Fiction What Is Fiction? Defining

Fiction

What is Fiction?

Defining fiction might initially seem to be a highly simple task, but when one examines the wide range of works that fall under the umbrella of the term "fiction," it becomes clear that this term is not quite as direct or clearly defined as is often thought. Fiction consists of telling stories, but also of creating worlds, of imagining impossibilities and constructing fantasies that happen in the real and everyday world; fiction can be an avenue for escape or a way for drawing both readers and authors alike deeper into the real worlds that they inhabit and affect. No single definition of fiction could ever hope to encompass all of these variations and varieties, unless that definition were essay-length in and of itself. For this reason, in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of fiction in a way that is both academically acceptable and personally relevant, a description of some of fictions many features is more appropriate and more effective than any single definition.

Fiction can be considered entirely separate from the author that created it; in this light, it is not the creative but rather the created aspects of fiction that are emphasized, and the whole of a work and/or world of fiction becomes open to interpretation by readers coming to the fiction from many different perspectives. That is, the author's intentions in creating a work of fiction cease to matter in the understanding and application of that fiction, according to this perspective, in a way that is generally the case with non0fictional (and non-argumentative) texts. Certain features (or facts, in the case of non-fiction) are presented, and it is up to the reader to create full and true meaning form these fictional features.

Contemporary critics have pointed out that this removal of the author is ultimately an impossibility, however, and that the views/perspectives/prejudices/beliefs/politics of the author necessarily make themselves into any written text, fictional or otherwise (Booth 1983). Whether or not an author overtly speaks to the reader through text that is not in the mind or mouth of a specific character or narrator in the book, a fiction must ultimately be seen as the product of its author, and indeed even non-fictional texts that retain a high degree of scientific objectivity can reveal certain beliefs and assumptions made by the author if close enough examination is made (Booth 1983). Any comment, relfection, or observation made outside the realm of an identified character or narrator is by sheer circumstance an argument of the author's, Booth contends, and therefore fiction is the illumination of a specific perspective, set of ideologies, and imagined possibilities that is wholly individual to the author (Booth 1983).

The nineteenth- (and early twentieth- ) century author and critic Henry James had a very different approach to understanding and explaining fiction as it was to be understood in both a scholarly and an artistic sense. Fiction and its authors have to take themselves with a certain sense of seriousness of purpose, in James' view, but with this cam a certain detachment (James 1884). True fiction, or at least good fiction, has a definite sense of context in the wider world, and with this comes a certain removal of the author's importance -- the seriousness and historical trajectory of great works of fiction transport the fiction itself beyond the control of the author, making it a part of the entire cultural and social tapestry (James 1884).