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Mallarme in the Twentieth Century

Mallarme in the Twentieth Century COMPARATIVE LITERATURE /84 With exemplary clarity and acumen, Cohn examines these debates, but remains unwilling to decide, although her own criterion of nonreferentiality could help solve the puzzle. Since this criterion does not require the main character to be nonreferential, but simply that some aspects of the narrative be invented, the nonreferentiality of characters like Swann, Vinteuil, and Cottard should be enough to warrant the fictionality of the Recherche. But perhaps the criterion of nonreferentiality does not fully capture the specificity of fiction. This criterion correctly assumes that most literary narratives are playful mixtures of referential and nonreferential statements. Writers of fiction are free to invent as many particular objects and events (imaginary individuals and actions) as they want, while historians and biographers aren’t. Beyond particular objects, however, writers of fiction do not invent much, since properties and abstract notions found in fiction are virtually always part of the actual world. In Kafka’s Castle, properties and notions such as “sur veyor,” “bureaucrat,” “oblivious,” “sexually aroused,” “puzzled,” “obstinacy,” “indifference,” etc. cannot be said to be imaginary in the same way in which the main character is. This is why the typical reader knows that K. is not a real http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Comparative Literature Duke University Press

Mallarme in the Twentieth Century

Brady, Patrick
Comparative Literature , Volume 53 (1) – Jan 1, 2001
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Publisher
Duke University Press
Copyright
Copyright 2001 by University of Oregon
ISSN
0010-4124
eISSN
1945-8517
DOI
10.1215/-53-1-93
Publisher site
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Abstract

COMPARATIVE LITERATURE /84 With exemplary clarity and acumen, Cohn examines these debates, but remains unwilling to decide, although her own criterion of nonreferentiality could help solve the puzzle. Since this criterion does not require the main character to be nonreferential, but simply that some aspects of the narrative be invented, the nonreferentiality of characters like Swann, Vinteuil, and Cottard should be enough to warrant the fictionality of the Recherche. But perhaps the criterion of nonreferentiality does not fully capture the specificity of fiction. This criterion correctly assumes that most literary narratives are playful mixtures of referential and nonreferential statements. Writers of fiction are free to invent as many particular objects and events (imaginary individuals and actions) as they want, while historians and biographers aren’t. Beyond particular objects, however, writers of fiction do not invent much, since properties and abstract notions found in fiction are virtually always part of the actual world. In Kafka’s Castle, properties and notions such as “sur veyor,” “bureaucrat,” “oblivious,” “sexually aroused,” “puzzled,” “obstinacy,” “indifference,” etc. cannot be said to be imaginary in the same way in which the main character is. This is why the typical reader knows that K. is not a real

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Comparative Literature – Duke University Press

Published: Jan 1, 2001

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