Caddick Bourne, Emily (2011) Book review: 'Fiction and Fictionalism' by Mark Sainsbury. British Journal of Aesthetics 51 (3), pp. 340-343. ISSN 1468-2842.
Abstract
What is a fictional character? Nothing, according to Mark Sainsbury. Yet it is true to say that there are fictional characters. How? Because there are fictions according to which there are specific individuals. And it can be true to say that Anna Karenina is more intelligent than Emma Bovary. How? Because the truth-value of the sentence is to be assessed under the (false) presupposition that there are such people as Emma and Anna. And it is true to say that Conan Doyle's novels represent Sherlock Holmes, that I have been thinking about Holmes, and that Holmes is a famous character. How? Because such sentences either involve, or can be explained in terms of, intensional verbs or operators, and intensional contexts do not require that something be the thing which is represented, or thought about, or regarded in such a way as to make it famous.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences > School of Historical Studies |
| Depositing User: | Sarah Hall |
| Date Deposited: | 25 Nov 2014 14:37 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:14 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/11117 |
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