Q&A Question 1

Is fiction necessarily comprised of pretend assertions as claimed by Searle?

In his attempt to break down the art of fiction into a series of illocutionary acts, Searle claims that fiction is comprised of a series of pretend assertions. Searle's defense of this claim seems to be strong; that a work of fiction must correspond to the pretend world in the same way that a series of assertions must correspond to reality. For the majority of fictional works, this seems to be the case. But what happens if a work is not comprised of pretend assertions, as part or all of the story does not adhere to the four criteria of an assertion? For instance, in the novel The Catcher in the Rye, the story is narrated by the main character, who at first appears to be making assertions. As the reader follows the story, however, the "truth" behind much of Holden Caulfield's narration comes into question. By the end of the story, it's not even apparent that Holden himself believes that much of what he is saying is true.

Would the Catcher in the Rye be eliminated from fiction under Searle's definition?

Necessary and Sufficient

What are the necessary and sufficient conditions for a work to be considered literature?

While some of us contend that literature can and should be defined classically, the burden subsequently falls upon us to demonstrate how. Jacob has already attempted this definition, and I believe it is a defensible position. Since I agree with Jacob's definition of art, and since I consider literature to be an art form, I would begin my definition of literature in much the same manner. Art is the creation of an object through the use of an aesthetic medium with the intent to convey and embody a concept or emotion. Therefore, I agree with the beginning of Jacob's definition, that literature is an object created through the use of language with the intent to convey and embody a concept and emotion. The only area of contention that I thought I might have was with the qualification that literature must be a narrative. I thought that something important might be excluded with that stipulation, and I wondered why we needed to include it at all.

Then two thoughts occurred to me. The first was that without the inclusion of narrative as a descriptive qualifier, the definition of literature might then be used to include a work such as "Spazio." Also, depending on how we define narrative in this case, we may not have a problem at all. I would like to posit that narrative in this definition should mean a story or account of events; which is broad enough to include the works we should include and still discriminates against works like Spazio.

Coherent Qualification

In one of his more recent posts, Jacob posited a definition of literature. While I am a fan of this definition (mostly because it corresponds nicely to his definition of art, which I am also a fan of for personal reasons), the fourth part is the only section that I question. Jacob says that in order for a work to be considered literature, it must have a "coherent narrative." Although I'm inclined to agree that a work of literature must possess a narrative, I am dubious of the merit in including the qualification that the narrative be "coherent." I think that the inclusion of coherent in the definition may bring a host of problems in determining works to be literature. For instance, is Ulysses by Joyce literature? While I think that it clearly has a narrative, some may argue against the coherency of it. But if Ulysses satisfies the criterion, than what work would contain a narrative not coherent enough to include in the category of literature? I think that we must first define narrative and then determine whether or not the inclusion (and definition) of coherent becomes necessary.