Theory Of Fiction Research Articles

Notes on Contributors

Notes on Contributors

Tracking Meat of the Sand

Abstract This article explores the skilled arts of tracking and gathering as methods for noticing and theorizing multispecies landscapes in the Kalahari Desert, Botswana. Tracking is typically used to describe a practice of following animals, usually for hunting, whereas gathering primarily refers to the collection of plant and fungal materials. The author presents a case in which these terms have been scrambled during long-term ethnographic field research. The author and his interlocutors tracked the Kalahari desert truffle, an experience that demonstrates how aspects of tracking extend to gathering, but also how the practices are attentive to the movements of landscapes more broadly. This form of tracking attends to multiple spatial and temporal movements that include nonanimals and other nonhumans. It represents a way of noticing the assemblages of more-than-human relations that make up landscapes. These convergences, first identified through tracking, are then explored through the more distributed analytic of gathering. Inspired by Ursula LeGuin’s call to describe stories of gatherers and collectives in her “Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction,” the article argues that thinking tracking through the gathering analytic helps articulate a “carrier bag approach” for understanding landscapes through the gatherings of relations with which they emerge.

Narration Without Narrating

This paper addresses the question of how to account for the distinction between narrator-creating and narrator-neutral narration from a linguistic perspective. I first take issue with the approach by Eckardt (2015), according to which narrator-neutral narration is due to a lack of knowledge about the narrating situation; specifically, I raise an existence problem, an anthropomorphism problem, and a tense problem. Second, combining ideas of the Institutional Theory of Fiction as described by Walton (1990) and Köppe/Stühring (2011) and formal tools of Attitude Description Theory as developed by Maier (2017), I propose an imagination-based alternative account of narrator-neutrality. According to this, the distinction between narrator-creating and narrator-neutral narration is captured by optional existential binding of a narrating situation and a narrator in an imagination component of an interpreter’s mental state. Particular attention is paid to the semantics of the German preterit in fictional narratives. On the one hand, I confirm the famous hypothesis by Hamburger (31977) and her successors in German linguistics that the preterit licenses an atemporal reading and thus an interpretation that eliminates the grammatical need for a narrating situation within the fiction. On the other hand, I reject the prevailing assumption that the preterit in its atemporal reading marks the fiction as such. In lieu thereof, the preterit is argued to instruct interpreters to imagine the story from the perspective of a distant observer.

O biograficznych aluzjach do rzeczywistości w poezji. Wprowadzenie teoretycznoliterackie

This article is an introduction to theoretical considerations focused on biographical allusions to reality that find their place in poetry. The author, following the theories of literary fiction rooted in Aristotle’s thought, takes the position that all scientific considerations concerning the actual prototypes of the creation of the represented worlds must start with the rejection of existential monism and assume the existence of ‘possible worlds’. The author proposes to introduce the concept of ‘biographical allusion formulated by applying a lyric strategy’ into literary theory and indicates three basic lyrical strategies of this type: testimony, confession and challenge.

Theory of legal fiction in the civil doctrine of Russia

Theory of legal fiction in the civil doctrine of Russia

Review of the theoretical approaches regarding the legal protection of objects generated by artificial intelligence systems in the field of copyright and related rights

Keywords: artificial intelligence, copyright, related rights, sui generis
 The publication provides a descriptive review of existingtheoretical approaches regarding the legal protection of objects generated byartificial intelligence systems in the field of copyright and related rights, namely.1) The inexpediency of legal protection of computer-generated objects. It is concludedthat the absence of legal regulation and free circulation of generated objects isconsidered the easiest option. Still, hardly fair and justified, as the creation of artificialintelligence systems requires large and significant investments in their development.2) The possibility of protecting computer-generated objects by copyright as originalworks. It has been established that extending the concept of «originality» to computergeneratedobjects seems unjustifiable.3) The introduction of the latest iteration of the fiction theory and establishing aspecial legal status for artificial intelligence systems. It is noted that such an approachseems premature because the existing artificial intelligence systems are amanifestation of «narrow» or «weak» artificial intelligence and not artificial generalintelligence.4) Protection of specific generated objects through related rights. It is concludedthat the objects generated by AI systems may be protected in Ukraine through theprism of related rights, under the condition that the relevant object can be attributedto a phonogram, videogram, or broadcast (program) of broadcasters respectively.5) Protection of generated objects through a special legal regime under copyrightlaw. It is described that this approach cannot be considered a universal example forimitating the legal protection of objects generated by computer programs because itsapplication leaves more questions and inconsistencies than solving the problem onthe merits.6) Protection of generated objects through sui generis law. It is assumed that applyingsuch an approach to the protection of objects generated by computer programswill not lead to significant changes in copyright and will protect the interests and investmentsof developers of artificial intelligence systems.

Minimal Departure and Fictional Narrative Situations

Minimal Departure and Fictional Narrative Situations

Edith Wharton Society Panels at the American Literature Association Conference, Chicago, 2022

Edith Wharton Society Panels at the American Literature Association Conference, Chicago, 2022

Realist Fiction as the Rightful Genre of our Time: Realist Fiction after the Postpositivist Intervention

Realist fiction, which had a pivotal place in 19th. Century literature, has lost its central position in the contemporary literary scene as modernism, postmodernism and poststructuralism have raised some serious challenges against it, advocating experimentalism in fiction, instead. Still, in our age, when globalization and capitalism breed different forms of marginalizations and injustices in societies, it is the realist fiction that better than any other form can depict the struggles and pains of these marginalized lives. Thus, realist fiction deserves to be considered a major genre of our time rather than a second-rater. This paper attempts to investigate into the present state of realist fiction in the literary scene, and it argues that, with the significant theoretical backing from the postpositivist realist critics, it can move toward reclaiming its position in literature today. Postpositivist realists base their defense of realist fiction on the notion that the representation of reality, identity and experience in realist fiction, in spite of being theory-mediated and affected by ideologies and discourses, is possible, as these objects of representation are real and important for being real. The paper maintains that the postpositivist support can favorably affect the present place of realist fiction. Still, the rightful realist fiction of our time, in tune with the developments in the theories of knowledge and fiction, unlike the 19th. century realist fiction, has patches of experimentalism, while keeping its realistic ethos, which further indicates that the contemporary fiction is the fiction of an era affected by postpositivist realist concepts.

The Prosthetic Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life. Peter Boxall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xi+411.

<i>The Prosthetic Imagination: A History of the Novel as Artificial Life</i>. Peter Boxall. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020. Pp. xi+411.

Analysis of Textual Reality in Mist (1914) of Miguel de Unamuno.

Considering the war context and the emergence of the avant-garde in the early twentieth century, I base on this work the reasons why the presence of the concept of nivola, attributed by Miguel de Unamuno to refer to the literary technique used in his novel Mist (1914), provokes a possible confrontation between universes composed of elements of reality and the virtual. In that sense, it will be appropriate to explain the procedure that originates that collision of established plans. For this, I will resort to literary categories that support the theories of fiction, according to the perception of Thomas Pavel and MarieLaure Ryan.

Mental Files and the Theory of Fiction: A Reply to Zoltán Vecsey

Mental Files and the Theory of Fiction: A Reply to Zoltán Vecsey

A Journey to the City of Hope: Immigration, Diaspora and Identity in Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl

The motif of journey constitutes one of the most important cornerstones of both postcolonial literatures and science fiction narratives, the latter of which owe a significant debt to the essentially colonial origins of the genre, thus inviting postcolonial practices of reimagining and writing back. For that reason, the following article aims at an examination of the peculiar ties between the postcolonial theory and science fiction, in order to discuss how speculative fiction allows for an in-depth analysis of the contemporary diasporic condition and the issues of memory and cultural identity, in the context of a dialogue with contemporary diaspora studies and postcolonial studies.The motif of the journey, then, understood both in literal and metaphoric terms, becomes the point of departure for a discussion concerning the ways in which the experiences of migration and diasporic existence influence the subject’s identity as well as their relationship with the culture and language of the country of their ancestors.To this end, the paper aims at a thorough analysis of the ways in which Larissa Lai, in her novel Salt Fish Girl, engages in a discussion regarding the contemporary condition of diasporic communities, proposing a new perspective on the complicated relationship between diasporas, their past and ancestral heritage as well as their language, and the motif of journey, understood both spatially (as a journey from one place to another) and temporally (as a journey back to the roots or the impossibility of going back). Employing postcolonial theory as well as the theory of science fiction as the methodological framework, the paper argues that for Lai, the journey of one of the incarnations of the protagonist, Nu Wa, to the Island of Mist and Forgetfulness constitutes an extended metaphor for the experience of Chinese immigrants in Canada. The motif of journey is inextricably tied here with the practices of remembering and forgetting, crucial for diasporic communities, as well as the constant search for a new, hyphenated identity in the new reality. Moreover, Lai suggests that such a journey constitutes a traumatic experience for the individual, which results in the loss of access to ancestral heritage as well as the language and the necessity of accepting one’s liminal condition, which contributes to the feeling of alienation and rootlessness.

A Journey to the City of Hope: Immigration, Diaspora and Identity in Larissa Lai’s Salt Fish Girl

The motif of journey constitutes one of the most important cornerstones of both postcolonial literatures and science fiction narratives, the latter of which owe a significant debt to the essentially colonial origins of the genre, thus inviting postcolonial practices of reimagining and writing back. For that reason, the following article aims at an examination of the peculiar ties between the postcolonial theory and science fiction, in order to discuss how speculative fiction allows for an in-depth analysis of the contemporary diasporic condition and the issues of memory and cultural identity, in the context of a dialogue with contemporary diaspora studies and postcolonial studies.The motif of the journey, then, understood both in literal and metaphoric terms, becomes the point of departure for a discussion concerning the ways in which the experiences of migration and diasporic existence influence the subject’s identity as well as their relationship with the culture and language of the country of their ancestors.To this end, the paper aims at a thorough analysis of the ways in which Larissa Lai, in her novel Salt Fish Girl, engages in a discussion regarding the contemporary condition of diasporic communities, proposing a new perspective on the complicated relationship between diasporas, their past and ancestral heritage as well as their language, and the motif of journey, understood both spatially (as a journey from one place to another) and temporally (as a journey back to the roots or the impossibility of going back). Employing postcolonial theory as well as the theory of science fiction as the methodological framework, the paper argues that for Lai, the journey of one of the incarnations of the protagonist, Nu Wa, to the Island of Mist and Forgetfulness constitutes an extended metaphor for the experience of Chinese immigrants in Canada. The motif of journey is inextricably tied here with the practices of remembering and forgetting, crucial for diasporic communities, as well as the constant search for a new, hyphenated identity in the new reality. Moreover, Lai suggests that such a journey constitutes a traumatic experience for the individual, which results in the loss of access to ancestral heritage as well as the language and the necessity of accepting one’s liminal condition, which contributes to the feeling of alienation and rootlessness.

A fada dos olhos grandes: proporção inversa nos “Fragmentos” de Almada Negreiros

Este estudo propõe uma primeira leitura do conjunto dos sete “Fragmentos” narrativos de Almada Negreiros, publicado apenas em 2002 na colecção das suas Ficções. Descentrando a atenção oferecida aos textos mais proeminentes e debatidos da obra do autor, adopta-se uma abordagem mista que combina, por um lado, uma revisão dos filões principais da crítica do fragmento e das formas breves, e, por outro lado, uma leitura próxima dos textos aqui considerados. Analisando a criação de seres e objectos textuais ao longo destas ficções fragmentárias, conclui-se que a proporção inversa — mais do que a lacuna ou a elipse habitualmente invocadas — é o conceito primordial na ideia de fragmento para Almada. Este conceito é alegorizado naqueles seres e objectos metaliterários enquanto figura e performance, isto é, demonstração em acto, da sua própria teoria e, por extensão, da teoria da ficção do autor.

The Rights of Nature, the Rights of Fiction: Mario Vargas Llosa and the Amazon

AbstractThe Amazonian region occupies a singular place in the fiction and nonfiction of the Peruvian writer Mario Vargas Llosa. Author of paradigmatic novels on the Peruvian Amazon, Vargas Llosa nevertheless has repeatedly defended extensive exploitation of Amazonian natural resources—at the expense of Indigenous rights and environmental conservation—in his essays and political activities. This article discusses this conflict between Vargas Llosa's fictional and nonfictional work on the Amazon through the lens of a theory of fiction that emerges from his essays across decades and that suggests that the fictional text is independent from the referential reality it represents. By revisiting his novels and writings about fiction, this article argues that Vargas Llosa's belief in the autonomy of fiction from its referential reality explains, to a certain extent, how the fascination with the Amazon present in the author's novels coexists with his defense of drastic changes in the region through environmental exploitation and the acculturation of Indigenous populations. While Vargas Llosa's work enjoyed a positive reception in the 1960s, the nontransitive notion of mimesis he proposed has gradually taken on reactionary undertones in the context of changing expectations since the 1980s and 1990s.

THE EGO AS USEFUL FICTION: THE CASE OF MRS. J.

ABSTRACT: Using a clinical case as a starting point, we pose the following hypothesis: in clinical practice, Lacan’s decentering of the ego is neither its demolition nor its praise, but its conceptual delimitation. This idea will be argued through the analysis of a woman’s case, in the light of certain points from Seminar 2 and other references that are implied in this text: Jeremy Bentham’s theory of fictions and Freud’s construction in analysis. This clinical-theoretical analysis will guide us to contemplate a possible conceptual delimitation of the ego: the ego as a useful fiction.

Power, Dangers and Resources of Forgery, from Theory to Novels

The subject of this contribution concerns the evolution of Eco’s thought on the problem of the false, from the first writings (in which the sign is just what can be used to lie) to the reflections of the late 1980s on the strength of the false, in a more culturological perspective. The essay will therefore trace an evolution that establishes in Eco’s theory a continuity between reflection on falsehood, reflection on falsification and the theory of fiction, while in a second time it will retrace all of Eco’s narrative going to highlight how all novels have to do with the false, or at least with the non-verifiability of the true. From this point of view, it will be argued that novels are the best place for Eco to affirm the strength of the false, for the nomothetic power of fictions.

MINIMALIST THEORY OF FICTION AND THE ICTHINKING® METHOD AS A BACKGROUND FOR NEW INSIGHTS TO AUTISM

The standard approach to conceptual understanding in the case of autism uses the distinction of abstract versus concrete thinking. This approach has its benefits but fails to explain all features of language use. For example, some concepts change their meaning in different contexts in contrast to concepts that are more rigid in their uses, such as mathematical concepts. This idea has its background in Minimalist theory of fiction (MTF), a theory that considers ‘skills to use words’ essential for understanding fiction, contrasting with theories that require pretending or make believe to understand fiction. From this background, the theory of Integrative Complexity (IC), and the method animating for practice, ICthinking®, can be of particular use to autistic people. The interventions develop meta-cognitive skills and are supportive of autistic people. From these starting points, we introduce new research hypotheses for developing educational methods especially for autistic people.&#x0D; &#x0D; &lt;p&gt; &lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt; Article visualizations:&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0765/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

Fikcja jako „dybuk”

Fiction as a „dybbuk”. Remarks about the „Adherence” of the Past to the Present in the Context of the Film Titled Demon Directed by Marcin Wrona The article remarks about the „adherence” of the past to the present in the context of the film, Demon directed by Marcin Wrona showing that the influence of fiction on memory brings about a lot of changes in the cognition of the relations between the past and the present. The author of the paper suggests that we could or should treat fiction as the cognitive frame of the relations between the past and the present. To be able to strengthen his hypothesis, he analyzes and interprets the film created in the horror genre, which shows complicated Jewish-Polish relations. The article is a short introduction to the theory of fiction as the cognitive frame of memory.