Mimesis and Motivation: The Two Faces of Fictional Coherence

This paper deals with “motivation” as fiction’s twofold logic of patterning and relates it to other concepts or lines of sense-making (e.g., integration, naturalization). The argument is best summarized through the paper’s headings. 1. Why Is the Discourse Like That? Motivation as Twofold Reason-Giving 2. Reality, Artifice, and Motivation: Doctrinal Biases, Variable Products, Universal Modes; 2.1 Aristotle’s Mimesis of Nature by Art; or, Why Plot above Character?; 2.2 Viktor Shklovsky and Mimesis Fallen below Art 3. How the Extremes Compare: Toward an Alternative Theory 4. Conceptualizing Motivation: Basic Requirements 5. Motivation and Integration: The Concept of Functional Mediacy; 5.1 Motivation in Tomashevsky’s “Thematics”: The Shift from Cover to Coherence; 5.2 From Polarity to Threefold: The Typology of Motivation; 5.3 Motivating and Integrating Distinguished in Face of Persistent Mix-Up; 5.4 Naturalization 6. Integral and Differential Motivation: The Mimetic Function 7. Motivation and Communicative Structure: Point of View as Sense-Making Construct; 7.1 Who Motivates, and from Whose Standpoint?; 7.2 Motivating Fictional as against Factual Discourse: The Difference Made by Quotation; 7.3 Appeal to Existence or to Perspective? Unrealistic World and/or Unreliable Subject?; 7.4 Fictional Motivation under the Proteus Principle; 7.5 Sibling Rivalry and Contingent Resolution within the Family of Mimesis I am an art theoretician.... I know what motivation is! Viktor Shklovsky, A Sentimental Journey