The Routledge Handbook of Fiction and Belief offers a fresh reevaluation of the relationship between fiction and belief, surveying key debates and perspectives from a range of disciplines including narrative and cultural studies, science, religion, and politics. This volume draws on global, cutting edge research and theory to investigate the historically variable understandings of fictionality, and allow readers to grasp the role of fictions in our understanding of the world.
This interdisciplinary approach provides a thorough introduction to the fundamental themes of:
- Theoretical and Philosophical Perspectives
- Fiction, Fact, and Science
- Social Effects and the Uses of Fiction
- Fiction and Politics
- Fiction and Religion
Questioning how fictions in fact shape, mediate or distort our beliefs about the real world, essays in this volume outline the state of theoretical debates from the perspectives of literary theory, philosophy, sociology, religious studies, history, and the cognitive sciences. It aims to take stock of the real or supposed effects that fiction has on the world, and to offer a wide-reaching reflection on the implications of belief in fictions in the so-called "post-truth" era.
About the Author: Alison James is Professor of French at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include the Oulipo group, the contemporary novel, theories and representations of everyday life, and questions of fact and fiction. She is the author of Constraining Chance: Georges Perec and the Oulipo (2009) and The Documentary Imagination in Twentieth-Century French Literature: Writing with Facts (2020). She has also edited volumes and journal issues on literary formalism, fieldwork literatures, and nonfiction across media.
Akihiro Kubo is Professor of French Literature at Kwansei Gakuin University. His research interests focus on twentieth-century French literature and theories of literature. He is the author of Hyosho-no Kizu, Daiichiji Sekaitaisen kara miru Furansu Bungaku [French literature and First World War] (2011) and the translator of Jean-Marie Schaeffer's Pourquoi la fiction? [Naze-Fiction ka] (2019) and Gérard Genette's Métalepse [Metalepsis] (2022).
Françoise Lavocat is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. She received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Chicago, and is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France as well as a member and section chair in the Academia Europaea. Her publications include Arcadies malheureuses (1997), Usages et théories de la fiction (2004), La Syrinx au bûcher (2005), La théorie littéraire des mondes possibles (2010), Pestes, Incendies naufrages, Écritures du désastre au XVIIe siècle (2010), Fait et fiction: Pour une frontière (2016), and Les Personnages rêvent aussi (2020). Since 2018, she has been president of the International Society for Fiction and Fictionality Studies.
