Non-Fictions and Narrative Truths
Non-Fictions and Narrative Truths

Summary/Abstract: This paper starts from the fact that the study of narrative in contemporary Anglo-American philosophy is almost exclusively the study of fi ctional narrative. It returns to an earlier debate in which Hayden White argued that “historiography is a form of fi ction-making”. Although White’s claims are hyperbolical, the paper argues that he was correct to stress the importance of the claim that fi ction and non-fi ction use “the same techniques and strategies”. A distinction is drawn between properties of narratives that are simply properties of narratives and properties of narratives that play a role in forming readers’ beliefs about the world. Using this distinction, it is shown that it is an important feature of nonfi ctions that they are narratives; it is salutary to recognise non-fi ctions as being more like fi ctions than they are like the events they represent.

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