Introduction1 Previous studies of the fact/fiction dichotomy have usually been confined to particular levels or genres of discourse. There are, for ex

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2 Introduction1 Previous studies of the fact/fiction dichotomy have usually been confined to particular levels or genres of discourse. There are, for example, several works which examine the nature of language in different types of discourse. Such studies include: John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, and especially his article The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse ; Louise M. Pratt, Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse and J. Mukařovsky, Standard Language and Poetic Language. 2 Other critics, like Michael Sheringham in his work French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, and Georges May in his L Autobiographie, have simply incorporated in their studies an analysis of the interrelation of fact and fiction in relation to the genre with which they are concerned.3 Some studies discuss the genre of a particular novel. G. Gabriele Starr in his Objects, Imaginings, and Facts: Going beyond Genre in Behn and Defoe, examines the role of the imagination in eighteenth-century works.4 He refers to these books as factual fictions, concluding that the role of 1 The terms factual and non fictional will be used interchangeably in this study, as will the terms empirical world and the world of actuality. Most of the factual works referred to will be narratives. 2 Such works include: S. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969) and The Logical Status of Fictional Discourse, in New Literary History, 6, No. 2 (Winter 1955), pp ; L. M. Pratt, Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977) and J. Mukařovsky, Standard Language and Poetic Language, in A Prague School Reader, ed. P. L. Garvin (Washington: Georgetown University Press, 1964). 3 M. Sheringham, French Autobiography: Devices and Desires, from Rousseau to Perec (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) and G. May, L Autobiographie en France, Chapter 5 (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1979), pp G. G. Starr, Objects, Imaginings, and Facts: Going beyond Genre in Behn and Defoe, Eighteenth-Century Fiction, 16, 4, July 2004.

3 2 Introduction the imagination can point to a new genre.5 Karen Roggenkamp looks at the newspapers of the 1890s and in particular three New York newspapers, the Sun, the Journal and the World. She notes that entertainment is more important than information and that these newspapers use many of the techniques of storytelling.6 Yet other critics study the use of facts in a particular work. Stephen Crane s short story The Open Boat, contains many facts based on his actual experience of being shipwrecked.7 Stephanie Bates Eye concludes in her study of this narrative, that the work is a true story using literary techniques.8 Lilian Furst in her study of realism All is True: The Claims and Strategies of Fiction, examines the use of facts in realist novels. She concludes that the use of facts serves to authenticate the fictional elements.9 In his book Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel, Lennard Davis explains how such terms as Factual Fictions originated, when the novel was presented as an ambiguous form a factual fiction which denied its fictionality. 10 In the eighteenth century the new work of the novel was trying to find a place alongside canonical works. Davis shows how these works are an important part of the process of the history of the division of fact and fiction, news and novel, the movement from untroubled fictionality to the inherent ambivalence of Defoe, Richardson, Fielding, and later writers. 11 Davis work and the novels he studied, as well as the criticial input on these works by other writers, including those mentioned 5 K. Roggenkamp, Narrating the News: New Journalism and Literary Genre in Late Nineteenth-Century American Newspapers and Fiction (London: Kent State Press, 2005). 6 S. Crane, The Open Boat and Other Tales of Adventure: A Tale intended to Be after the Fact. Being the Experience of Four Men from the Sunk Steamer Commodore (New York: Double Day and McClure, 1998). 7 S. B. Eye, Fact, not Fiction: Questioning our Assumptions about Stephen Crane s The Open Boat Studies in Fiction, 35, 1 (Autumn, 1998), pp L. R. Furst, All is True: The Claims and Strategies of Realist Fiction (New York: Duke University Press, 1995). 9 L. J. Davis, Factual Fictions: The Origins of the English Novel (New York: University of Columbia Press, 1983), p Davis, p Davis, p. 223.

4 Introduction 3 above, shed light on the conflict between fact and fiction in this era. These novelists might even be seen as the precursors of the whole Literature as Fact genre, which was again seen as new, in the twentieth century, and given different terms, such as the nonfiction novel. 12 The nature of such works was again questioned when conversely journalism and the novel appeared to come together again, rather than to separate, as in the eighteenth century, which led to a heated debate in which this present study engages. This work seeks at once to give a broader view of the different levels at which fact and fiction interact in discourse, and to focus on a particular area of discourse that of documentary works in order to examine the ways in which factual and fictional texts, might be differentiated. Though the interrelation of fact and fiction in all discourse is stressed, the aim is not to suggest a general levelling of texts. The study, having looked at the rather simplistic true/false method of differentiation, and certain other dichotomies, such as ordinary and poetic language, aims to deepen the discussion and to go beyond this method of analysis and classification, which masks the complexity of the issue. In the matter of differentiation, the focus is less on the reasons why a factual work is accepted as authoritative, than on the way in which fictional works, by their special use of a particular factual paradigm, mark out their separate discursive space. This book explores the pervasiveness of fiction in our everyday world and in written discourse. It also explores the boundaries between factual and fictional works, which have been challenged, particularly in the twentieth century, with such works as What is History?,13 The Mythopoieic Reality14 and the The Literature of Fact.15 We interpret the world in terms of fiction which, in its broadest sense, shapes our world. We tell stories about events in our lives and create characters from people we know. Sometimes 12 See definition of Hollowell, note E. H. Carr, What is History? (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961). 14 M. Zavarzadeh, The Mythopoeic Reality: The Postwar American Nonfiction Novel (Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1976), pp. 55 and R. Weber, The Literature of Fact: Literary Non-Fiction in American Writing (Athens: University of Ohio Press, 1985).

5 4 Introduction the world around us seems as unreal as a fictional world. In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, this can be due to the many new technological feats which make life appear as strange as the most imaginative forms of fiction. Translating the world into discourse is also characterized by poiesis. It involves an imaginative leap and a shaping force which creates different genres. Verisimilitude is necessary, not only in translating the world into a fictional work, but equally in the representation of the real in factual works. In both cases the image of the world must conform to what is accepted as our conventional view of reality, which changes over time. The book then turns to the example of modern documentary works, both factual and fictional, using examples in the areas of history, travel tales, autobiography and reportage. These works almost all use narrative, but have their own distinctive paradigm. Various methods are suggested as a means of distinguishing between factual and fictional works. This is a very complex problem as it involves the episteme of a particular era and also literary conventions which change over time. The main aim is to understand how factual and fictional works use their particular paradigm in different ways, and how fictional works, rather than seeking to imitate the factual work, have their own distinctive aims. Part I, Chapter 1 deals with the problem of both setting up borders between factual and fictional works, and the endless crossing of those boundaries by apparently new texts. The different ways of distinguishing between these various discourses include discursive signs, found both inside and outside the text, on the level of fond and forme, such as the information presented on the cover or in the introduction, and the type of language used transparent or poetic. Other elements of texts of importance in this argument are the use of facts in both factual and fictional works, the ever present fiction in both types of writing, the historical moment, the episteme of an age, and the conventions in force in literary works. Chapter 2 examines how stories form an essential part of out daily lives and how both factual and fictional works are translated into texts, based mainly on the concept of verisimilitude. In Part II, modern French documentary works of fact and fiction, taken from the areas of history, travel tales, autobiography and reportage, are used to illustrate the problem of boundaries in literary discourse,

6 Introduction 5 especially the way documentary works use the above devices and how they can be differentiated in terms of factual and fictional works. The first part of each chapter consists of a general examination of the interrelation of fact and fiction in the light of the particular characteristics of each paradigm. The second part is devoted to a closer analysis of the way fact and fiction play their part in an example of both a factual and a fictional work. The second part of these chapters consists of analyses of specific French works of fact and fiction, taken from the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries. Thus, examining the particular characteristics of each paradigm studied, there is the use and nature of historical fact and of narrative in history and the historical novel, the first person and the itinerary in travel tales, the first-person narrative, and memory in autobiography, and finally the objective viewpoint and events-presented-as-news in reportage. In the area of history, a prominent literary work belonging to the factual genre, Michelet s Histoire de la révolution française (1847), is contrasted with Balzac s novel Les Chouans (1834), which was to have formed part of a projected series of historical novels. In travel tales, the chapter focuses mainly on eighteenth-century works, though earlier works are mentioned because of the apparent fantasy element, due largely to the limited knowledge of the world in earlier epochs. Factual and fictional works are examined, as well as bogus works, such as armchair tales, when the author borrowed work from other travellers and probably did not even leave the country. In autobiography, two works have been selected because of their ambiguous status. Sartre s autobiography, Les Mots [The Words], though classified as a factual work, was considered by Sartre himself to resemble a novel. Proust s A la recherche du temps perdu [In Search of Lost Time], while accepted as a novel, incorporates many of the techniques and aspects found in fictional autobiography. Lejeune writes about the ambiguities in this genre, whether factual or fictional. Pour qu il y ait autobiographie (et plus généralement littérature intime) il faut qu il y ait identité de l auteur, du narrateur et du personnage. Mais cette identité soulève de nombreux problèmes P. Lejeune, Le Pacte autobiographique (Paris: Editions du Seuil, 1975).

7 6 Introduction [In order for autobiography to exist (and in a more general sense, personal writing) the identity of the author, of the narrator and of the person must be there. But this revealing of the identity leads to numerous problems.] These are some of the issues which Lejeune discusses in Le Pacte autobiograthique and which will be discussed at some length in the chapter in this work, which focuses on autobiography. In the area of reportage, pieces of journalism are compared with Malraux s roman-reportage, L Espoir [a journalistic novel, Man s Hope]. An example of the objective who, when, what, where, why, how paradigm, taken from Le Figaro, is included in the first part of this chapter. The article acts as a further point of comparison with the pieces of literary journalism, belonging to the French grands reporters, Jean-Pierre Chabrol and Joseph Kessel, whose techniques resemble those of the American New Journalists. John Hollowell defines the non fiction novel as a form of nonfiction that relies upon narrative techniques and intuitive insights of the novelist to chronicle contemporary events Critics have seen in them a new fusion of reporting and fiction and have called them nonfiction novels and new journalism. 17 Capote in his work In Cold Blood, based on a true story, has been seen as the leader in this new genre. The analyses in the chapter on reportage, reveal the many similarities between the factual and fictional works, on the level of subject matter and technique. All these types of journalism can be brought together under the umbrella term Literature of Reality, which is of course an apparent contradiction. Modes of discourse are discussed in each of these four areas, the analyes showing how the fictional work, by its particular use of the factual paradigm, maintains its own identity, and brings about a final ordering of realms. 17 J. Hollowell, Fact and Fiction: The New Journalism and The Nonfiction Novel (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1977), p. 11.