Definition of Fiction: State of the Art

In his 2014 book Fiction and Narrative, Derek Matravers mounts a concerted attack on what he terms the ‘post-Walton consensus’ as to the features that distinguish fiction from non-fiction. He takes those who subscribe to this consensus to be committed to the following claims: ... Matravers argues (2014, 30ff) that imagination, so conceived, cannot be distinctive of fictions because ‘what goes on in the reader’s head’ in reading non-fiction involves just as much imaginative activity as what goes on in reading fiction. I shall return to Matravers’ claims later. First, however, I want to briefly clarify (i) why some kind of consensus emerged on the first of these claims, and (ii) the spectrum of different views that might be taken to fall within such a consensus. I shall then look at a number of challenges to the ‘consensus view’, both comprehensive and more local, and at how those theorists who endorse a notion of ‘fiction-making’ that encompasses a prescription to imagine certain things might respond to these challenges.