Much Ado About Nonexistence

Fiction and Reference

By (author) Avrum Stroll Edited by Hatem Rushdy

Paperback - £42.00

Publication date:

26 April 2007

Length of book:

176 pages

Publisher

Rowman & Littlefield Publishers

ISBN-13: 9780742548343

The problem of the nature of fiction and the problem of nonexistence are closely tied because fiction often talks about nonexistent entities. In Fiction, Reference, and Nonexistence, A. P. Martinich and Avrum Stroll, two of America's leading philosophers, explore fiction and undertake an analytic philosophical study of fiction and its reference and its relation to truth. Included in the discussion is the authors' new, contemporary theory of fiction developed as an extension of the speech act theory of H. P. Grice, as well as the relationship between nonexistence and Bertrand Russell's well-known theory of definite descriptions, and Hilary Putnam's theory of the relationship between common names and the world.
Rejecting standard presuppositions that have guided much of the debate about fictional discourse, Stroll and Martinich offer a novel approach to fictional discourse—indeed, theirs is clearly the most developed and important ordinary language-style treatment of fictional discourse available. This is essential reading for anyone interested in fictional discourse, and also will be relevant to those with broader concerns about meaning and reference and the relation between fiction and history.