Fiction and Imitation

Datos Bibliográficos

ID4376331
AutoresThomas Pavel (autor de correspondencia)
Año2000
Volumen21
Número3
Páginas521-541
Fecha de publicación2000-09-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaPoetics Today (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0333-5372 • E-ISSN: 1527-5507
EditorialDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/03335372-21-3-521
OpenAlexW2139424160
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas4
Referencias citadas18

This article begins with a discussion of the views on mimesis defended in recent works by Lubomír Doležel, Dorrit Cohn, and Jean-Marie Schaeffer. It then argues that literary fiction typically represents human beings in their relationship with norms and values. But since norms and values cannot be uniformly reduced to a set of observable facts, they cannot be copied directly but only highlighted indirectly, through examples of human action. These examples, however, do not necessarily represent the norm or the value they are meant to typify. It follows that representation of norms and values cannot be reduced to imitation and that mere observation of nature cannot suffice for creating and understanding fiction. The poet and the reader must know how to distance themselves from the world of "is," the empirical realm, in order to explore its dependence on the world of"ought," the realm of norms, and the world of"praise," the realm of values

Aesthetics · Art · Epistemology · Imitation · Literature · Physics · Political science · Politics · Praise · Realm · Sociology · Statistics · History · Law · Mathematics · Narrative Theory and Analysis · Philosophy · Psychology · Social Psychology