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A matrix for worlds: Genre, intertext, world knowledge, and fictional-world semantics

Posted on:1995-07-18Degree:Ph.DType:Dissertation
University:University of Alberta (Canada)Candidate:Charles, MayFull Text:PDF
GTID:1475390014991875Subject:Comparative Literature
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
The study establishes and clarifies the crucial intersection of extra- and intertextuality with fictional worlds, formulating a theoretical model on the basis of fictional-world semantic theory coupled with a semiotics of reading perspective. With emphasis on fictional characters, the model demonstrates how the textual stipulation of fictional truth is complemented with the three text-external knowledge bases of world-models, text-models, and intertextual repertoire, reformulating a theory of fictionality in terms of reading procedures. The initial chapters synthesize and analyse standard metaphysically-oriented arguments, suggesting supplementation of key concepts to develop an expanded model which fuses the logical/philosophical perspective with aesthetic concerns, and which is reoriented from ontological to epistemic issues. Addressing the epistemological indeterminacy of fiction, the study develops a systematic representation of the reader's role in the construction of fictional truth, describing a semiotic communication model and the role of the reader within conventional knowledge systems. The study investigates the shared, interpersonal structure of text-external knowledge, defining reading operations as the logical space of the fictional sphere--a matrix for textual reference worlds, and a codified structure which regulates the hierarchy of text-external models. The concept of reference world is developed as a reader-construct--a relatively comprehensive world postulated as pre-existing textual stipulation, fictional characters acquiring consequently more intuitively accurate existential dimensions. Each contributing knowledge base is defined, beginning with an entire range of world-knowledge potentially operative. Text-models are explored as the controlling context fundamental to the codified structure. Intertext is analyzed as a "recycling" of knowledge in which transworld identity is not problematic, once access among the worlds of various texts is defined in epistemological terms. The study produces structures for variable combinations of text-external models, beginning with the realistic generic default to world-models, continuing with a spectrum of selection procedures through dominant text-models which govern the inclusion of world-knowledge, and concluding with the relations between intertext and world-models, and the activation of intertext in accord with (or in violation of) text-models. The study expands and applies the concepts of narrative and authorial audiences, the latter defined as a logical counterpart of the real reader, thereby suggesting a modal structure for the hierarchy of the fictional sphere.
Keywords/Search Tags:Fictional, Worlds, Intertext, Model, Structure
PDF Full Text Request
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