; cf. Bradley and Swartz 1979: 63ff.). The construction of fictional possible worlds occurs, primarily, in diverse cultural activities -poetry and music composition, mythology and story telling, painting and sculpting, theater and dance performance, film making, etc. Many semiotic systems-language, gestures, motions, colours, shapes, tones, etc.-serve as media of fictional world-construction. Literary fictions are constructed in the creative act of the poetic imagination, in the activity of poiesis. Literary text is the medium of this activity. With the semiotic potentials of the literary text, the poet brings into fictional existence a possible world which did not exist prior to his poietic act. In this explanation of the origins of fictional worlds, constructional texts are sharply differentiated from descriptive texts. Descriptive texts are representations of the actual world, of a world existing prior to any textual activity. In contrast, constructional texts are prior to their worlds; fictional worlds are dependent on, and determined by, constructional texts. As textually determined constructs, fictional worlds cannot be altered or cancelled, while the versions of the actual world provided by descriptive texts are subject to constant modifications and refutations.23 We have emphasized the crucial role of the poet's imagination in the construction of fictional worlds of literature. Literary semantics, however, is concerned primarily with the semiotic medium of world construction, with the literary text. Constructional texts can be called fictional texts in the functional sense: they are actual texts with the potential of constructing fictional worlds. However, the role of the fictional text does not end with its serving as the medium of the poet's constructive activity; it is also the semiotic means for storing and transmitting fictional worlds. We have already mentioned that fictional worlds are publicly and permanently available in fictional texts. As long as the text exists, its world can be reconstructed at any time in the reading and interpretive activities of potential receivers. From the viewpoint of the reader, the fictional text can be characterized as a set of instructions according to which the fictional world is to be recovered and reassembled. The crucial link between fictional semantics and text theory now 23. Radical constructivism obliterates the distinction between world description and world construction, proclaiming all texts world-constructing and all worlds dependent on texts (cf. Goodman 1978; Schmidt 1984). For a criticism of this "semiotic idealism," see Savan (1983).
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becomes obvious. The genesis, preservation and reception of fictional worlds depend on special semiotic capacities of fictional texts. For a theory of literary fictions, it is especially important to pinpoint the textual capacity which can be credited with the genesis of fictional worlds. I have suggested earlier (Dolezel 1980b) that this world-constructing capacity can be identified if literary texts are interpreted in terms of the Austinian theory ofperformativespeech acts.24Austin has stipulated that performative speech acts carry a special illocutionary force; because of this force, the utterance of a performative speech act under appropriate felicity conditions (given by extralinguistic conventions) produces a change in the world (Austin 1962; 1971; cf. Searle 1979: 16ff.; Urmson 1979). The genesis of fictional worlds can be seen as an extreme case of world-change, a change from nonexistence into (fictional) existence. The special illocutionary force of literary speech acts that produces this change is called the force of authentication. A non-actualized possible state of affairs becomes a fictional existent by being authenticated in a felicitously uttered literary speech act.25To exist fictionally means to exist as a textually authenticated possible. The theory of authentication assumes that the force of authentication is exercised differently in different literary text types (genres). In the particular case of the narrative text type (see Dolezel 1980b), the force of authentication is assigned to the speech acts originating with the so-called narrator. The narrator's authority to issue authenticating speech acts is given by the conventions of the narrative genre.26 The mechanism of authentication is best demonstrated in the case of the "omniscient," "reliable," authoritative Er-form narrator. Whatever is uttered by this source automatically becomes a fictional existent. Other types of narrators, such as the "unreliable," "subjective" Ich-form narrator, are sources with a lower degree of authentication authority. Since fictional existence depends on the act of authentication, its character is, ultimately, determined by the degree of authority 24. A link between literature and performatives was already perceived by Barthes: "Writing [in the sense of ecriture] can no longer designate an operation of recording, notation, representation, 'depiction' (as the Classics would say); rather, it designates exactly what linguists, referring to Oxford philosophy, call a performative" (Barthes 1977: 145). Barthes did not go beyond this passing remark. 25. If we want to express the authenticating illocutionary act by an explicit performative formula, we could suggest the prefix: Let it be. 26. It is true that the actual source of all speech acts in narrative is the author. In the narrative text itself, however, there is no author's discourse. By a generic convention, discourses of the narrative text are assigned to different fictional sources (the narrator, the acting characters). It is a commonly accepted principle of narrative theory that the narrator cannot be identified with the author. For this reason, the so-called sayso pragmatics of fictionality which relies on the author's authority (Woods 1974: 24ff.) is misdirected.
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of the authenticating source. The theory of authentication leads us to acknowledge different modes of fictional existence correlated with the different degrees of the text's force of authentication. Thus, fictional existence is not only determined but also manipulated by the authenticating narrative act. IV. Self-Voiding Texts and ImpossibleFictionalWorlds The illocutionary force of a performative speech act is activated only if its particular felicity conditions are met. If a breach of any of these conditions occurs, the act is "null and void"; no change in the world is produced. A different kind of failure of the performative act is self-voiding. A performative utterance is said to be self-voiding if it is abused, if, for example, it is issued insincerely (Austin 1971: 14ff.). Like the breach of felicity conditions, self-voiding deprives the speech act of its performative force. I consider the concept of self-voiding highly important for the theory of fictional narratives. It offers an explanation of diverse nonstandard narratives of modern literature which arise, in fact, from a cultivation of performative failure. The authenticating act of fictional narratives is abused in many different ways by not being performed "seriously." I shall present two examples of such abuse: (a) In skaz narrative, the authenticating act is abused by being treated with irony. The skaz narrator engages in a non-binding game of story-telling, moving freely from the third to the first person, from a lofty to a colloquial style, from the "omniscient" to the "limited knowledge" posture. Skaz has been extremely popular in Russian fiction, especially since it was established by Gogol (cf. Ejchenbaum 1919). (b) In self-disclosingnarrative ("metafiction"), the authenticating act is abused by being "laid bare." All procedures of fiction-making, particularly the authentication procedure, are practiced overtly as literary conventions. Self-disclosing narrative has achieved great popularity in modern literature (the "nouveau roman," John Barth, John Fowles) and has been very attractive to critics (cf. Hutcheon 1980; Christensen 1981). It is a radical manifestation of the power of literature to generate aesthetic effects by flaunting its hidden foundations. Both the skaz and the self-disclosing narrative are self-voiding; in both, the authenticating act loses its performative force. Fictional worlds constructed by self-voiding narratives lack authenticity. They are introduced and presented but their fictional existence is not definitely established. Self-voiding narratives are games with fictional existence. On the one hand, possible entities seem to be brought into
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fictional existence since standard authentication procedures are applied; on the other hand, the status of this existence is made dubious because the very foundation of the authenticating mechanism is revealed as mere convention. Ultimately, it is impossible to decide what does exist and what does not in the fictional worlds constructed by self-voiding narratives. In the case of self-voiding narratives, the fictional world's lack of authenticity is due to a disturbance affecting the authenticating act. The roots of the disturbance are pragmatic, although its presence is manifest in the text's semantic features. However, a disruption of the fictional world's authenticity can also be achieved by a purely semantic strategy. Impossiblefictional worlds, i.e., worlds that include inner contradictions, imply contradictory states of affairs, are a case in point. O. Henry's story "Roads of Destiny" is an example of such a world structure. Its protagonist dies three times in three different ways. Since all the conflicting versions of his demise are constructed by the authoritative narrator, they are all fully authentic. They exist in the fictional world, juxtaposed, unreconciled, unexplained. Ultimately, it is impossible to decide which version of the event is a legitimate constituent of the fictional world. Impossible worlds are no less an abuse of fictionmaking than self-voiding narratives. In this case, however, the authenticity of fictional existence is denied by the logico-semantic structure of the world itself. Literature offers the means for constructing impossible worlds but at the price of frustrating the whole enterprise: the fictional existence of impossible worlds cannot be made authentic. The Leibnizian restriction is circumvented but not cancelled. The close link between the lack of authenticity and the impossibility of fictional worlds is confirmed by narratives in which both the pragmatic and the semantic disturbance operate. Such a double manoeuvre undermines fictional existence in Robbe-Grillet's novel La maison de rendez-vous (The House of Assignation).
Robbe-Grillet's text certainly constructs an impossible world, a maze of contradictions of several different orders: a) one and the same event is introduced in several conflicting versions; b) one and the same place (Hong Kong) is and is not the setting of the novel; c) events are ordered in contradictory temporal sequences (A precedes B, B precedes A); d) one and the same fictional entity recurs in several existential modes (as fictional "reality" or theater performance or sculpture or painting, etc.).27 Like 0. Henry's "Roads of Destiny," La maison de rendez-vousconstructs several incompatible alternate plots or plot 27. The "mixing"of different modes of existence seems to be a universal feature of modern art; its explicit demonstration is the cubisticcollage which incorporates real objects in paintings (cf. Hintikka 1975: 246).
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fragments (cf. Ricardou 1973: 102ff.). In Robbe-Grillet's case, however, the impossible logico-semantic world structure is coupled with a pragmatic flouting of the authenticating narrative act. The act of world-constructing is tentative, unfinished, crumbling into a series of frustrated attempts. As a result, the text of the novel is a sequence of drafts, with recurring cuts, new beginnings, corrections, deletions, additions, etc. La maison de rendez-vousis a self-disclosing narrative of a most radical type, an overt demonstration of fiction-making as a trial-and-error procedure.28 Robbe-Grillet's novel reconfirms the ultimate impossibility of constructing a fictionally authentic impossible world. This undertaking necessarily leads to the ruin of the very mechanism of fiction-making. Literature, however, turns this destructive process into a new achievement. Fiction-making becomes overtly what it has been covertly: a game of possible existence. References Abrams, M. H. 1953 The Mirror and the Lamp: Romantic Theory and the Critical Tradition (LondonOxford-New York: Oxford University Press). Adams, Robert M. 1974 "Theories of Actuality," Nous 8: 211-31. Austin, J. L. 1962 How to Do Things with Words(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). 1971 "Performative-Constative." in The Philosophy of Language, edited by J. R. Searle, 13-22. (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Barthes, Roland 1977 Image, Music, Text (New York: Hill and Wang). Berlin, Isaiah 1973 "Austin and the Early Beginnings of Oxford Philosophy," in Essays onJ. L. Austin, edited by Isaiah Berlin et al., 1-16. (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Bradley, Raymond and Norman Swartz 1979 Possible Worlds. An Introduction to Logic and Its Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell). Christensen, Inger 1981 The Meaning of Metafiction (Bergen-Oslo-Troms0: Universitetsforlaget). Cohen, L. Jonathan 1980 "The Individuation of Proper Names," in Philosophical Subjects. Essays Presented to P. F. Strawson, edited by Zak van Straaten, 140-63. (Oxford: Clarendon Press). Dallenbach, Lucien 1984 "Reading as Suture (Problems of Reception of the Fragmentary Text: 28. This technique was glimpsed by Sturrock in Robbe-Grille's first novel Les Gommes: the novel dramatizes "the conditions under which a novel comes into being, or rather tries to come into being" (Sturrock 1969: 172). Morrissette has recovered an underlying coherent plot of La maison de rendez-vous (Morrissette, 1975: 260ff.). It must be noted, however, that this coherent plot has no privileged authenticity.
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