Style articles from June 1995

Style archives from June 1995

Philosophical realism and postmodern antirealism.
June 22, 1995... Realism has preoccupied philosophers, literary theorists, and art theorists for generations. Yet in neither of these disciplines have discussions concerning realism reached a conclusive state or a clear definition. Typically, the conception of...

Fictional worlds: density, gaps, and inference.
June 22, 1995... 1. Gaps and facts. Possible-worlds semantics claims that fictions are possible worlds, but, disturbingly, in some essential features they differ from, or are even in contrast to, the formalized systems that are known by that name in logical...

The problem of impossible fictions.
June 22, 1995... "In fiction, anything is possible." This statement appears to be such a truism about literature that its utterance seems hardly necessary. And yet the implicit assumption in this platitude is that those events and circumstances whose realization...

A postmodern challenge to reference-world construction: Gilbert Sorrentino's 'Mulligan Stew.'
June 22, 1995... The subversions of postmodern fiction have constituted a challenge to narrative reading that theorists in diverse fields have been unable to ignore. Even within fictional-world semantics, where remarkable tolerance exists for the often disturbing...

Allegories of immersion: virtual narration in postmodern fiction.
June 22, 1995... Through its insistence on the concept of virtuality, the possible-world approach has brought a new dimension to the study of narrative. The first stage in the study of the interplay between the actual and the virtual in narrative communication...

Virtual termites: a hypotextual technomutant explo(it)ration of william Gibson and the electronic beyond(s).
June 22, 1995... He'd(1) operated(2) on(3) an(4) almost(5) permanent(6) adrenaline(7) high(8,9) a(10) byproduct(11) of(12) youth(13) and(14) proficiency(15,16) jacked(17) into(18) a(19) custom(20) cyberspace(21) deck(22) that(23) projected(24) his(25)...

Jean Baudrillard in cyberspace: Internet, virtuality, and postmodernity.
June 22, 1995... From AT&T advertisements to White House policy statements, the past two years have prepared America for a changed world or, more precisely, a new world: one that exists on the shimmering surface of our computer screens. In the first six months of...

Writing Space: The Computer, Hypertext, and the History of Writing.
June 22, 1995... The emergence of new writing technologies, particularly hypertext, has prompted a great deal of prophesying about such changes in literacy, narrative, and culture that a new form of text might encourage and/or reflect. The two works under review...

Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Critical Theory and Technology.
June 22, 1995... The emergence of new writing technologies, particularly hypertext, has prompted a great deal of prophesying about such changes in literacy, narrative, and culture that a new form of text might encourage and/or reflect. The two works under review...

Virtual Worlds.
June 22, 1995... As the twentieth century draws to a close, philosophical and scientific thought seems to have centered on one perennial philosophical question: is the reality of the world we inhabit independent of the attempts made by an observer to create...

Possible Worlds in Literary Theory.
June 22, 1995... The present book - Ruth Ronen's first - is primarily a meticulous presentation of those theories of fictionality available in current literary studies that have been inspired by possible-worlds theories in philosophy. In addition to a survey and...

The Fictions of Language and the Languages of Fiction: The Linguistic Representation of Speech and Consciousness.
June 22, 1995... In the long history of reflection on the nature of narrative, narratology can best be distinguished by the privileged relation it has established between the features of narrative content and linguistically inspired theories of the mediation of...