Abstract
Fiction is the ultimate application of the human capacity for displacement—thinking and talking about things beyond the here and now. Fictional characters may live in very remote possible or even impossible worlds. Yet our engagement with fictional stories and characters seems effortless and permeates every aspect of our everyday lives. How is this possible? How does fictional talk relate to assertions about the here and now, or indeed to modal talk about other possible worlds? What is the relation between fiction and mental states like belief and imagination? How does a sequence of fictional statements become a story? What are fictional characters? How do narrators manage to give us access to their characters’ innermost thoughts and desires? This introductory chapter traces the development of various strands of research on these questions within linguistics, narratology, and philosophy in order to lay a foundation for the cutting-edge interdisciplinary work in this volume.
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