The religious affordance of fiction: a semiotic approach

Abstract

A curious aspect of late modern religion is the emergence of fiction-based religions, such as Jediism, based on George Lucas’ Star Wars saga, and Tolkien spirituality, based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s literary mythology about Middle-earth. This article draws on narrative semiotics to explain why some fictional narratives (and not others) afford religious use and have hence given rise to fiction-based religions. I show that to afford religious use it is not enough that supernatural fiction tells about supernatural agents; it must also, to some extent, construct an aura of factuality around these supernatural agents. The main aim of this article is to identify and discuss those textual ‘veracity mechanisms’ that in various ways can help achieve such a sense of factuality. Each veracity mechanism is discussed and illustrated with examples from supernatural fiction, especially from Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings. I furthermore show how conceptual blending theory can be used to analyse the cognitive processes involved in the religious interpretation of supernatural fiction. While the empirical focus is on supernatural fiction and fiction-based religion, the wider implications for the study of religious narratives are discussed throughout.