Generic Considerations

Dan'l Danehy-Oakes · 24 Apr 2003, 17:45 · from urth-v0304.mbox · original

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From: "Dan'l Danehy-Oakes" <katbarx at hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: (urth) Generic Considerations
Date: Thu, 24 Apr 2003 10:45:37 -0700
Message-ID: <urth-v0304-3308 at digest.urth.net>
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Me:

> > Can you show me a fictive universe which maps exactly against the real?
> > If so, how can you know it does?

Gareth (I reverse the order of your paragraphs to come to my point more
quickly):
>Clearly, you can never have a completely 'real' representation of a world=20
>in
>a narrative (whether it be a fictional or non-fictional narrative for that
>matter) because it will always be a 'representation' of the thing, not the
>thing itself; but clearly some fictions are trying far harder to map onto
>the real world than others...

I suppose the word "exact" is what prompted my question. Obviously it
does not mean that "everything" in the "real" (consensus) is reepresented
in the text; that would require an infinite text. Does it mean perhaps
that everything described in the fictional text represents something that
actually exists in the "real" world? And if so, just how exactly does it
have to represent that something in order to be an "exact" mapping? I
don't grok this.

>But there are differing degrees of 'mapping', if you see what I mean. I
>highly 'realist' or 'naturalistic' narrative like an Old Norse saga is=20
>going
>to map its fictive world far more closely to what it knows as the 'real'
>world than other narratives that have no interest in being at realistic or
>naturalistic...

Degrees of representation I have no problem with. It's this "exact" thing
that gave me heartburn.

--Blattid

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