Workshop - Is there a Philosophy of Fiction?

On the Fiction/Non-fiction Distinction

November 23-24, 2015

Workshop Abstract

The recent publication of Derek Matravers’s Fiction and Narrative (OUP, 2014) has called into question many accepted tenets of the recent Philosophy of Fiction.

The questions raised include: whether there is a fiction/non-fiction distinction; whether traditional attempts to draw such a distinction track any interesting differences in the ways in which narratives are produced and/or consumed?; whether there are distinctive philosophical questions about fiction as opposed to narrative more generally; whether there is any interesting connection between fiction and the imagination; whether all narrative works have worlds, like the fictional worlds of novels and stories.