Two Perspectives on Fictional Characters
Two Perspectives on Fictional Characters

Summary/Abstract: Despite the major role played by the fictional agents in the economy of literary narratives, issues concerning “characterisation” have often been insufficiently exploited, sometimes because the trending emphasis was laid on other narratological issues such as point of view, or the text as a linguistic structural network, at other times because the conceptual framework of the traditional poetics of narrative was too limited to deal with certain pressing problems concerning fictional characters, such as their ontological status. The possible worlds semantic approach to literary studies and to fiction in particular has considerably enlarged this framework, allowing these issues to be reconsidered and for satisfactory explanations to be proposed concerning the fictional universe: its rules and limitations, the identity of its inhabitants and the way the readers are invited to relate to these.

• Details
• Contents