Literary Fiction : the Ways We Read Narrative Literature

Content: Title Page
 Copyright Page
 Contents
 Chapter 1 Introduction
 Chapter 2 What is Literary Fiction?
 Attempts to define literary fiction
 Intratextual criteria
 Extratextual criteria
 The embedding of real elements in fiction
 A reader-oriented definition of literary fiction
 Fiction with reservations
 How to distinguish between fact and fiction?
 Is the author of documentary fiction obliged to cite his sources?
 The embedding of external facts: Conclusion
 The embedding of fictitious elements in non-fiction
 Narrative and fiction
 Chapter 3 The Fictional Communication Process. The question of genreThe levels of the communication process
 Early theories of levels
 Narratological theories of levels
 The material text
 The mental model of the action
 The relationship between the mental model and the action
 The cognitive content
 What kind of content does literary fiction convey?
 Identification
 Popular literature
 The cognitive content: Terminological alternatives
 The truth of the message
 The incompleteness of the mental model
 The transparency of the model
 The two aspects of the model
 Why the term mental model? One drawback of the terms signifier, signified and referentDrama
 Literary fiction as a speech mode
 Possible worlds
 What comes first, text or action?
 Chapter 4 The Cognitive and the Aesthetic Dimension
 Definition of the aesthetic
 The aesthetic dimension in art
 Does fiction have an aesthetic dimension?
 Does the text have an aesthetic function?
 Does the action have an aesthetic function?
 Does the mental model have an aesthetic function?
 Does the cognitive content have an aesthetic function?
 Does the interplay between the levels have an aesthetic function? Must fiction have an aesthetic dimension in order to be art?The cognitive function and consciousness
 Evidence of the cognitive function
 Chapter 5 The Delimitation of the Literary Work
 The text and the mental model of the action
 The message
 Drama and lyric poetry
 Ambiguous texts
 Reading in another order and repeated readings
 The simultaneity of the levels
 Other theories
 Chapter 6 Intention and Message
 The message as perceived by the receiver
 Different forms of communication
 The many faces of the author
 The message as perceived by the sender. Does the work always reflect the author\'s own views?The relationship between the latent and the received message
 To what extent is information about the author\'s intention available?
 The expectations of the reader
 The author\'s responsibility for the received message
 Conclusion
 Interpretative strategies
 Chapter 7 Problems Related to the Sender
 The narrator and the narrative act
 Käte Hamburger\'s theory
 The nature of the narrator
 The role of the receiver
 Attachment
 Chapter 8 The Structure of the Action
 The mental model and the action
 What is the action?