By: Catharine Abell (Manchester)
On: Tuesday 30th April
From: 6-7.30 pm
In: CBA0.060, Chancellor’s Building, Keele University
All Welcome! Wine provided
Abstract:
The content of works of fiction is typically taken to exceed the literal contents of the utterances by which they are produced. For example, it is generally assumed that it is part of the content of Fielding’s Tom Jones that Tom eats and sleeps regularly and has blood in his veins, although Fielding never addresses these issues. Philosophers generally attempt to accommodate this by claiming that much fictive content is generated indirectly by general principles by which facts about the real world are imported into the fiction. I challenge this view of the structure of fictive content. I argue that fictive content is not determined by general principles of these kinds. I propose an alternative account which allow the contents of works of fiction to exceed those of the utterances by which they are produced, but provides a much more austere conception of the ways in which they can do so.
About the Speaker:
I am Reader in Philosophy at the University of Manchester. I work mainly in aesthetics, and have written on a wide range of issues in this area, including the nature of depiction, of art, of genre, and of artistic expression. I am currently completing a book on fiction to be published by OUP in 2020.