Frank Zipfel

The Pleasures of Imagination. Aspects of Fictionality in the Poetics of the Age of Enlightenment and in Present-Day Theories of Fiction

(Abstract)

Full-length article in: JLT 14/2 (2020), 260–286.

Investigations into the history of the modern practice of fiction encounter a wide range of obstacles. One of the major impediments lies in the fact that former centuries have used different concepts and terms to designate or describe phenomena or ideas that we, during the last 50 years, have been dealing with under the label of fiction/ality. Therefore, it is not easy to establish whether scholars and poets of other centuries actually do talk about what we today call fiction or fictionality and, if they do, what they say about it. Moreover, even when we detect discourses or propositions that seem to deal with aspects of fictionality we have to be careful and ask whether these propositions are actually intended to talk about phenomena that belong to the realm of fiction/ality. However, if we want to gain some knowledge about the history of fiction/ality, we have no other choice than to tackle the arduous task of trying to detect similarities (and differences) between the present-day discourse on fictionality and (allegedly) related discourses of other epochs. The goal of this paper is to make a small contribution to this task.

The starting point of the paper are two observations, which also determine the approach I have chosen for my investigations. 1) In the 18th century the terms »fiction« or »fictionality« do not seem to play a significant role in the discussion of art and literature. However, some propositions of the discourse on imagination, one of the most prominent discourses of the Age of Enlightenment, seem to suggest that this discourse deals more or less explicitly with questions regarding the fictionality of literary artefacts as we conceive it today. 2) The concepts of imagination and fictionality are also closely linked in present-day theories of fiction. Naturally, the question arises how the entanglement of the concepts of fictionality and imagination can be understood in a historical perspective. Can it function as a common ground between 18th-century and present-day conceptions of fiction/ality? Is imagination still used in the same ways to explain phenomena of fictionality or have the approaches evolved over the last 250 years and if yes, then how? These kinds of questions inevitably lead to one major question: What do 18th-century and present-day conceptions of fiction/ality have in common, how much and in what ways do they differ?

For heuristic reasons, the article is subdivided according to what I consider the three salient features of today’s institutional theories of fiction (i. e. theories which try to explain fictionality as an institutional practice that is determined and ruled by specific conventions): fictive utterance (aspects concerning the production of fictional texts), fictional content (aspects concerning the narrated story in fictional texts) and fictive stance (aspects concerning the reader’s response to fictional texts). The article focusses on the English, French and German-speaking debates of the long 18th century and within these discourses on the most central and, therefore, for the development of the concept of fiction/ality most influential figures. These are, most notably, Madame de Staël, Voltaire, Joseph Addison, Georg Friedrich Meier, Christian Wolff, the duo Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Jakob Breitinger as well as their adversary Johann Christoph Gottsched.

The relevance of the article for a historical approach to the theory of fiction lies in the following aspects. By means of a tentative reconstruction of some carefully chosen propositions of 18th-century discourse on imagination I want to show that these propositions deal in some way or other with literary phenomena and theoretical concepts that in present-day theory are addressed under the label of fiction/ality. By comparing propositions stemming from 18th-century discourse on imagination with some major assertions of present-day theories of fiction I try to lay bare the similarities and the differences of the respective approaches to literary fiction and its conceptualisations. One of the major questions is to what extent these similarities and differences stem from the differing theoretical paradigms that are used to explain literary phenomena in both epochs. I venture some hypotheses about the influence of the respective theoretical backgrounds on the conceptions of fictionality then and today. An even more intriguing question seems to be whether the practice of fictional storytelling as we know and conceive it today had already been established during the 18th century or whether it was only in the process of being established.

Investigations into the history of the modern practice of fiction encounter a wide range of obstacles.[1] One of the major impediments lies in the fact that former centuries have used different concepts and terms to designate or describe phenomena or ideas that we, during the last 50 years, have been dealing with under the label of fiction/ality.[2] Therefore, it is not easy to establish whether scholars and poets of other centuries actually do talk about what we today call fiction or fictionality and, if they do, what they say about it. Moreover, even when we detect discourses or propositions that on the surface seem to deal with aspects of fictionality we have to be careful and ask whether these propositions are actually intended to talk about phenomena that belong to the realm of fiction/ality. However, if we want to gain some knowledge about the history of fiction/ality, we have no other choice than to tackle the arduous task of trying to detect similarities (and differences) between the present-day discourse on fictionality and (allegedly) related discourses of other epochs. The goal of the present article is to make a small contribution to this task.

The starting point of my investigations are two observations, which also determine the approach I have chosen. 1) In the 18th century the terms »fiction« or »fictionality« do not seem to play a significant role in the discussion of art and literature.[3] However, some propositions of the discourse on imagination, one of the most prominent discourses of the Age of Enlightenment, seem to suggest that this discourse deals more or less explicitly with questions regarding the fictionality of literary artefacts as we conceive it today (cf., e. g., Dürbeck 1996, 26). Therefore, I want to try and tentatively reconstruct some of the implicit and explicit propositions on various aspects of fictionality that can be found in 18th-century discourse on imagination. 2) The concepts of imagination and fictionality are also closely linked in today’s theories of fiction. Naturally, the question arises how the entanglement of the concepts of fictionality and imagination can be understood in a historical perspective. Can it function as a common ground between 18th-century and present-day conceptions of fiction/ality? Is imagination still used in the same ways to explain phenomena of fictionality or have the approaches evolved over the last 250 years and if yes, how? These kinds of questions inevitably lead to one major question: What do 18th-century and present-day conceptions of fiction/ality have in common, how much and in what ways do they differ? By comparing propositions stemming from 18th-century discourse on imagination with some major assertions of today’s theories of fiction I want to try and give some preliminary answers to these questions. It would, however, go far beyond the scope of the present article to try and answer the mentioned questions completely and definitively – for the simple reason that dealing with these questions involves a wide range of premises and encompasses a vast and diverse set of aspects. Still, by reconstructing what 18th-century discourse on imagination says about different aspects of fictionality and by comparing these propositions with corresponding aspects of today’s theory of fiction I hope to lay bare some important aspects of the 18th-century understanding of fictionality and to put them in relation to 21st century views on the topic.

For heuristic reasons, I subdivide my reconstructive and comparative investigations according to what I consider the three salient features of today’s institutional theories of fiction:[4] fictive utterance (aspects concerning the production of fictional texts), fictional content (aspects concerning the narrated story in fictional texts) and fictive stance (aspects concerning the reader’s response to fictional texts).[5] In order to set the frame of my investigation, I begin with a very brief overview of how imagination is used and what it means in 18th-century discourse on art and literature.

References

Achermann, Eric, Was Wunder? Gottscheds Modaltheorie von Fiktion, in: E.A. (ed.), Johann Christoph Gottsched (1700–1760). Philosophie, Poetik und Wissenschaft, Berlin/New York 2014, 147–181.

Addison, Joseph, Critical Essays from The Spectator, ed. by Richard F. Bond, Oxford 1970.

Adler, Hans, Utopie und Imagination. A.G. Baumgartens Fiktionstheorie am Rande der Aufklärung, in: Jost Hermand (ed.), Positive Dialektik. Hoffnungsvolle Momente in der deutschen Kultur, Oxford et al. 2007, 17–28.

Alward, Peter, Leave Me out of It. De Re, but not De Se. Imaginative Engagement with Fiction, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 64:4 (2006), 451–459.

Batteux, Charles, Les Beaux-Arts réduits à un même principe [1746]. Édition critique par Jean-Rémy Mantion, Paris 1989. [dt.: Einschränkung der schönen Künste auf einen einzigen Grundsatz (1770). Aus dem Französischen übersetzt und mit Abhandlungen begleitet von Johann Adolf Schlegel, Nachdr. der dritten Auflage, Hildesheim/New York 1976].

Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, Meditationes de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus/Philosopische Betrachtungen über einige Bedingungen des Gedichts [1735], ed. by Heinz Paetzold, Hamburg 1983.

Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, Ästhetik [1750–1758], ed. by Dagmar Mirbach, Hamburg 2007.

Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb, Metaphysica/Metaphysik [1757], ed. by Günter Gawlick/Lothar Kreimendahl, Stuttgart/Bad Cannstatt 2011.

Behrens, Rudolf/Jörn Steigerwald, Französische Imaginationstheorien des 18. Jahrhunderts in kultur- und ideengeschichtlicher Sicht. Ein perspektivierender Aufriss, in: R.B./J.S. (eds.), Aufklärung und Imagination in Frankreich (1675–1810). Anthologie und Analyse,Berlin/Boston 2016, 1–29.

Bender, John, Enlightenment Fiction and the Scientific Hypothesis, Representations 61 (1998), 6.

Bender, Niklas, Lesen und Lieben im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Die emotionale Beispielhaftigkeit von literarischen Texten, Romanisch-Germanische Monatsschrift 67:1 (2017), 47–86.

Berghahn, Klaus L., German literary theory from Gottsched to Goethe, in: H.B. Nisbet/Claude Rawson (eds.), The Cambridge History of Literary Criticism, Vol. 1: The Eighteenth Century, Cambridge 1997, 522–545.

Berthold, Christian, Fiktion und Vieldeutigkeit. Zur Entstehung moderner Kulturtechniken des Lesens im 18. Jahrhundert, Tübingen 1993.

Bodmer, Johann Jakob/Johann Jakob Breitinger, Von dem Einfluß und Gebrauche der Einbildungs-Krafft [1727], in: J.B.B./J.B.B., Schriften zur Literatur, ed. by Volker Meid, Stuttgart 2014, 29–35.

Brann, Eva T.H., The World of Imagination. Sum and Substance, Lanham 1991.

Breitinger, Johann Jakob, Critische Dichtkunst [1740], in: Johann Jakob Bodmer/J.J.B., Schriften zur Literatur, ed. by Volker Meid, Stuttgart 2014, 83–204.

Buchenau, Stefanie, Weitläufige Wahrheit, fruchtbare Begriffe. Georg Friedrich Meiers Anfangsgründe aller schönen Wissenschaft, in: Frank Grunert/Gideon Stiening (eds.), Georg Friedrich Meier (1718–1777). Philosophie als »wahre Weltweisheit«, Berlin/Boston 2015, 287–297.

Burke, Edmund, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful [1757], ed. with an introd. by Adam Phillips, Oxford/New York 1990.

Carroll, Noël, The Philosophy of Horror or Paradoxes of the Heart, New York 1990.

Carroll, Noël, Fiction, Non-Fiction, and the Film of Presumptive Assertion. A Conceptual Analysis, in: Richard Allen/Murray Smith (eds.), Film Theory and Philosophy, Oxford 1997, 173–202.

Coulet, Henri, Révolution et Roman selon Mme de Staël, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France 4 (1987), 638–660.

Currie, Gregory, Literature and the psychology lab, The Times Literary Supplement, 29.08.2011.

Davies, Stephen, Responding Emotionally to Fictions, The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 67 (2009), 269–284.

Defoe, Daniel, Robinson Crusoe [1719], ed. by Michael Shinagel, New York/London 21994.

Ding, Katherine, Searching After the Splendid Nothing. Gothic Epistemology and the Rise of Fictionality, ELH 80 (2013), 543–573.

Döring, Detlef, Der Literaturstreit zwischen Leipzig und Zürich in der Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts. Neue Untersuchungen zu einem alten Thema, in: Anett Lütteken/Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (eds.), Bodmer und Breitinger im Netzwerk der europäischen Aufklärung, Göttingen 2009, 60–104.

Dryden, John, Epistle dedicatory to The Rival Ladies, in: J.D., The Works of John Dryden, Volume VIII. Plays. The Wild Gallant, The Rival Ladies, The Indian Queen, ed. by John Harrington Smith and Dougald MacMillan, Berkeley 1962, 95–102.

Dürbeck, Gabriele, Fiktion und Wirklichkeit in Philosophie und Ästhetik. Zur Konzeption der Einbildungskraft bei Christian Wolff und Georg Friedrich Meier, in: Daniel Fulda/Thomas Prüfer (eds.), Faktenglaube und fiktionales Wissen. Zum Verhältnis von Wissenschaft und Kunst in der Moderne, Frankfurt a.M. et al. 1996, 25–42.

Engell, James, The Creative Imagination. Enlightenment to Romanticism, Cambridge/London 1981.

Fielding, Henry, The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling, ed. by John Bender and Simon Stern, Oxford/New York 1996.

Franzen, Johannes et al. (eds.), Geschichte der Fiktionalität, Baden-Baden 2018.

Friedrich, Hans-Edwin, Fiktionalität im 18. Jahrhundert. Zur historischen Transformation eines literaturtheoretischen Konzepts, in: Simone Winko/Fotis Jannidis/Gerhard Lauer (eds.), Grenzen der Literatur. Zum Begriff und Phänomen des Literarischen, Berlin/New York 2009, 338–373.

Gabriel, Gottfried, Der Begriff der Fiktion. Zur systematischen Bedeutung der Dichtungstheorie der Aufklärung, in: Jörg Schönert/Ulrike Zeuch (eds.), Mimesis – Repräsentation – Imagination. Literaturtheoretische Positionen von Aristoteles bis zum Ende des 18. Jahrhunderts, Berlin/New York 2004, 231–240.

Gabriel, Gottfried, Vergegenwärtigung in Literatur, Kunst und Philosophie, in: Carl Friedrich Gethmann (ed.), Leben und Wissenschaft. XXI. Deutscher Kongreß für Philosophie 15.–19. September 2008, Hamburg 2011, 726–745.

Gallagher, Catherine, The Rise of Fictionality, in: Franco Moretti (ed.), The Novel, Vol. 1: History, Geography, and Culture, Princeton/Oxford 2006, 337–363.

Gaut, Berys, Creativity and Imagination, in: B.G./Paisley Livingston (eds.), The Creation of Art. New Essays in Philosophical Aesthetics, Cambridge 2003, 148–173.

Genand, Stéphanie, Présentation, in: Madame de Staël, Œuvres complètes I,II. De la littérature et autres essais littéraires, ed. by S.G., Paris 2013, 21–37.

Genette, Gérard, Vraisemblance et motivation, in: G.G., Figures II, Paris 1969, 71–99.

Gertken, Jan/Tilmann Köppe, Fiktionalität, in: Simone Winko/Fotis Jannidis/Gerhard Lauer (eds.), Grenzen der Literatur. Zu Begriff und Phänomen des Literarischen, Berlin 2009, 228–266.

Gibson, John, Fiction and the Weave of Life, Oxford 2007.

Goldman, Alvin, Imagination and Simulation in Audience Response to Fiction, in: Shaun Nichols (ed.), The Architecture of the Imagination. New Essays on Pretence, Possibility and Fiction, Oxford 2016, 41–56.

Gorman, David, Theories of fiction, in: David Herman/Manfred Jahn/Marie-Laure Ryan (eds.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Narrative Theory, London 2005, 163–167.

Gottsched, Johann Christoph, Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst [1751]. Unveränd. reprogr. Nachdruck der 4., verm. Aufl., Darmstadt 1982.

Guyer, Paul, 18th Century German Aesthetics, in: Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Winter 2016], https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/aesthetics-18th-german (19.03.2020).

Haßelbeck, Otto, Illusion und Fiktion, München 1979.

Holzhey, Helmut, Befreiung und Bindung der Einbildungskraft im Prozess der Aufklärung, in: Anett Lütteken/Barbara Mahlmann-Bauer (eds.), Bodmer und Breitinger im Netzwerk der europäischen Aufklärung, Göttingen 2009, 42–59.

Jones, Lisa, Der zweifache kognitive Wert des imaginativen Aspekts von fiktionalen Texten, in: Christoph Demmerling/Íngrid Vendrell Ferran (eds.), Wahrheit, Wissen und Erkenntnis in der Literatur. Philosophische Beiträge, Berlin 2014, 97–117.

Keller, Nathalie, Préliminaires à la théorie esthétique du XVIIe siècle, Paris 2008.

Köppe, Tilmann, Die Institution Fiktionalität, in: Tobias Klauk/T.K. (eds.), Fiktionalität. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, Berlin/Boston 2014, 35–49 (Köppe 2014a).

Köppe, Tilmann, Fiktionalität in der Neuzeit, in: Tobias Klauk/T.K. (eds.), Fiktionalität. Ein interdisziplinäres Handbuch, Berlin/Boston 2014, 363–384 (Köppe 2014b).

Kukkonen, Karin, A Prehistory of Cognitive Poetics. Neoclassicism and the Novel, New York/Oxford 2017.

Lamarque, Peter/Stein Haugom Olsen, Truth, Fiction, and Literature. A Philosophical Perspective, Oxford 1994.

Maeder-Metcalf, Beate, La Théorie du roman chez Madame de Staël, Europe. Revue Littéraire Mensuelle 693 (1987), 38–48.

Marmontel, Jean-François, Éléments de littérature, ed. by Sophie Le Ménahèze, Paris 2005.

Marshall, Donald G., Ideas and History. The Case of »imagination«, Boundary 2 10:3 (1982), 343–359.

McKeon, Michael, The Origins of the English Novel 1600–1740, Baltimore/London 1987.

Meier, Georg Friedrich, Anfangsgründe aller Schönen Wissenschaften [1748–50], Teil II, Hildesheim 1976.

Nussbaum, Martha, Poetic Justice. The Literary Imagination and Public Life, Boston 1995.

Paige, Nicholas, Examples, Samples, Signs. An Artifactual View of Fictionality in the French Novel, 1681–1830, New Literary History 48 (2017), 503–530.

Paige, Nicholas, Pseudofactuality, in: Monika Fludernik, Marie-Laure Ryan (eds.), Narrative Factuality. A Handbook, Berlin 2019, 593–600.

Paoletti, Giovanni, Fiction, connaissance morale et mélancolie dans l’Essai sur les fictions de Madame de Staël, in: Bertrand Binoche/Daniel Dumouchel (eds.), Passages par la fiction, Paris 2013, 211–229.

Prévost d’Exilles, Antoine François, Œuvres de Prévost I, Texte établi par Pierre Berthiaume et Jean Sgard, Grenoble 1978.

Richardson, Alan, Defaulting to Fiction. Neuroscience Rediscovers the Romantic Imagination, Poetics Today 32:4 (2011), 663–692.

Richardson, Alan, Imagination and Cognitive Intersections, in: Lisa Zunshine (ed.), Cognitive Literary Studies, New York 2015, 225–245.

Rosenmeyer, Thomas G., Φαντασία und Einbildungskraft. Zur Vorgeschichte eines Leitbegriffs der europäischen Ästhetik, Poetica 18 (1986), 197–248.

Scholar, Richard/Alexis Tadié, Introduction, in: R.S./A.T. (eds.), Fiction and the Frontiers of Knowledge in Europe, 1500–1800, Farnham et al. 2010, 1–16.

Schulte-Sasse, Jürgen, Einbildungskraft/Imagination, in: Karlheinz Barck et al. (eds.), Ästhetische Grundbegriffe, Vol. 2, Stuttgart 2001, 88–120.

Scruton, Roger, Art and Imagination. A Study in Philosophy of Mind, London 1974.

Scruton, Roger, Feeling Fictions, in: Garry L. Hagberg/Walter Jost (eds.), A Companion to the Philosophy of Literature, Malden, MA 2010, 93–105.

Searle, John R., The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse, in: J.R.S., Expression and Meaning. Studies in the Theory of Speech Acts, Cambridge et al. 1979, 58–75.

Seiler, Bernd W., Die leidigen Tatsachen. Von den Grenzen der Wahrscheinlichkeit in der deutschen Literatur seit dem 18. Jahrhundert, Stuttgart 1983.

Shelley, James, 18th Century British Aesthetics, in: Edward N. Zalta (ed.), Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [Fall 2018], https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/aesthetics-18th-british (19.3.2020).

Staël, Frau von, Essai sur les fiction (1795) mit Goethes Übersetzung (1796), ed. by Johann Imelmann, Berlin 1896.

Staël, Madame de, Œuvres complètes I,II. De la littérature et autres essais littéraires, ed. by Stéphanie Genand, Paris 2013.

Stewart, Keith, History, Poetry, and the Terms of Fiction in the Eighteenth Century, Modern Philology 66:2 (1968), 110–120.

Sulzer, Johann Georg, Allgemeine Theorie der schönen Künste: in einzelnen, nach alphabetischer Ordnung der Kunstwörter aufeinanderfolgenden, Artikeln abgehandelt [1792], Reprograph. Nachdr. der 2., vermehrten Aufl., Hildesheim 1967.

Vietta, Silvio, Literarische Phantasie. Theorie und Geschichte, Stuttgart 1986.

Vendrell Ferran, Íngrid, Das Wissen der Literatur und die epistemische Kraft der Imagination, in: Christoph Demmerling/Í.V.F. (eds.), Wahrheit, Wissen und Erkenntnis in der Literatur. Philosophische Beiträge. Berlin 2014, 119–140.

Voltaire, Imagination, Imaginer, in: Encyclopédie ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers [1751–1780], Vol. 8, Stuttgart/Bad Canstatt 1967, 560–564.

Walton, Kendall, Mimesis as Make-Believe. On the Foundations of the Representational Arts, Cambridge 1990.

White, Alan R., The Language of Imagination, Oxford/Cambridge, MA 1990.

Wille, Holger, Inwiefern ein Empirismus kein Empirismus bleiben kann. Zu David Humes Theorie der Imagination im Traktat über die menschliche Natur (1739/49), in: Jörg Steigerwald/Daniela Watzke (eds), Reiz, Imagination, Aufmerksamkeit. Erregung und Steuerung von Einbildungskraft im klassischen Zeitalter (1680–1830), Würzburg 2003, 75–89.

Wolff, Christian, Vernünftige Gedanken von Gott, der Welt und der Seele des Menschen, auch allen Dingen überhaupt. Den Liebhabern der Wahrheit mitgeteilet [1720], ed. by Charles A. Corr, Hildesheim et al. 1983.

Zetterberg Gjerlevsen, Simona, A Novel History of Fictionality, Narrative 24:2 (2016), 174–189.

Zipfel, Frank, Fiktion, Fiktivität, Fiktionalität. Analysen zur Fiktion in der Literatur und zum Fiktionsbegriff in der Literaturwissenschaft, Berlin 2001.

Zipfel, Frank, Emotion und Fiktion. Zur Relevanz des Fiktions-Paradoxes für eine Theorie der Emotionalisierung in Literatur und Film, in: Sandra Poppe (ed.), Emotionen in Literatur und Film, Würzburg 2012, 127–153.

Zipfel, Frank, Imagination, fiktive Welten und fiktionale Wahrheit. Zu Theorien fiktionsspezifischer Rezeption von literarischen Texten, in: Eva-Maria Konrad et al. (eds.), Fiktion, Wahrheit, Interpretation. Philologische und philosophische Perspektiven, Münster 2013, 38–64.

Zipfel, Frank, Narratorless Narration? Some Reflections on the Arguments For and Against the Ubiquity of Narrators in Fictional Narration, in: Dorothee Birke/Tilmann Köppe (eds.), Author and Narrator. Transdisciplinary Contributions to a Narratological Debate, Berlin/Boston 2015, 45–80.

Zipfel, Frank, Madame de Staëls Essai sur les fictions vor dem Hintergrund damaliger und heutiger Fiktionstheorien, in: Johannes Franzen et al. (eds.), Geschichte der Fiktionalität. Baden-Baden 2018, 177–208.

Zipfel, Frank, Invention and Fictionality, in: Monika Fludernik/Henrik Skov Nielsen (eds.), Travelling Concepts. New Fictionality Studies, Frankfurt a.M. 2020, 25–44.

Žmegač, Viktor, Der europäische Roman. Geschichte seiner Poetik, Tübingen 1990.

2021-07-02

JLTonline ISSN 1862-8990

Copyright © by the author. All rights reserved.

This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and JLTonline.

For other permission, please contact JLTonline.