Time in Fiction

Abstract

There have been many studies of the nature of fictional characters: whether and what sense, they are real, and how, if not real, there can be truths apparently about them. But, as the authors of this lively, original and provocative essay point out, the ontology of fiction is by no means exhausted by the characters of fiction, and to focus mono-maniacally on characters misses some fascinating problems in the philosophy of fiction, and perhaps risks distorting one’s view of it. And one very large part of fictional ontology, without which narrative fiction would simply not exist, is time, and this is, as I think the authors can justifiably claim, the first monograph-length analytic philosophical treatment of the topic. The OUP website puts it rather more strongly, dropping the qualification ‘analytic’, which is perhaps a bit hard on Paul Ricoeur’s three-volume Time and Narrative. But those who (like the present writer) found Ricoeur’s labyrinthine study baffling could not do better than to turn to this book.