Fictional Facts and Science in Defoe and Camus' Plague Year

Abstract

The status and treatment of facts in fiction are important indices of a novel's “logic, reasonings, intuition and postulates.” In La Peste, there is “a language of facts as everyone can see them,” doubt attaches exclusively to the why of things, and concern is with man's reaction to the evil tyranny of the real. Rieux' belief in the possibility of accurate description and the impossibility of ultimate explanation is shared by absurd man and by early 20th century positivistic science. In the Journal, the factuality of recorded facts, the reliability of reported facts and the accuracy and authority of the narrative based on them, are constantly undermined. In the more sceptical spirit of 18th century science, HF's history tests the feasibility of making “faithful records of all the works of nature” and of deriving probable hypotheses for future action from “things experienced.”