Truth in Fiction is Truth Infection: A Study of Emma Donoghue’s Room

From Firenze University Press Journal: Studi irlandesi. A Journal of Irish Studies

Ahlam Ahmed Mohamed Othman, The British University in Egypt/Al-Azhar University

How much truth can a spirit bear,how much truth can a spirit dare?(Nietzsche 2004, 5)

Possible worlds theory, which posits that the literary text imposes its own laws on the fi ctional world and opens a new horizon of possibilities (Pavel 1975, 175), stands as a living proof of interdisciplinary cross-fertilization with work in philosophy and modal logic revolutionizing classical narratology, and work in narratology informing philosophical and modal logic enterprise. Th e main contribution of possible worlds theory to narratology lies in replacing the metaphysical notion of truth as an essential correspondence between world and language by a pragmatic, more relaxed view according to which “[a] state-ment is true if it ‘works’,if its assertion is warranted by a state of aff airs it produces regardless of referential questions” (Ronen 1994, 37). Possible worlds theory thus marks a shift in the conceptualization of truth from a fixed, absolute standard to a flexible concept relative to a universe of discourse. Accordingly, fictional discourse is viewed as an autonomous universe in relation to which propositions can be deemed true or false. In her short article, “Les mondes possibles du texte” (1977), Lucia Vaina defines the fictional universe as a succession of states of affairs mediated by events. The sum of these states of affairs constitutes the factual domain of the narrative universe, while the actions that mediate these states form another set of possible worlds, the world of the characters who aim at preventing or producing these states of affairs. To Vaina’s two sets of possible worlds, Umberto Eco adds a third set: the world constructed by the reader to rationalize narrative events. In Eco’s model, a text is “a machine for producing possible worlds (of the fabula, of the characters within the fabula, and of the reader outside the fabula)” (1984, 246). According to Eco, therefore, the fictional universe “tells at least three stories: (i) the story of what happens to its dramatis personae, (ii) the story of what happens to its naive reader; (iii) the story of what happens to itself as a text (this third story being potentially the same as what happens to the critical reader)” (205). According to Marie-Laure Ryan, the possible world imagined and asserted by the author constitutes all the states of the fabula: the possible subworlds imagined, believed or wished by the characters of the fabula thatpropel the events forward, the possible subworlds imagined, believed or wished by the Model Reader at every disjunction of probability, and “ghost chapters”, that are later approved or disapproved by the states of the fabula (1992, 542). “Model Readers”, Joseph Francese explains, “do not allow the author’s biography and poetic vision to condition their reading, but interact only with the work” (2003, 161). Rather than following the author’s point of view, the Model Reader creates meaning and order of the literary text “by constructing a Model Author, who is a projection of the wishes and desires of the empirical reader” (162). As a further development of Ryan’s view, I posit that the possible world, or rather the fictional universe, imagined and asserted by the author, is comprised of the following possible worlds:

1. A Metafictional world: fiction which directs attention to the process of fictive composition. It can be explicit, denotative, or implicit, connotative.
2. A Subfictional world: fiction that houses the author’s beliefs and memories that are not in focal awareness. It is intended and usually takes the shape of recurrent use of certain words.
3. A Nonfictional world: fiction that houses the author’s repressed thoughts. It is usually unintended and hidden within the fictional universe.
4. A Superfictional world: revelatory fiction that transcends ordinary fiction. It happens to the author as a revelation, as a moment of enlightenment.

The fictional universe of Emma Donoghue’s Room (2010) is made up of five chapters and several thresholds. On the Cover page, the thematic title on the Little, Brown and Company edition published on 13 September 2010, is written in four rainbow colors: orange, red, green and blue, representing the LGBTQ+ communities. Moreover, the thematic title, Room, refers to a nonspe-cific place that stands out like the LGBTQ+ people. The rhematic subtitle, A Novel, establishes the genre of the work as a fictional narrative; together with the disclaimer on the Copyright Page:

This is a work of fiction. The people, events, circumstances and institutions depicted are fictitious and the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance of any character to any actual person, whether living or dead, is purely coincidental.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.36253/SIJIS-2239-3978-14626

Read Full Text: https://oajournals.fupress.net/index.php/bsfm-sijis/article/view/14626