Chapter 8
Fact, fiction and French flights of fancy
This chapter discusses a satirical novel: La septième
fonction du langage by Laurent Binet, published in 2015. The
book is a thriller with a deliberately absurd plot about a search for a lost manuscript which holds the secret of ultimate rhetorical power: the ability to convince anyone to
do anything. Although the characters in the novel include some “real
people”, such as two former Presidents of France, Stubbs argues that
Binet’s characters in general embody an extreme mix of factual and fictional
characteristics, and the merciless satire expressed in their mixed
ontological status has left many ordinary readers and professional critics
uncertain how to evaluate the novel. Stubbs employs various models of
analysis, including John Searle’s observations on the logical status of
fictional discourse, and contends that, while useful, this approach does not
explain in full how readers distinguish fact from fiction, nor indeed how
far writers can appropriately go with outrageous caricatures of living
persons. In sum, the chapter shows how the novel provides textual problems
which have not been solved by either literary scholars or language
philosophers.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.The plot: Spoiler alert!
- 3.What is the book really (sic) about?
- 4.The intertext
- 5.The lists
- 6.Factual worlds and fictional worlds
- 7.What is this chapter really about?
- 8.Searle: A pragmatic approach?
- 9.Eco: A semantic approach?
- 10.Searle and Eco (and Gabriel)
- 11.Ordinary readers
- 12.Professional critics
- 13.On the ethical status of fictional discourse
- 14.In lieu of a conclusion
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
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Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Statham, Simon
2020.
The year’s work in stylistics 2019.
Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics 29:4
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