Please join us for
the final seminar of the year:
Possible and
Fictional Worlds
Professor Jonathan Hart
Durham University
***
Wednesday, 30th
May 2012
5:00 – 6:30 pm
Department of
English Studies, Hallgarth House Seminar Room
***
ABSTRACT
Whereas
the possible world of literature, or what Aristotle called poetry, is a
fictional world and is a representation of, or alternative to, the actual
world, history is about the actual world, no matter how many possibilities it
considers and how literary its technique. Even if in theory it is difficult to
distinguish between the fictional and historical, the possible and the actual,
context does matter, and an event that has actual existence is taken to be
different from one that is possible or part of an alternative world. The
realized and the putative are experienced differently in practice but are
difficult to distinguish in theory. To
understand fictionality, an interdisciplinary approach is necessary. In this
context, literary theorists have been interested in fiction, and philosophers
have been concerned with the ways fictional texts challenged notions of logic
and semantics. This moment of the meeting (sometimes uneasy meeting) of the possible
and fictional worlds debate connects with my own interest in the texture and
contexture of literary texts as well as the relation between word and world,
poetry and history. Fiction may be a possible impossibility. There is one
actual world made of many. Metafictional experiments expand our view of worlds.
As a method, which demonstrates variety among its proponents, fictional world
theory has expanded our heterogeneous methodology. We now have more tools and
choices in coming to terms with actual and possible worlds, with the nature of
fiction.
ABOUT
THE SPEAKER
Before joining Department of English
Studies, Durham this academic year, Professor Hart taught at University of
Alberta, Canada. His teaching and research areas are Shakespeare and
Renaissance/early modern studies; comparative literature and comparative
history; theory and historiography; colonial and postcolonial studies; Canadian
culture; early comparative American studies (especially the ‘Atlantic world').
For more information, find us on facebook, follow us on
Twitter (@inventionsSem) or check our blog: inventionsofthetext.blogspot.com
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