What Is Fiction Literature Actually?

photo: Clay Banks on unsplash

«License is given to the writer to say everything he wants to or everything he can…».
Jacques Derrida, interview.

I began wondering about the problem of defining fiction literature not so long ago, but I was completely swallowed by this issue. It is actually not as simple as it might seem at first, because if we try to explain what fiction is, it will turn out that we cannot do it. It is a very complicated and multifaceted concept which defies laconic and simple explanation.

In this post, I try to form some verbalization of this term appealing to literary scholars from various countries and their ways of viewing literature. Of course, there are a lot of definitions, but I chose those which seemed to me the most intriguing and thought-provoking. They all approach literature from different angles. Some perceive it from the point of view of classical literary theory, some in terms of reception, some in the light of sociology, etc. Therefore, each of these definitions is interesting in its own way and suggests different directions for thinking over this problem which I find interesting in itself.

The most common definition of literature in humanities states that fiction literature is specific knowledge, which differs from philosophical or scientific knowledge. Fiction allows us to gain special knowledge, which can not be gained through other sources. It is through literary experience that modern subjectivity has developed, and the reader of a fiction text is an example of a free person [1].

I find this definition not really precise, but extremely captivating. For me it is strongly connected with another question — the role which literature plays in our lives, the way people read and perceive books. The problem of this special knowledge which literature can give us and which other kinds of cognition — can not, interests me a lot. The way literature transmits this knowledge and the way we perceive it are the issues which I enjoy thinking about.

Paul Ricœur (a French philosopher who combined phenomenological method with hermeneutics) gave another description of literature which has something in common with the previous idea. He stated that the artistry of a literary work is determined by mimesis (a term introduced by Aristotle): creative imitation of reality. Mimesis does not double the present reality, it does not copy it — it implies creative processing, reshaping the reality.

This is a construction of a possible world where relations and objects are similar to reality.

But it is not a reference to the real world, because mimesis can be the reproduction of objects in a possible world, not the real one [7].

This understanding of mimesis means, that is not enough to simply reproduce life in the literary work — it is also necessary to comprehend it through reproduction. The author takes a whole piece of experience and presents it as a complete story configured in different ways. According to Ricœur, fiction literature is a way of increasing our being. For the author to compose a literary intrigue means to refigure and formalize a vague, unformed temporal experience into something distinct. In this case not just an increment in meaning happens, but also an increment in experience. A contact is being established between the world of the text and the world of the reader.

The reader interprets (refigures) the text and begins to conceptualize his own experience with the support of the literary work.

The function of literature in this case is to reconfigure (or shape) this vague reading experience: literature helps readers to play back different situations [7].

I really love this explanation, although reading Ricœur (even in translation into my mother tongue) is extremely tough. But I find Ricœur’s idea one of the most important points in the process of defining fiction literature.

Wolfgang Iser (the founder of receptive aesthetics) said, that the literary work is «a form of communication, for it impinges upon the world, upon prevailing social structures, and upon existing literature. <…> The literary work is to be considered not as a documentary record of something that exists or has existed, but as a reformulation of an already formulated reality, which brings into the world something that did not exist before» [4]. I think, this definition has something in common with Ricœur’s point of view. And there definitely will be more posts about different ideas of receptive aesthetics, such as communication between the author and the reader in the text, the way fiction text influences us, etc.

Antoine Compagnon, a French structuralist, believed that literary texts were texts that society used without relating them to the primary context. Their meaning, applicability and relevance are not limited to the context in which they were first expressed. Society decides which texts are to be considered literary by consuming them outside of their original context [1]. I was mesmerized by this explanation of literature. It seems for me very deep, elegant and unexpected, so to say. If I was supposed to suggest the most comprehensive definition of fiction literature I would definitely include this description into it, because it outlines the aspect which I have not seen in any other definitions given.

Jacques Derrida, another French structuralist and philosopher, said in one of his interviews, that when he was a child literature seemed to him to be «the institution which allows one to say everything, in every way. The space of literature is not only that of an instituted fiction but also a fictive institution which in principle allows one to say everything. To say everything is no doubt to gather, by translating, all figures into one another, to totalize by formalizing, but to say everything is also to break out of [franchir] prohibitions. <…> It is an institution which tends to overflow the institution».

Derrida perceived literature as an

«institution of fiction which gives in principle the power to say everything, to break free of the rules, to displace them, and thereby to institute, to invent and even to suspect the traditional difference between nature and institution, nature and conventional law, nature and history» [2].

Also a very unusual and intriguing way to define literature, as for me, which perceives literature not from the familiar point of view of the classical literary theory. I also think that this definition is in some way especially relevant for Russian literature which actually substituted philosophy for the Russian people and functioned as a way of nation’s voice. Just like Herzen said: «For the nation deprived of public freedom, literature is the only platform from the height of which people make the cry of their indignation and their conscience heard».

Russian formalists considered the literary work to be a pure form, the sum of literary techniques which the author used to create it and which caused impression on readers. In their opinion, the essence of a literary work of art is not in the nature of individual expressions, but in their combination into certain unities, in the artistic construction of verbal material. A literary work possesses two features: it is independent from the random everyday conditions of usage; it has the fixed immutability of the text.

Literature is a fixed speech of its own value, a speech which focuses not on the information transmission, but on expression as such.

This is what differs artistic speech from practical speech: the latter focuses not on the expression, but only on the content [8].

Although I find this side of the definition of fiction very aptly noted, I can not fully agree with it and consider it precise enough. I find another aspect of the definition (which is about the way of configurating our experience, etc.) equally important.

Yuri Lotman, a Russian structuralist and semiotician, assumed that fiction text implemented a certain cultural function and conveyed some holistic meaning. «To be a novel», «to be a document», «to be a prayer» means to implement a certain cultural function and convey some kind of specific holistic meaning which is typical only for this type of text. The thing which was also important for Lotman in the definition of fiction texts was the number of semantic layers a text had. Lotman stated, that the more semantic layers there are in a text, the deeper the specifically artistic meaning of the text is and the longer it lives.

A text that allows only a limited number of interpretations is closer to non-fiction and loses its specific artistic longevity [6].

I love reading Lotman because he very clearly explains extremely abstract issues. His theory of how fiction text functions is also very captivating and comprehensible and I will also write about it in a different post.

Wolf Schmid, a German literary scholar and narratologist wrote, that to be fictitious means to be only depicted. Literary fiction is a depiction of the world that does not pretend to be directly related to any real, extraliterary world. Fiction consists of doership, the process of constructing an imaginary, possible world.

For creation of his depicted world, the author can draw elements from different worlds. The thematic units used by him as elements of a fiction world may be familiar from the real world, they may be found in various discourses of a given culture, originating from foreign or ancient cultures, or existing in the imagination.

But regardless of their origin, all these elements when they enter a work of fiction are transformed into fictitious units.

Even if the heroes of the novel are historical characters, such as Napoleon and Kutuzov in Leo Tolstoy’s «War and Peace». The very fact that these quasi-historical figures live in the same world as clearly fictional characters turns them into fictitious characters. The places in which the heroes of the fictitious world live (even if it is Moscow), the situations in which they find themselves, the actions they perform, and the space and time of the novel are fictitious. The narrated world is the world that is created by the narrative act of the narrator [9].

Fictionality and artistry are not the same concepts. There are fictional narrative texts that do not belong to fiction (text tasks in a math textbook, for example). Artistic storytelling has one more feature — the aesthetic function of the entire literary work.

Among the functions performed by a literary work, the aesthetic function comes first, it distinguishes fiction literature [9].

Aesthetic perception of text implies the tension of different perceptive forces in the reader: both cognitive and sensory. It is not limited neither to the theme of the text nor to the means of its expression. This is an integral perception, which includes the interaction of both meaningful and formal elements. Thematic elements acquire a secondary meaning, and formal elements, which do not have a referential meaning as such, are endowed with a semantic function [9].

In order for the aesthetic function of the text to prevail, the narrative need to possess features that evoke an aesthetic attitude in the reader. It does not mean though that the author has to write beautifully.

It means, that the author organizes the narrative in such a way that the manner of narration itself becomes meaningful. The story does not only give the reader some intriguing facts — it also captivates him with the way it is told.

Thematic and formal elements have to motivate and justify each other, contributing to the formation of complex aesthetic content [9].

Fictionality and aesthetics are different and independent distinctive features of artistic narrative. But they influence the perception of the literary text equally. They cause the isolation of the text, the removal of external reference, and the weakening of its relationship with reality. They cause concentration of attention on the literary work itself, on its structure, on internal reference (when the reader pays attention mostly not to the information which is said, but to how it is said) [9].

I found this explanation of the main features of fiction literature very elegant. Do not even know what is to be added here.

Jan van der Eng (a Dutch Slavist) considered the essence of artistry to consist in the «moves» («techniques») of the hidden author, through which the world he created is explained. A literary work has some kind of hidden and deep level of semantics, there is a labyrinth of connections, different categories of semantic communications between motives.

The feature of the construction of a narrative work consists in the formation of series of techniques, parallelisms, analogies, etc.

They develop the initial thematic data and deepen the most important stages of this development. Due to this the text can provide a more complete, gripping and accurate picture of life than reality itself [5].

The last idea impressed me the most. At first I found it weird, but then I remembered my experience of reading some especially good texts and thought that maybe in some sense Jan van der Eng is right: sometimes the life described in a fiction text feels like more real and «lively», than the real life. I do not know how to explain this phenomenon, but still it occurs. I actually plan to write a separate post about semantic construction of fiction texts and Van der Eng’s theory will be for sure one of the ideas I will outline there.

Lidiya Ginzburg, a soviet literary scholar, stated that fiction literature draws its material from reality and absorbs it, turning it into artistic structure. The factual authenticity of what is depicted, in particular its origin from the writer’s personal experience, acquires aesthetical indifference, because it becomes an artistic image [3].

For aesthetic significance, fiction is not required, but organization is required — the selection and creative combination of elements reflected and transformed by words.

I find this thought especially important in Ginzburg’s definition. The thing is, that the way the author chooses material for his artistic work is very important. If one want to shoot a film (or write a novel) about modernity, for example, he will not succeed if he just shoots everything he sees around him (or verbally describes every single detail of the modern life). It is important to choose only details which are specific for the modern everyday life and to combine them in the way which captures and reflects specifics of the time.

That is why, for example, Homer is praised for his poems: he chose a single part of the Trojan war to depict in the text, and this part determined his literary work (the «Iliad»), made it look complete and whole. Although this war itself of course has a beginning and an end.

The choice of material is not about stylistic decorations and external imagery. The words may remain unadorned, but the quality of artistic image must appear in them.

The artistic image is always symbolic, it is a single sign of generalizations, a representative of vast layers of social and psychological human experience.

The artist creates signs that embody thought, and this thought cannot be separated from the signs without being destroyed [3].

I find all these definitions important in their own way, because all of them take into account different aspects of fiction text. Each of them can be contested (and if done in detail, it would require writing a dissertation in response to each quote), each has its own pros and cons, each is not ideal and not complete. I don’t think I came to any definitive answer to the issue this post is about, and that was not actually my goal. I did not mean to figure out the most precise definition of the fiction literature. My goal was just to collect several intriguing and ingenious definitions and reflect on them. This issue interests me a lot and I enjoy the process of finding an answer to this question, the process of thinking it over.

P.

Literature:

1. Compagnon A. Demon of theory. Moscow, 2001. 336 p.
2. Derrida J. Act of literature. London, 1992. 456 p.
3. Ginsburg L. On psychological prose. Leningrad, 1977. 448 p.
4. Iser W. The act of reading: a theory of aesthetic response. USA, 1978. 239 p.
5. Van der Eng J. Structure of texts and semiotics of culture. Paris, 1973. 371 p.
6. Lotman Y. The structure of the artistic text. Moscow, 1969. 384 p.
7. Ricœur P. Time and narrative. Moscow, 2000. 313 p.
8. Tomashevsky B. Theory of literature, poetics. Moscow, 2002. 332 p.
9. Schmid W. Narratology. Moscow, 2003. 311 p.