Does Grandcourt Exist? Description and Fictional Characters

This essay argues that fictional characters share a second-order existence with perceptual illusions in that both are present to experience even as they are not really there. It suggests that this second-order existence is what allows descriptive criticism to strategically combine two Victorian epistemological categories: empirical knowledge by acquaintance and verbally mediated knowledge by description. The paper reads George Eliot's Romola (1862-63) as similarly aiming to make readers acquainted with a past that can be described but not directly experienced. Ultimately, it contends that descriptive criticism and the Victorian historical novel are engaged in parallel explorations of what is presented, as opposed to what is represented, in fiction.

Loại tài liệu:

Article - Bài báo

Tác giả:

Coombs, David Sweeney

Đề mục:

Novels

Nhà xuất bản:

Indiana University Press

Ngày xuất bản:

Spring 2017

Số trang/ tờ:

Định dạng:

pdf

Nguồn gốc:

Victorian studies, Volume 59, Number 3, Spring 2017, Pages 390-398

Liên kết:

ISSN 0042-5222

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Does Grandcourt Exist? Description and Fictional Characters

Trung tâm Thông tin và Thư viện Trường Đại học Khoa học, Đại học Huế