Abstract

Derek Matravers’s latest book—Fiction and Narrative1—is a bracing review of many of the leading topics in the philosophical discussion of the intersection of—as his title indicates—fiction and narrative. A major aim of the book is to dethrone the prevailing view that the notion of the imagination plays a central role in the definition of fiction versus nonfiction. In addition, Matravers argues that the distinction we should care about in this vicinity is between representation and confrontation. Matravers takes up many other issues in this book, which is alive with argument. But these are the two matters upon which I focus in this review because they appear to be the most important.Matravers dialectically paves the...