Intentionally Signaled Lying or Tenorless Metaphor? Comparing Two Rhetorical Conceptions of Fictionality through Lauren Slater's Lying

Fictionality as a Rhetorical Resource for Dual Narrative Progression Dan Shen (bio) Fictionality may be viewed from different perspectives, each giving the most weight to one of the three entities involved in communication: the addresser, the message, and the addressee. Most previous approaches endeavor to reveal the fictional nature of the message, but some pragmatic investigations [End Page 495] try to show the determining force of the addressee and the context: whether a text is put on a shelf with the classifying label of “fiction” or on a shelf with the label of “nonfiction” and whether a reader reads the text as fiction or as nonfiction would give rise to drastically different interpretations in terms of the text’s fictionality (see, for instance, Kearns 2–14)1. What has been more or less neglected is the remaining entity: the addresser, who can be viewed either as a producer of fictionality as a product or as a user of fictionality as a helpful resource in communicating with the addressee. As pointed out by Walsh, most previous approaches to fictionality rely on a product-oriented understanding of fictionality based on its relation to truth that makes it radically different from nonfictionality and its relation to truth. If the addresser is brought into consideration, she or he will be viewed only as a creator of the product as fiction. By contrast, Walsh’s rhetorical approach, which shifts attention to the communicative process, views fictionality as a rhetorical resource, one that is utilized by the addresser in trying to affect the addressee. Walsh thinks that his rhetorical position is not shared by the widely adopted rhetorical approach as led first by Wayne Booth and then by James Phelan, and he refers to the classic narrative communication model proposed by Seymour Chatman in distinguishing the two rhetorical approaches (see the section “Rhetorical Accounts” in the target essay). But in effect Chatman’s model is based on a misunderstanding of the concept of the “implied author” put forward by Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction at the height of formalist criticism excluding the consideration of the author. In order to talk about the author as a prerequisite for rhetorical criticism, Booth used the metaphor of real author’s “creating” the implied author to make the latter appear textual. As I made clear in “What is the Implied Author?” (see also Shen “Booth’s,” “Implied”), if we examine Booth’s formulations carefully, we’ll find that Booth’s distinction between the implied author and the real author is no other than one between the author in the process of writing a text and the author in daily life—the implied author is the very writer of the text. Unfortunately, Booth’s “creating” metaphor formed an almost unavoidable pitfall for narrative theorists including Chatman, who confined the communication among “Implied author → Narrator → Narratee → Implied reader” to the text (Shen, “What” 88–89). To me, so long as rhetorical critics including Booth himself and Phelan in recent years are concerned with how the writer communicates with his intended audience and how individual readers react [End Page 496] differently to the communicative invitation, there is no essential difference between the Walsh and the Booth–Phelan rhetorical approaches, since both are concerned with how addressers utilize rhetorical resources to affect addressees. Phelan’s Somebody Telling Somebody Else, for instance, proposes a paradigm shift from viewing narrative as a structure to viewing it as a rhetorical action in which a teller deploys resources of storytelling for particular purposes in relation to particular audiences, a position in my view essentially compatible to that of Walsh. What is more, the Booth–Phelan line can help flesh out the “implicatures” generated by an understanding of fictionality as discourse designed to move away from direct informative relevance: in addition to cognitive effects as emphasized by Walsh, it highlights affect and ethics. It may be noted that the Booth–Phelan rhetorical line puts more emphasis on various narrative techniques as rhetorical resources such as point of view/focalization and narratorial unreliability. If attention is paid to fictionality, it is treated as one of many rhetorical resources (see Phelan, “Local Nonfictionality” and “Local Fictionality”). By contrast, Walsh, concerned...

The Art of Sofi Oksanen’s Novels. Narrative, Ethics, Rhetoric Sofi Oksanen is the most visible and widely discussed Finnish author of the 21st century, yet her novels have gained less attention than her public performances. This study shifts the focus from the author’s persona to her literary art, proposing to read Oksanen’s fiction from the methodological viewpoint of the rhetorical theory of narrative. Accordingly, Oksanen’s six novels published to date – Stalinin lehmät, Baby Jane, Puhdistus, Kun kyyhkyset katosivat, Norma, and Koirapuisto – are considered as examples of authorial rhetoric and ethics, as narrative and textual constructions, and as affective readerly experiences. Instead of only following the rhetorical theory’s emphasis on character, plot, and progression, however, the study develops a new kind of narrative rhetoric, which also pays attention to language and politics. In the study, Sofi Oksanen emerges as a feminist narrative artist, who employs fiction as a serious rhetorical resource in order to say something worthwhile about the past history as well as the contemporary world.

Zuozhuan (Spring and autumn annals with Zuo’s commentary) initiated a narrative practice in Chinese historiography, which features not only records of historical events, but also various mysterious and unsubstantiated phenomena, such as divinations, omens, acts of mystical justice, apparitions and dreams. They played important roles for interpreting fictionality as a rhetorical resource in Zuozhuan. To elaborate fictionality and its competing relations with factuality, this paper subscribes to some Chinese scholars’ idea that it is from Zuozhuan on that fictionality endows Chinese historiography some “literary cover”, and analyzes those events in Zuozhuan. Moreover, enlightened by a rhetorical approach to fictionality proposed by Nielson, Phelan, and Walsh, this paper examines fictionality in Zuozhuan in terms of communicative intent, sender of fictionality, receivers of fictionality, and consequences on the logos and ethos. It argues that the communicative intent of Zuozhuan facilitates its compiler to utilize various means of fictionality so that the receivers conceive many interpretive assumptions, thus shedding much light to later generations in composing history.

Considering narrative as a communicative act implies that all interlocutors in this act take an active role. From this rhetorical stance, reading has always been a co-constructed world-building exercise: the audience, as much as the author, builds a storyworld as conveyed by the narrative. This article employs critical apparatuses that foreground this collaborative nature of narrative communication to illuminate its collaborative world-building processes. Thus, by focusing on these aspects of narrative communication, we here begin responding to Paul Dawson’s and James Phelan’s invitations toward a multi-directional narrative communication model approach. To illustrate this approach’s utility, we explicate readers’ co-constructions of the story-worlds and the actual world in John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars (2012). Attending to world-building processes in, about, and around the novel of our case study, we call attention to how the rhetorical resources used to construct the storyworld are not limited to the physical space of the book and, in fact, often cross into the actual world.

With the advent of the digital age and new mediums of communication, it is becoming increasingly important for those interested in the interpretation of religious text to look beyond traditional ideas of text and textuality to find the sacred in unlikely places. Philosophical and theological hermeneutics have been invigorated by a de-regionalization of the interpretation of texts that corresponds with this journal’s mandate to “cross traditional boundaries, bringing different disciplinary tools to the process of analysis and opening up a sustained dialogue between and among scholars and others who are interested in religion, textuality, media, and mediation and the contemporary world.” Paul Ricoeur’s phenomenological reorientation of classical hermeneutics from romanticized notions of authorial intent and psychological divinations to a serious engagement with the “science of the text” is a hermeneutical tool that opens up an important dialogue between the interpreter, the world of the text, and the contemporary world in front of the text. This article examines three significant insights that Paul Ricoeur contributes to our expanding understanding of text. First under scrutiny will be Ricoeur’s de-regionalization of classic hermeneutics culminating in his understanding of Dasein (Being) as “being-in-the-world,” allowing meaning to transcend the physical boundaries of the text. Next, Ricoeur’s threefold under-standing of traditionality/Traditions/tradition as the “chain of interpretations” through which religious language transcends the temporal boundary of historicity will be explored. The final section will focus on Ricoeur’s understanding of the productive imagination and metaphoric truth as the under-appreciated yet key insight around which Ricoeur’s philosophical investigation into the metaphoric transfer from text to life revolves.

We exist in our time alone, and as Benedetto Croce posited, all history is contemporary history. It is challenging, to say the least, to interpret texts solely in the historical sense, since there are many authors whose lives and/or historical circumstances are vague or unknown. How does one interpret The Hermetica, which was written over 3000 years ago? How does one know what Shakespeare truly intended with his texts since we know so little about him or his life? Yet, we still engage with these texts and find meaning. The texts speak to us in our time, circumstances, culture; in our time in history. For these reasons, in the 1980s Terence Hawkes and Hugh Grady proposed a new approach – presentism; one that would overcome the obstacles of time and history, which in all honesty was not always recorded justly. Presentism as a hermeneutical approach suggests that our interpretation of texts is always a dialogue with the past. Therefore, this paper will re-visit presentism as a contemporary hermeneutical approach and will show how the present moment always determines the interpretation

This paper aims to descibe the relevance of the muzara'ah hadith and RKUHP which literally contain conflicting spirits. The author tries to find the rhetoric of traditions through historical search and formulates moral ideals that can be applied and contextualized to the present age. In conducting research, the author uses qualitative-descriptive literature research methods, with material objects of muzara'ah hadith and RKUHP criminal article 278. While the formal objects used are Fazlur Rahman’s hadith hermeneutics. The results of this study are (1) Fazlu Rahman’s hadith hermeneutics emphasizes on the fusion of formal traditions, returning to their nature as living sunnah in the community. Melting the Hadith into a Sunnah does not mean practicing it through textual interpretation, it is necessary to have a historical study to find a retio legis (goal) and formulation of a moral ideal, so that the essence of the hadith can be applied and applied in contemporary times, (2) Muzara'ah hadith with RKUHP has a spirit or with the RKUHP the same essence that is motivating farmers to enthusiasm in farming as a retio legis, so that there is no contradiction between the two. (3) Moral ideal that can be applied to the current situation is an effort to strengthen the work ethic of farmers with pro-farmer government policies, both legally through the RKUHP, minimizing food imports or with more concrete policies, namely by providing plant seeds, seeds, fertilizer, and agricultural equipment free of charge for farmers. Keywords: Muzara’ah Hadith, Fazlur Rahman’s Hadith Hermeneutics, Moral Ideal, Retio Legis

Fictionality is a term used in various fields within and beyond literary theory, from speech act theory through the theory of fictional worlds, to theories of “as if.” It is often equated with the genre of the novel. However, as a consequence of the rhetorical theory of fictionality developed from the early 21st century, the concept has gained ground as an autonomous communicative device, independent of its relation to any genre. Theories of fictionality have been developed (1) prior to the establishment of fiction as a genre, with Plato, Aristotle, Philip Sidney, and Pierre Daniel Huet; (2) with the establishment of fiction by Blankenburg and some of the first novelists, such as Daniel Defoe and Horace Walpole; (3) after the establishment of the novel, with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Hans Vaihinger, John Searle, Kendall Walton, Dorrit Cohn, Richard Walsh, and others. From the 1990s, the debates on fictionality have centered on questions of whether fictionality is best described in terms of semantic, syntactic, or pragmatic approaches. This includes discussions about possible signposts of fictionality, encouraged by the semantic and syntactic approaches, and about how to define the concept of fictionality, as either a question of text internal features as argued by the semantic and syntactic theorists, or as a question of contextual assumptions, as held by the pragmatists. Regarding fictionality as a rhetorical resource, among many other resources in communication at large, has a number of consequences for the study of fictionality and for literary theory in general. First, it contributes the insight that literature is similar to other acts of communication. Second, overtly invented stories do not have to follow the rules of non-invented communication. Third, a rhetorical approach to fictionality makes visible the ways in which fiction interacts with and affects reality, in concrete, yet complicated ways.

This essay updates and extends the model for understanding the concept of character in literary fiction I proposed in Reading People, Reading Plots (1989). That model proposes that character has three simultaneously existing components, the mimetic (character as possible person), thematic (character as representative of a larger group of people and/or a set of ideas), and the synthetic (character as construct within the larger construct of the narrative). The model also specifies that the relations among the components varies from narrative to narrative, depending on the narrative progression. Using Joyce Carol Oates's flash fiction "Widow's First Year" as a test case, I develop three interrelated points: (1) character is a flexible resource that authors can deploy in a diversity of ways; (2) a rhetorical approach to audiences helps clarify the relations among the mimetic, thematic, and synthetic components; and (3) the approach works, with appropriate adjustments, for nonfictional as well as fictional narrative. Along the way, I also suggest how the updated model can address some of the tensions in the nature and functions of character identified by Alex Woloch and John Frow.

This essay updates and extends the model for understanding the concept of character in literary fiction I proposed in Reading People, Reading Plots (1989). That model proposes that character has three simultaneously existing components, the mimetic (character as possible person), thematic (character as representative of a larger group of people and/or a set of ideas), and the synthetic (character as construct within the larger construct of the narrative). The model also specifies that the relations among the components varies from narrative to narrative, depending on the narrative progression. Using Joyce Carol Oates's flash fiction "Widow's First Year" as a test case, I develop three interrelated points: (1) character is a flexible resource that authors can deploy in a diversity of ways; (2) a rhetorical approach to audiences helps clarify the relations among the mimetic, thematic, and synthetic components; and (3) the approach works, with appropriate adjustments, for nonfictional as well as fictional narrative. Along the way, I also suggest how the updated model can address some of the tensions in the nature and functions of character identified by Alex Woloch and John Frow.

Siguiendo los planteamientos de la retórica, este artículo analiza la manera en que los agentes políticos guatemaltecos comunican la idea de corrupción a propósito de las recientes denuncias de corrupción hechas por las autoridades judiciales de ese país. El abordaje de la construcción retórica de la corrupción se hizo a partir de un análisis retórico de clusters que permitió identificar tres principales pantallas terminológicas con relación a las cuales se comprende este fenómeno: Fraude, Democracia e Intervencionismo. Así mismo, se describen las dos principales estrategias retóricas usadas por los agentes políticos para referirse a la corrupción: acreditación de agentes y referencia a evidencias. Se concluye que estos clusters y recursos retóricos conllevan a la normalización de la corrupción y al establecimiento de programas de acción débiles contra este fenómeno.

“Traditional” or “Modern”? Methodological Dilemmas of the Contemporary Researchers of Old Polish Literature. Part One: General Remarks and the Case of Postcolonial Criticism This paper shows the personal reflection of its authors upon the methodological contexts of cultural and literary studies concerning Old Polish literature. Especially those contexts that eagerly and sophisticatedly – though quite superficially – apply the so called “modern” literary theories to the analyses and interpretations of Old Polish texts and – at the same time – disregard their very historical backgrounds. The authors present a fairly sceptical approach towards the blind and unjustifiable, although fashionable, application of “modern” criticism in the given field of research. Instead they emphasise the contextual, secondary character of the possible modern theoretical implications, as well as the particular, specific character of Old Polish writings. Moreover, wider social factors influencing the methodological decisions taken by the academic community in question (who undoubtedly still favour the traditional, philological method of research and strongly distances itself from the contemporary theoretical thought) have been discussed in great detail. The enclosed analysis of the recent controversial book Fantomowe cialo krola ( The Phantom Body of a King , 2011) by Jan Sowa, which deals with the Old Polish history, society, and culture, strongly influenced by the application of modern criticism, in particular the postcolonial part of it, served both as an example of the authors’ argumentation and, at the same time, a warning.

Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata is hailed as an influential masterpiece in the tradition of Dante and Virgil. The most pervasive discussion emphasizes his intention to revive the epic by infusing new materials-elements of romance-into the tradition. For his attempt to fuse two different genres and to please all his readers-both the learned and the common folk, Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata was strongly criticized by his contemporaries. Thus the inherent ambiguity in this work reveals an unstable structure and promises a multiplicity of transgressive interpretations of the text itself. In this essay, I would like to shed light on an alternative interpretation of reading Tasso's three prominent female characters-Clorinda, Erminia, and Armida. In a sense, Tasso challenges and further blurs the traditional definitions of female figures in the epic and romance-a female warrior, an Amazon, in the epic and a prize object in the romance. According to a rigid definition of what constitutes the romance and the epic, a female warrior acts and fights like a man and ceases to be a woman physically, whereas the prize object of the romances is voiceless, unidentifiable and submissive to male characters. Interestingly, Tasso's portraits of his female characters transgressed the boundaries of this predominant feature of both the genres. The nature of these three female characters is subversive, undefined and elusive, which cannot be manipulated or pinned down by any traditional definitions of gender. Therefore, these female characters are potentially endowed by nature with a subversive power to transgress the boundaries set by previous epic and romance writers. This convention notwithstanding, Tasso has made their process of conversion diversified and undermined by portraying them as distinct from other female characters in epics and romances. Clorinda, Erminia and Armida should be perceived as complicated heroines whose submissiveness and subversiveness coexist within them. This ambivalent coexistence contributes to an alternative way of reading Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata.

This thesis describes new approaches to the formal modeling of narrative discourse. Although narratives of all kinds are ubiquitous in daily life, contemporary text processing techniques typically do not leverage the aspects that separate narrative from expository discourse. We describe two approaches to the problem. The first approach considers the conversational networks to be found in literary fiction as a key aspect of discourse coherence; by isolating and analyzing these networks, we are able to comment on longstanding literary theories. The second approach proposes a new set of discourse relations that are specific to narrative. By focusing on certain key aspects, such as agentive characters, goals, plans, beliefs, and time, these relations represent a theory-of-mind interpretation of a text. We show that these discourse relations are expressive, formal, robust, and through the use of a software system, amenable to corpus collection projects through the use of trained annotators. We have procured and released a collection of over 100 encodings, covering a set of fables as well as longer texts including literary fiction and epic poetry. We are able to inferentially find similarities and analogies between encoded stories based on the proposed relations, and an evaluation of this technique shows that human raters prefer such a measure of similarity to a more traditional one based on the semantic distances between story propositions.

The understandings most Americans have of the Daode jing 道德經 (Tao Te Ching) and Daoism (Taoism) have been deeply conditioned by the reception of this text in its most circulated English forms: popular translations. Because of their acute reliance on previous interpretations and emphasis on relevancy to their own historical contexts, popular translations are a valuable, underutilized resource for understanding both the specifics of this text’s reception and more universal processes of textual transmission. To propose “The Daode jing as American scripture” is to consider both the Americanization of this text and the interpretation of all texts received as “classics” or “scriptures.” To do so, this dissertation first critiques assumptions contributing to the academic neglect of popular translations and proposes the utility of Hans-Georg Gadamer’s reconfiguration of the concept of “text” not as a historical object to be recovered but as a “traditionary text” or “text-tradition” that operates in history through an ongoing dialogue with its interpreters. To Gadamer’s thought, this dissertation suggests a new attention to translations as records of previous interpretations intersecting with new contexts and affecting subsequent transmission. Subsequent chapters summarize the transmission of the Daode jing in China and survey its early European reception before focusing on the translations of Herbert Giles (1886), Paul Carus (1898), Witter Bynner (1944), and Gia-fu Feng (1972). These translations document the development of five popular conceptions about the Daode jing that have conditioned the general features of its otherwise diverse reception in America. They emerged chronologically and continue to influence popular translation and understanding today: 1) the Daode jing is the principal scripture of Daoism; 2) its wisdom is universal and timeless; 3) its meaning is accessible through a populist hermeneutic heavily influenced by lay Bible reading; 4) its teachings can correct and ameliorate contemporary American problems; and 5) it can contribute to a more complete “Way of Life.” This examination advances existing scholarship by providing a more comprehensive and detailed analysis of paradigmatic texts and dominant trends in the American popular reception of the Daode jing, by suggesting implications for related fields, and by proposing that the reception of this text evidences a hermeneutic that is more universal than unique in the historical transmission of canonical texts.