The Distinction of Fiction

by Dorrit Cohn

Winner of the Modern Language Association's Aldo and Jeanne Scaglione Prize for Comparative Literary Studies

The border between fact and fiction has been trespassed so often it seems to be a highway. Works of history that include fictional techniques are usually held in contempt, but works of fiction that include history are among the greatest of classics. Fiction claims to be able to convey its own unique kinds of truth. But unless a reader knows in advance whether a narrative is fictional or not, judgment can be frustrated and confused.

In The Distinction of Fiction, Dorrit Cohn argues that fiction does present specific clues to its fictionality, and its own justifications. Indeed, except in cases of deliberate deception, fiction achieves its purposes best by exercising generic conventions that inform the reader that it is fiction. Cohn tests her conclusions against major narrative works, including Proust's A la Recherche du temps perdu, Mann's Death in Venice, Tolstoy's War and Peace, and Freud's case studies. She contests widespread poststructuralist views that all narratives are fictional. On the contrary, she separates fiction and nonfiction as necessarily distinct, even when bound together. An expansion of Cohn's Christian Gauss lectures at Princeton and the product of many years of labor and thought, The Distinction of Fiction builds on narratological and phenomenological theories to show that boundaries between fiction and history can be firmly and systematically explored.

Genres: Nonfiction, Humanities

208 pages, Paperback

First published December 28, 1998

Reviews

[Eliška ** · Rating 2 out of 5]

2,5 ⭐️

[El Lector Enmascarado · Rating 5 out of 5]

Parece mentira que haya podido afirmarse seriamente que las novelas realistas son indistinguibles de los textos historiográficos, o que los casos clínicos de Sigmund Freud son relatos ficticios, o que el discurso indirecto libre constituye una forma de control totalitario de los personajes de ficción análoga al panopticón foucaultiano; pero así están los estudios literarios. En 1999 Dorrit Cohn publicó este escalpelo textual para poner algo de orden en este desbarajuste, pero me temo que no se le ha prestado suficiente atención. Si las facultades de Humanidades no proponen libros como este en el primer año de carrera es porque todavía están demasiado ocupadas gestionando un canon nacional y explicando por qué los autores de su país son tan incomparablemente fascinantes.

[Anthony Lacroix · Rating 2 out of 5]

Apres 8 fois, je pense que j’ai fait le tour

[Gv · Rating 3 out of 5]

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