Holocaust writing and the limits of influence

This article raises questions about the role and function of influence in Holocaust fiction. Particular attention is paid to the works of fiction in which authors are consciously using documentary materials. Three case studies are presented: Once by Morris Gleitzman, Call the Swallow by Fergus O'Connel, and Polsk Krigsommar by Mogels Kjelgaard. In each case, the links with the documentary sources are analysed in detail

'Getting out of the closet': Scientific authorship of literary fiction and knowledge transfer

Some scientists write literary fiction books in their spare time. If these books contain scientific knowledge, literary fiction becomes a mechanism of knowledge transfer. In this case, we could conceptualize literary fiction as non-formal knowledge transfer. We model knowledge transfer via literary fiction as a function of the type of scientist (academic or non-academic) and his/her scientific field. Academic scientists are those employed in academia and public research organizations whereas non-academic scientists are those with a scientific background employed in other sectors. We also distinguish between direct knowledge transfer (the book includes the scientist's research topics), indirect knowledge transfer (scientific authors talk about their research with cultural agents) and reverse knowledge transfer (cultural agents give scientists ideas for future research). Through mixed-methods research and a sample from Spain, we find that scientific authorship accounts for a considerable percentage of all literary fiction authorship. Academic scientists do not transfer knowledge directly so often as non-academic scientists, but the former engage into indirect and reverse transfer knowledge more often than the latter. Scientists from History stand out in direct knowledge transfer. We draw propositions about the role of the academic logic and scientific field on knowledge transfer via literary fiction. We advance some tentative conclusions regarding the consideration of scientific authorship of literary fiction as a valuable knowledge transfer mechanism.Comment: Paper published in Journal of Technology Transfe

LANGUAGE PLAY AND ITS FUNCTIONS IN CHILDREN’S FICTION

Language play in fiction can be used as a means to attract readers’ attention and as such, language play is a means of foregrounding. The readers can notice and feel that the parts containing language play stand out more, which makes them more special compared with the other parts. The research belongs to Stylistics, a study of style. It focuses on the various linguistic forms of language play found in Roald Dahl’s The Witches. This research investigates the different types of language play that occur in children’s fiction. These types will be classified in terms of Phonology, Morphology, Syntax, and Semantics. Furthermore, the research will also discuss the literal and contextual meaning of language play as well as its functions. There are some findings resulted from the research. Language play in children’s fiction, as shown in this particular novel, is basically an exploitation of repetition and deviation. The function of language play is mostly to entertain the readers as it builds humor and creates aesthetics

Fictional persuasion, transparency, and the aim of belief

In this chapter we argue that some beliefs present a problem for the truth-aim teleological account of belief, according to which it is constitutive of belief that it is aimed at truth. We draw on empirical literature which shows that subjects form beliefs about the real world when they read fictional narratives, even when those narratives are presented as fiction, and subjects are warned that the narratives may contain falsehoods. We consider Nishi Shah’s teleologist’s dilemma and a response to it from Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen which appeals to weak truth regulation as a feature common to all belief. We argue that beliefs from fiction indicate that there is not a basic level of truth regulation common to all beliefs, and thus the teleologist’s dilemma remains. We consider two objections to our argument. First, that the attitudes gained through reading fiction are not beliefs, and thus teleologists are not required to account for them in their theory. We respond to this concern by defending a doxastic account of the attitudes gained from fiction. Second, that these beliefs are in fact appropriately truth-aimed, insofar as readers form beliefs upon what they take to be author testimony. We respond to this concern by suggesting that the conditions under which one can form justified beliefs upon testimony are not met in the cases we discuss. Lastly, we gesture towards a teleological account grounded in biological function, which is not vulnerable to our argument. We conclude that beliefs from fiction present a problem for the truth-aim teleological account of belief

Retelling the Future: Don Juan Manuel's "Exenplo XI" and the Power of Fiction

In this paper I look at how “Exenplo XI” is both product and reflection of the various traditions and cultures of medieval Iberia and how Juan Manuel forges a new version of this story from these inherited traditions in order to showcase problems of concern to his fourteenth-century audience, namely, the tension between ecclesiastical and Andalusi systems of thought and their representatives and how the author’s manipulation of the frame and the power of fiction itself echoes Don Yllán’s manipulation of magic to test the dean’s mettle. Then I turn to the lessons of “Exenplo XI” regarding the transmission of knowledge and who controls it, as well as the function of speculative fiction and its ability to explore alternative realities and potential futures for both fictional audience (Conde Lucanor) and contemporary twenty-first-century readers

Reimagining roads: The fiction and function of infrastructure

pp. 107-114 of the Journal of the LUCAS Graduate Conference, Issue 6 (2018). The complete issue can be found at: https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/handle/1887/5771

Polignac Numbers, Conjectures of Erd\"os on Gaps between Primes, Arithmetic Progressions in Primes, and the Bounded Gap Conjecture

In the present work we prove a number of surprising results about gaps between consecutive primes and arithmetic progressions in the sequence of generalized twin primes which could not have been proven without the recent fantastic achievement of Yitang Zhang about the existence of bounded gaps between consecutive primes. Most of these results would have belonged to the category of science fiction a decade ago. However, the presented results are far from being immediate consequences of Zhang's famous theorem: they require various new ideas, other important properties of the applied sieve function and a closer analysis of the methods of Goldston-Pintz-Yildirim, Green-Tao, and Zhang, respectively

Situational fiction

This article takes the issue of epistemology in writing for (performance) art to ask: ‘What is the value of using “fictional” – as in “novelistic” – writing in reflective discourse on creative practice generally?’ Using Susan Sontag’s seminal essay ‘Against Interpretation’ as a starting point, the article argues that much writing on art assumes art’s ‘will-to-signify’ – its value as a form of meaning – and consequently ‘explanation’ as the purpose of art writing. The problems with this reflex are discussed, including its suppression of alternative responses, which may include acknowledging that art is an affective entity: it has a function (if, in Kant’s phrase, it is ‘without purpose’) and it has an ontology that may be more than its identity as signification. Extending, or restoring, the scope of art’s reflective discourse in this way, the paper also notes, via reference to George Steiner, that a reciprocal extension for the media of this discourse is also possible, and it seeks to map the two extensions as the axes of a grid that offers varied combinations of the content-form dimensions of art writing. One of these conjunctions produces ‘fictional writing’ as a possible response to art. Seeming to dispel the problem of reductionism in explanatory discourse, the article then goes on to argue that the use of fiction in the spaces of art writing – ‘Situational Fiction’ – may be valuable in other ways as well. Hence, this is an argument for knowledge of creative practice in creative form. But ‘Situational Fiction’ may pursue this ethos of ‘creative knowledge’ in another way as well: as its reflexive dimension implicates the reader in deciding whether any aspect of this academic paper designates this work as ‘fictional’, as the paper understands this

From subject to device, history as myth in action : the evolution of event from mythic processes as revealed in Waterfront Dispute fiction

This analysis of selected New Zealand works defends the evolving function of history as fiction-material. It is intended to establish that purpose and treatment alter, as time further separates the writing and the event. The general change is one of development from subject to device properties. In tracing history's evolving role and treatment in fiction, analysis identifies history's eventual source - shown, in fiction, to be mythic and subjectively conceptual