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(2005) Carola Barbero, Madame Bovary: something like a melody, Milano, Edizioni AlboVersorio, pp. 137
[ISBN: 88-89130-05-9]
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What does a fictional
entity like Madame Bovary have in common with a melody? They are both higher order
objects, i.e. objects that are made up of other objects but are not strictly identical
with their sum. Melodies are, as is well known, objects of higher order par
excellence: we can play a familiar melody of eight tones, then afterwards
we can employ eight new tones, and yet still recognize the melody despite the
change. Why is this possible? It is possible because we have something more than
the mere sum of eight tones, i.e. a ninth something, which is the form-quality,
the Gestaltqualität, of the original eight. This ninth factor is the element
which enables us to recognize the melody despite the fact that it had been transposed.
These considerations are analogously appropriate for fictional entities: we have
properties, sets of properties, and we have to understand what kind of relation
subsists between these sets of properties and the fictional object – e.g. Madame
Bovary. The set of properties is not one and the same with its object-correlate:
what then is the difference between Madame Bovary and its constitutive properties?
It is the very same kind of difference subsisting between the eight tones and
the melody. The form or shape characteristic of the fictional entity can therefore,
exactly as in the case of melody, be transposed to a different story, even with
different constitutive properties, and still remain the same entity, as happens,
for instance, to Madame Bovary in Allen’s novel, The Kugelmass Episode. |
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Index
INTRODUCTION
NONEXISTENT OBJECTS
1. How objects that do not exist do not exist, p. 1; 2 Possible questions about fictional entities, p. 4; 3. Possible answers to the questions of what there is and what it is, p. 7; 4. What Voodoo Metaphysics is, p. 9; 5. The intrinsic limits of Voodoo Metaphysics, p. 12
SECTION 1: OBJECT THEORY AND FICTIONAL ENTITIES
1.1 Object Theory, p. 16. 1.2 What being an object means, p. 22. 1.2.1 Definition of object, p. 25. 1.2.2 The object’s independence from the human mind, p. 26. 1.2.3 Distinction between the object itself and its ways of givenness, p. 27;
1.2.4 Ways of givenness of objects: a taxonomy, p. 29;
1.3 Neo-Meinongian theories, p. 31;
1.3.1 Two modes of predication, p. 41;
1.3.2 Two kinds of properties, p. 45;
1.4 The Meinongian theory of fictional entities, p. 51;
1.4.1 Internal properties and internal ways of givenness, p. 56;
1.4.2 External properties and external ways of givenness, p. 59;
1.4.2.1 The Artifactualist position, p. 61;
1.4.2.1.2 Why we cannot simply accept an Artifactualist position, p. 68;
1.4.3 The kind of objects fictional entities are, p. 70;
1.4.3.1 Fictional entities are both existent and nonexistent objects, p. 71;
1.4.3.2 Fictional entities are both complete and incomplete objects, p. 72;
1.4.3.3 Fictional entities are created objects, shaped by the human imagination through language, p. 76;
1.4.3.4 Fictional entities are dependent entities, p. 78;
1.4.3.5 Fictional entities are higher order objects, p. 79;
1.4.3.6 Fictional entities as both subsistent and existent entities, p. 82;
1.5 Object Theory and Pretence Theory, p. 84
SECTION 2: FICTIONAL ENTITIES AS BOTH CONCRETE AND ABSTRACT OBJECTS
2.1 The creation problem, p. 89;
2.2 Madame Bovary is a product of Flaubert’s imagination, p. 92;
2.3 Fictional characters are created by linguistic practices, p. 94;
2.4 Fictional characters as creatures, p. 99;
2.5 Madame Bovary is both concrete (like a woman) and abstract (like a law), p. 103;
2.6 Woman and creator, character and critic, p. 107;
2.7 Genesis vs. structure: when does the fictional character start to be?, p. 109 ;
2.8 Pretending use, hypostatizing use, characterizing use, p. 111;
2.8.1 Naming a set of descriptions and naming a set of literary practices, p. 115;
2.9 Identity conditions, p. 117;
2.9.1 Transfictional identity, p. 123 ;
3. Fictional entities and other strange entities, p. 127;
4. Immortality, p. 135
REFERENCES, p. 137
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