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Alan Palmer

Universal minds

The key to fictionality is the construction of fictional minds. A fictional narrative is, in essence, the presentation of the mental functioning of the characters who inhabit the storyworld created by that narrative. Readers enter a storyworld primarily by using their knowledge of how to interpret other people's thought processes in the real world in order to try to follow the workings of characters' minds. Otherwise, readers will lose the plot. In this essay, I will suggest that there are twelve features relating to fictional minds that recur in all or nearly all novels. This argument will be put into three contexts: the cognitive turn in literature studies, discussions regarding the concept of narrative universals, and the longstanding debate on how the term narrative should be properly defined. I will also argue that my generalizations regarding the twelve features are not invalidated by a few counterexamples, and that some, particularly postmodern, novels gain their power and impact precisely from their attempts to undermine the default assumptions contained in these features.

Semiotica, Walter de Gruyter

Print ISSN: 0037-1998
Volume: 2007, 06/2007
Pages: 205 - 225

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