Names:Their Function in Fiction

The fact, however(orso it seems to me), is that names such as ‘Lear’, ‘Hamlet’, ‘Superman’, and the like do not (as they normally function in fiction) serve to denote any objects at all. How then do they function? Perhaps as follows. Someone writes a story entitled “George's

Adventures”: “Once upon a time”, he begins, “there was a boy named George who lived in Jamestown, North Dakota. George had many splendid adventures. For example, once he was attacked by an aroused prairie dog when he inadvertently stepped on its burrow. . . . ” No doubt “George's Adventures” will not win many prizes; but what, fundamentally, is the authordoing in telling this story? Fundamentally, I suggest, he presents and calls ourattention to a certain proposition or state of affairs. He brings it to mind for us, helps us focus our attention upon it, enables us to entertain, explore, and contemplate it, a procedure we find amusing and titillating oredifying and instructive as the case may be.

But what sort of proposition does the author present? In the simplest typical case—where, let us say, the story has only one character—a general proposition, one that could be expressed by an existentially quantified sentence whose conjuncts correspond roughly to the results of replacing ‘George’ in the story's sentences by the quantifier's variable. Let us call the proposition thus related to a story the story's Story Line and such an existentially quantified sentence expressing it a Stylized Sentence. The initial segment of a Stylized Sentence expressing the Story Line of “George's Adventures” will look like this:

(14) (E x) x was named ‘George’ and x had many splendid adventures and. . . .

where the succeeding conjuncts result from the story's succeeding sentences by replacing occurrences of ‘George’ therein by the variable ‘x’. Of course the correspondence is rough. Forexample, “George's Adventures” could have begun thus: “George lived in Jamestown, North Dakota. Many interesting things happened to him there; for example, one day. . . . ” Here the Story Line is the same as in the previous case even though the author does not explicitly say that someone was named George. But for each fictional name in a story, I suggest, a stylized sentence expressing its Story Line will contain a quantifierand a conjunct introducing that name.

Now of course only an author wooden in excelsis could present the Story Line by means of a Stylized Sentence such as (14). A more accomplished storyteller employs an artful mode of presentation complete with all the cunning and pleasing embellishments of stylistic technique. So naturally he replaces subsequent occurrences of the variable by the name introduced in the first conjunct; and he will probably omit that conjunct altogether. Then (unless he is writing in German) he breaks up the result into a lot of shorter sentences and adds his other embellishments.

The essential feature of this account (tentative and incomplete as it is) is that names such as ‘George’ in “George's Adventures” do not denote anything at all; they function substantially as stylistic variants of variables appearing in a Stylized Sentence. To ask, “Who orwhat

does ‘George’ denote in ‘George's Adventures’?”—is to misunderstand. This name denotes nothing at all in that story. To illustrate a point or give a counterexample I might speak of a pair of philosophers, McX and Wyman4 _{who hold}

peculiar views on some topic or other. Here it would be the sheerest confusion to ask for the denotation of ‘McX’ and ‘Wyman’. It is the same in the case of serious fiction.

Of course this account requires much by way of supplementation and qualification before it can be so much as called an account; many questions remain. For example, real persons and places often turn up in fiction, as do Jamestown in “George's Adventures” and Denmark in Hamlet; then the Story Line entails the existence of these persons or objects. Sometimes real people and places are given fictitious names, as is Grand Rapids, Michigan, in Frederick Manfred's The

Primitive. Sometimes the author pauses to express his own views on some appropriate subject, as Tolstoy does in War and Peace; he then briefly deserts fiction forsoberassertion. Sometimes it is difficult to discern the Story Line; we may

be unable to tell whether it includes the existence of a real person—Henry Kissinger, let us say—detailing his adventures in a state of affairs quite different from the actual world, or whether it only includes the existence of someone similar to Kissinger. Sometimes a story appears to be inconsistent or incoherent as in some time-travel fiction and fairy stories about people who turn into teacups or pumpkins. But then what goes into the Story Line of such a story?

There are plenty of other questions about what to include in the Story Line. Whatever is entailed by what the author explicitly says? Shall we therefore suppose that all of mathematics and necessary truth generally is included in every Story Line, and that everything is included in the Story Line of an inconsistent story? Does the Story Line include causal laws if the author seems to be taking them for granted but explicitly mentions none? Does it include trivial and obvious truths known to the author and his intended audience—e.g., that most people are under nine feet tall? Does it include items of misinformation—e.g., that a bilious person suffers from an excess of bile—the authorshares with his audience or thinks shared by his audience? These questions all await resolution; I shall say nothing about them here. So the peculiartalent and virtue of an authorof fiction is his wide-ranging and fertile imagination; he helps us explore states of affairs we should never have thought of, left to our own devices. Of course he does not assert the propositions that form his stock in trade; as Sir Philip Sydney puts it:

Now forthe poet, he nothing affirms, and therefore never lieth. For, as I take it, to lie is to affirm that to be true which is false. . .But

the poet (as I said before) never affirmeth. . . .And therefore, though he recount things not true, yet because he telleth them not fortrue, he lieth not—without we will say that Nathan lied in his speech before-alleged to David; which as a wicked man durst scarce say, so think I none so simple would say that Aesop lied in the tales of his beasts; for who thinks that Aesop writ it for actually true were well worthy to have his name chronicled among the beasts he writeth of.5

The authordoes not assert these propositions; he exhibits them, calls them to ourattention, invites us to considerand explore them. And hence his immunity from error noted earlier on.

Of course we are not thus immune. A critic who insists that Othello was an Eskimo has fallen into egregious error, whether through excess of carelessness or sophistication. For

(15) Othello was a Moor is true and

(16) Othello was an Eskimo

is false. The first is true (again, roughly and subject to qualification and amendment) because the appropriate Story Line entails the existence of a Moornamed Othello. (16), however, is false, because the Story Line entails the existence of someone named Othello who was not an Eskimo and it does not entail the existence of anyone else named Othello. (Here I venture no necessary and sufficient conditions fortruth and falsehood in fiction; I mean only to indicate a promising line of approach.) But surely there will be sentences such as

(17) Hamlet wore size 13 shoes

that are neither true nor false. The appropriate Story Line does not entail the existence of someone named Hamlet who wore size 13 shoes; but neither does it entail the existence of someone named Hamlet who did not wear size 13 shoes. So (17) is neither true nor false. Of course a careless critic writing a book on literary characters with large feet might write “Hamlet, furthermore, wore size 13 shoes, asdid. . . . ” Such a critic would probably be saying what is false; forvery likely he would be asserting something that entails that (17) is true; and that is false.

As I said, this account requires much by way of development and supplementation and qualification. Here I am less interested in filling out the account than in simply sketching its basic features, thus pointing to an understanding of fiction according to which stories are about nothing at all and the names they contain denote neither actual nor possible objects.

Notes

1. And this redeems a promissory note issued in chapter 4, section 8, of The Nature of Necessity.

2. “Bob and Carol and Ted and Alice,” in Approaches to Natural Language, ed. J. Hintikka, Moravesic, and Suppes (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1973).

3. Recall that a proposition P is true in a state of affairs S if and only if it is impossible that S obtain and P be false; similarly P is false in S if and only if it is impossible that S obtain and P be true.

4. See W. V. Quine, “On What There Is,” in From a Logical Point of View (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 2. 5. Apology for Poetry. Quoted in N. Wolterstorff, “A Theory of Fiction,” unpublished.