"Possible Worlds" in Literary Semantics

"Possible Worlds" in Literary SemanticsAuthor(s): Thomas G. PavelSource: The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 34, No. 2 (Winter, 1975), pp. 165-176Published by: Wiley on behalf of The American Society for AestheticsStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/430073 .

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THOMAS G. PAVEL

"Possible Worlds" in Literary Semantics

INTRODUCTION THE AIM OF THIS PAPER is to explore the consequences of applying some results of philosophical logic to literary semantics. My attention will be focused on the problem of the relationship between the literary work and the real world. I will first present some of the notions used in model structure semantics (§1). By using this conceptual framework, I will attempt to characterize a naive realist attitude toward literary works (§2 and §3). It will then be shown that naive realism presupposes the acceptance of the Wittgenstein- Searle theory of proper names (§4). As this theory will be criticized as inadequate, naive realism will be abandoned in favor of a more sophisticated way of interpreting the content of literary works in terms of the real world (§5). Subsequently I will examine the reliability of literary information and its possible reduction to "real" information (§6). Finally I will criticize the reductionist outlook (§7) and, by introduc- ing the notion of "ontological perspective," I will suggest a way towards establishing the semantical autonomy of literary works (§8).

1. "Possible worlds" semantics Saul Kripke, who has made some of the

most significant contributions to the semantic interpretation of modal logic,

THOMAS G. PAVEL is associate professor of linguistics at the University of Ottawa.

maintains in a well-known paper' that Sherlock Holmes "does not exist, but in other states of affairs, he would have existed." This puzzling statement belongs to a discussion of the models which represent the valid formulas of a modal logic system. A model structure in Kripke's sense is an ordered triple (G, K, R), where K is a non-null set, G is a member of K and R is a reflexive relation on K. In search of a more intuitive representation of model struc- tures, logicians use Leibniz's notion of possible world. K may be viewed as a set of possible worlds, G as a privileged member of this set, namely the "real" world, and R as a relation which links the actual world G with other worlds belonging to K and which are possible alternatives to G. The criterion of the alternativeness may con- sist, for example, in the identity of the sets of individuals which belong to G and to some other worlds. Imagine a world H identical with the world G in which we live except for the fact that while in G some individuals live in Toronto, in H they have moved to Ottawa. The list of individuals belonging to G is exactly the same as the list of individuals belonging to H. The only difference between G and H is a change in some properties of some individuals belonging to these worlds. Thus the relation R, defined in this way, puts together G and H: G R H. Obviously, if J is a world partially identical with G, but containing only half of the present population of G, then, according to our criterion, J is not an



166 alternative of G, so it is not true that G R J. R is reflexive, for each world has the same individuals as itself, more generally, every world is an alternative to itself.

The relation R can represent other crite- ria of alternativeness as well. Imagine a world I which is accessible from G, the converse being false. Temporal succession is a simple case of asymmetric accessibility. With a bit of patience and some luck we may reach the world I of January 1, 1977 having as a starting point the world G of January 1, 1976. The converse is impossible. The accessibility relation is thus reflexive and transitive, but asymmetric. A world H to which G bears the relation R has to be intuitively considered as possible relative to G or as compossible with G. (Incidentally, the notion of World-compossibility as used here is different from the original Leibnizian notion of compossibility among individuals (substances) which can jointly belong to the same world.)

The model structure (G, K, R) needs a model which assigns to each atomic formula p a truth-value in each world H belonging to K. A model is thus a function 4 which associates to an atomic formula p in a world H e K, one of the values {true, false]. This function may be defined in such a way that a proposition which is true, by 0, in all the worlds which are possible relative to G, is a necessary proposition in G. It is easy to see that this proposition originates in Leibniz's notion of necessary or eternal truths, which are true not only of the actual world, but of all possible worlds. Conversely, a proposition is possible in G if it is true at least in one world compossible with G. G being compossible with itself, a proposition which is true in G, is possible in G too.

A model structure becomes a quantifica- tional model structure if one adds to (G, K, R) a function ;/ which assigns to each world H belonging to K a set ;/ (H) of individuals which compose the world H. This set of individuals H is called the domain of H. The domains of different worlds belonging to K are not necessarily identical. A world H which is possible relative to G may have more or less individuals than G unless, of course, the relation R is so defined as to

THOMAS G. PAVEL

link only worlds which have the same domain.

Sometimes it is interesting to define R so as to connect the real world G with some of the worlds belonging to K, but not necessarily with all of them. If such is the case, G and R yield a partition of K into two subsets: the set K' of worlds which are compossible with G, and the set K" of worlds which are not compossible with G. It is easy to imagine some world G' belonging to the set K" of worlds which are not compossible with G and bearing the relation R to some other members of K. If R is an equivalence relation, no world compossible with G will be compossible with G' too. However if R is simply reflexive one can define it in such a way that some world H e

K be compossible with G as well as with G'. We can call G' a new world and say that, if such a H e K exists, the actual world G and the new world G' possibly overlap one another.

As to the status of individuals in this system we have already seen that a function ; attributes a domain of individuals to each world H e K. For simplicity's sake I will consider that I1(G) is defined. Thus we possess an inventory of the individuals (objects, constants) which exist in the initial real world. Now, how is ;/ to be defined for worlds which are possible relative to G? This question is a modern variant of an old philosophical problem: "Does everything that exists, exist necessarily?" Modal logicians and philosophers have debated the consequences of an affirmative answer to this question. It is obvious that from the metaphysical as well as from the logical point of view it makes a serious difference if we postulate that if G R H then 4i(G) = 4i(H), rather than accept- ing that it is possible to have both G R H and it(G) # 4(H).

2. Naive realism The position according to which the

worlds possible relative to G must have the same inventory of individuals as the real world G is too restrictive for literary semantics. Indeed, if all worlds possible relative to the real one must contain the same domain of individuals as the real




world, then a world H e K which includes some new individuals is not possible relative to G. However a very common aesthetic intuition takes for granted that things found in novels are, if not entirely true, at least in some way possible with respect to real life. A semantic system which intends to take this kind of intuition into account has to be more tolerant towards new individuals.

A tolerant modal logic may authorize a world H possible relative to G to gain individuals which do not belong to G, and to lose individuals which belong to G. Such an attitude towards individuals corresponds to common sense: one can indeed conceive of a world where Hitler did not exist, as well as a world where the president of the United States would be the son of a woman who in the real world has no children. Kripke's semantics allows the inventory of individuals to vary from G to a world H compossible with G, which means that it allows individuals who do not exist in G, to exist in some world H compossible with G. So, why not accept the idea that Sherlock Holmes, who does not belong to the set of individuals of the real world G, would have existed in another state of affairs. This seems satisfactory for common sense as well as for tradition. Aristotle maintains that "it is not the poet's busi- ness to tell what happened, but the kind of things that would happen-what is possible according to probability and necessity."2 In other words the poet must put forward either propositions true in every alternative of G (things possible according to necessity), or propositions true at least in one alternative of G (things possible according to probability). Now, as Aristotle notices, usually the tragic poets "keep to real people." When Shakespeare writes the story of Julius Caesar, he uses characters which belong to the real world. Is it not natural to think that, conversely, if, due to an unpleasant accident of history, Sher- lock Holmes does not happen to have existed, he would have existed in another state of affairs?

There are historical and social settings where this point of view is predominant. In such a setting the writer and his public

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accept the convention that a literary work speaks of something which is possible relative to the real world. This convention yields the realist literature, in the broad sense of the term. Defined as such, realism is not merely a set of stylistic and/or narrative conventions, but a fundamental attitude towards the relationship between the actual world and the truth of a literary work.3 In a realist perspective the criterion of the truth and falsity of a literary work and of its details is based upon the notion of possibility with respect to the actual world. Different kinds of realism vary, of course, according to the description of the actual world and to the definition of the relation R which connects this world with its possible alternatives. The actual world is different for the authors of medieval miracle plays than for the author of some modern mystery novel. The relation R of compossibility is different too in the two cases. A world in which the statue of the Holy Virgin speaks to a layman is compossible with the actual world for a medieval writer and its public. A world in which an FBI narcotics squad dismantles a network of drug traders and arrests everybody is a possible world for the writer of a mystery novel and its readers. In spite of the variations, what is common in these two cases is the logical attitude towards the information conveyed by literary discourse.

3. The integration of a proposition in a possible world

Imagine a world H and set PH of propositions true in H. Consider PH to be either infinite or at least very large. Imagine also an ideal reader for whom H is the only alternative of G. Propositions true in H are possible in G. The set PH being very large, the reader knows only a small part of it. Suppose that the reader is confronted with a proposition p which he does not yet know and that he has to decide whether or not p belongs to PH. Let us assume that the reader is provided with an intuitive decision procedure which allows him to find out within a reasonable time whether or not p belongs to PH . If the reader decides that p is true in H (hence possible in G), p is said to have been integrated into PH. The situa-



168 tion is slightly more complex when G has more than one alternative world in K. In this case, one can say that a new proposition p is integrated into Pc, where C is the set of worlds H belonging to K and compossible with G, and Pc = U PH, if p is integrated at least in one member PH of this union. Finally, if p is considered as true in G, one can say that p is accepted by the reader. "Accepted" is thus synonymous with "integrated into PG ."4

Let us take an example. A reader finds in his newspaper that a new nation, Ban- gladesh, has been formed. As he trusts the newspaper, the reader accepts the information, which is thus "integrated in PG." Suppose however that the newspaper does not speak of the formation of a new nation, but only reports some rumors which are circulating in well informed circles and which predict the imminent formation of Bangladesh. In this case the reader must use his decision procedure in order to see if the existence of the new "individual" may be integrated in at least one world H compossible with G. Let us assume that the reader, remembering that Pakistan has had some trouble with its neighbors, succeeds in imagining a likely situation which ends in the partition of Pakistan. If so, the reader has succeeded in integrating the news in the set Pc. If, on the contrary, the news report contradicts too forcibly what he knows about this country, he will decide not to integrate the news into Pc and will think "Impossible!"5

Instead of a newspaper suppose our reader examines a novel, La Princesse de Cleves by Madame de La Fayette, in order to decide if the propositions contained in it can or cannot be integrated into Pc.6 The propositions expressed by the first sentence of the novel:

"La magnificence et la galanterie n'ont jamais paru en France avec tant d'eclat que dans les derni/res annees du r/gne de Henri second"

may be easily integrated into Pc, and even into PG. The same thing holds for the following sentences of the novel, even if the reader may become more hesitant when the author, after having introduced the characters whose historical existence is quite well-known, proceeds to the less

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authenticated characters. However, the reader does not have to signal only the propositions accepted in Pc, but to indi- cate the propositions integrated into Pc, viz. the propositions possible in G. Now, the introduction of non-historic characters may be logically interpreted in two different ways, according to the status given by the theory to proper names.

4. Individuals, proper names, descriptions For simplicity's sake, I will assume in

what follows that the literary work is essen- tially readable, and that the control ex- erted by the author on the decoding operations is directed toward a better conveying of the work's content.7

One of the simplest ways of enforcing the realist impact of the work is to use individuals who belong to the domain ; (G). Even if the propositions about these individuals are false or undecidable in G, it is enough that a proposition p be categorically correct and have as subject an individual belonging to the domain of G, in order that the reader integrates p in a world H compossible with G. An example: In the actual world G of Aeschylus and of his audience, queen Atossa belongs to {I(G). The predicate "x dreams" may be combined categorically with names of persons. Conse- quently the proposition "Atossa dreams" is integrable in PH, even if it is actually false. A somewhat "weaker" effect is obtained by using, in default of names of real persons, names of real places.

However, more often than not literary works include only imaginary characters. Such characters do not belong to ;I (G) and the author often introduces them by means of likely descriptions. In doing this, the author takes advantage of a natural attitude toward individuals, an attitude which has given rise to the so-called Searle-Witt- genstein theory of proper names. According to this theory,8 the meaning of a proper name is given by a set-a family-of descriptions. Thus Napoleon is the French general who won such and such battles, who became first consul and emperor of France, who was defeated, exiled on such and such an island, etc. The meaning of a proper name being equivalent with a fam-




ily of descriptions, it is naturally possible to prepare such a set of descriptions and to associate a proper name with it.9 The proper name will thus mean "the one who has such and such properties." An author can imagine a set of properties: "lives in London," "is a private detective," "plays the violin," etc. and associate it with the name of Sherlock Holmes. If, moreover, the predicates used for the description of Holmes have extensions in the real world G, the Searle-Wittgenstein oriented reader will spontaneously decide that Holmes could have existed in some other world compossible with the real one.

5. Critique of naive realism

The practices I have just described represent an utterly naive attitude towards literature. In what follows I will endeavor to show that, though acceptable at an unsophisticated level, this attitude is logically inadequate for a better grasp of the properties of literary discourse.

The first objection refers to the definition of proper names. As long as a proper name means the same thing as a set of descriptions, as long as Sherlock Holmes's name is equivalent to the family of descriptions of Holmes's properties, it is natural to think that if it is possible that an individual exists who has all Holmes's properties, then it is possible that Sherlock Holmes himself exists. However, as Kripke shows,10 the Wittgenstein-Searle theory of proper names is fundamentally wrong. Indeed, one can conceive of a world compossible with the real one, where the individual named Napoleon would have had a totally different destiny. In this world all descriptions we apply now to Napoleon would be false. Would this mean that Napoleon himself would be someone else? Kripke's answer is resolutely negative. Even being a failure, Napoleon would have been himself. (Incidentally, this argument also holds against Leibniz's Predicate-in- Notion Priniciple and, more generally, against any identification of an individual with his destiny.) Proper names are not abbreviated descriptions, but rigid desig- nators. "Napoleon" is thus nothing else than the name of the person christened

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Napoleon. It does not carry any semantic content.

But if proper names are not equivalent to sets of descriptions, the possibility of some individual's having all the properties of Sherlock Holmes, does not mean one can infer the possibility that Holmes himself exists.

This leads us to a second objection: according to §3 above, the reader of a literary work was supposed to integrate the propositions found in the work into a set of propositions true in some world H, compossible with the real world. Now, this operation is somewhat queer. Indeed, the integration presupposes that information transmitted through literary channels is wholly equivalent to other types of information. The literary information however, is of a very peculiar kind. Imagine that our reader is looking for a good private detective and that he finds out that the newspapers are speaking in high terms of a certain London detective. If the reader notes all the information provided by the newspaper (the detective's name, address, re- tainers, etc.), he can afford to forget the exact origin of the information. In this context, the fact that he found the information in the London Times or in the New York Times is immaterial. But who would think of actually looking for Sherlock Holmes? In view of the origin of the information about Holmes, such a step would be preposterous.

We are thus led to make a distinction between propositions whose origin is immaterial for their integration and propositions the origin of which cannot be obliterated. Propositions which lose any mark of their origin when integrated into a set PH are said to be dissolved into PH. Scientific results as well as most of the information of daily life are usually expressed by propositions which are "soluble" in G or H e K. Propositions which cannot logically lose their mark of origin and thus cannot dis- solve into a set PH are said to be insoluble. A representation of an insoluble proposition is thus incomplete, until it includes some indication of the proposition's origin. Each proposition which originates in a literary work must accordingly include in



170 its logical representation the name of the work. Any correct representation of a proposition about Sherlock Holmes must contain such an indication. 1

The distinction between insoluble and soluble propositions shows that the integration of literary propositions as described above is a rudimentary operation. There are in our culture more sophisticated ways of evaluating the possible truth of a literary proposition p originating in the literary work Q. One can construct for each such p (of origin Q) a new proposition p', identical with p (of origin Q) in every respect, except for the absence from p' of the mark of origin, and then evaluate the integrability of p' into PH. This means that the reader will not assign a "possibility-value" directly to a proposition p belonging to a literary work Q, but to an ersatz proposition p', identical with pQ, but lacking the indication of its origin.

It should be noted that during this more sophisticated operation there is no risk that the literary work be decomposed irreversi- bly in its propositions, as could happen with a rudimentary realist integration. In- deed, as each of its propositions has re- ceived the mark of its origin, nothing prevents the "return" of the proposition to the literary work where it belongs. Insolu- ble propositions form indissoluble literary works.

6. The reliability of literary works

In what follows I will examine briefly the logical happenings which come after the integration of the ersatz propositions.

We must notice first that without their origin-qualifier the ersatz propositions are indistinguishable from "normal" propositions, the origin of which is immaterial from the outset.12 The information car- ried by the ersatz propositions will be regarded as equivalent to the information found in reliable sources such as truthful newspapers, scientific texts, etc. Obviously the set SR of reliable sources varies greatly according to the historical period, the social setting and even individual prefer- ences. It is possible to construct a relation RR on SR, the relation of "x's being as reliable as y." This relation will partition

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the set SR of reliable sources in classes of equally reliable sources. The relation RR and the partition PR also change according to historical, sociological, and individual variations. There was a time and a social group where two sources like the Psalms and a scientific treatise belonged to the same class of the partition induced by RR on SR. Consequently they were considered equally reliable. Hence the condemnation of Galileo.

The position of literary works with re- gard to the configuration (SR, RR) is somewhat ambiguous. The naive attitude described in §2 and §3 includes the literary work in SR. But according to the results in §5 it is no longer possible to do so. How- ever, the set E Q of ersatz propositions derived from some literary work Q can be and sometimes is evaluated in relation to the partition PR induced by RR. Let us consider the simple case when RR induces on SR only two partition cells: SR, the set of very reliable sources (e.g. scientific texts in a broad sense, which includes, for example, textbooks of the history of music) and SR, the set of less reliable sources (e.g. newspapers, memoirs, etc.). To what partition cell will the set EQ of ersatz propositions be assigned? It depends, of course, on the value of Q. Suppose Q = Doktor Faustus by Thomas Mann. It is obvious that the set EDoktor Faustus cannot be assigned as a whole to one of the two partition cells. Some parts of Doktor Faustus are "as reliable as" musicology texts belonging to SR. Among those parts one could mention Wendell Kretschmar's analysis of Beethoven's piano sonata, opus 111, or the narrator's thoughts about the disappearance of the glissando from tonal music and its use by Leverktihn in his Apocalypse. (The fact that a musical work entitled Apocalypse does not actually exist is immaterial; our criterion for the integration of new information is not correspondence to fact, but only compatibility with previous information.) Other parts of the novel, however, are "as reliable as" doubtful reports in second order newspapers. The story about Leverktihn's relationship with a sick woman has this kind of reliability. Thus, the set EDoktor Faustus of ersatz propositions




derived from Doktor Faustus is divided by a partition similar to PR. Accordingly, one can reasonably argue that granted a more refined partition PR, one would not fail to further divide EDoktor Faustus. There are certainly more than two levels of reliability among the ersatz propositions originating in Doktor Faustus.

Can one generalize this remark and assume that for any partition PR of the set SR of reliable sources one can partition any set EQ of ersatz propositions derived from a literary work Q, such as to each cell of PR corresponds a subset of E Q? I doubt it very much. Such a proposal not only would be counter-intuitive, but would deprive us of an excellent criterion for literary typology. Indeed, a more refined partition PR of SR can serve as a "scale" for measuring the "reliability stretch" of a set EQ and, in- directly, of the literary work Q itself. Imag- ine, for example, a partition PR which divides the set SR of reliable sources in n cells of partition: the set SR of scientific texts-excluding history, sociology, and other social sciences-the set SR of social science texts, ... the set of SR of almost unreliable neighborhood gossip. The set EDoktor Faustus certainly possesses sentences as reliable as those of S,..., S but I doubt whether one can find in it true Sh-reliability. Other literary works do not encompass even S2-reliability. There is nothing in the set of ersatz propositions derived from Racine's Phedre which could compare with Kretschmar's analyses or with the narrator's remarks about con- temporary theology in Doktor Faustus. Certainly the reliability stretch of a French classical tragedy is much more narrow than that of a modern highly sophisticated essay-novel.

Such a typology can be used to empha- size the diversity of means by which a writer or a literary epoch induces its readers to accept the literary works as believ- able. Of course, the reliability stretch of a set E Q of ersatz propositions depends on the way the partition PR itself is devised. In Dur culture the set of reliable sources is a proper subset of a more vast set of sources. In other words, for us at least, there are also unreliable sources, literature being

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precisely one of those. As a matter of fact, along with propositions "as reliable as" SR, ... SR, each set E Q of ersatz propositions includes propositions which are less reliable than the least reliable cell of partition SR. Consider Therambne's narrative in Phedre, or the conversation between Leverkiihn and the devil in Doktor Faustus. The very existence of fantastic literature is based upon the assumption that some sources are unreliable. In our culture, a novel N is considered as fantastic if an appreciable amount of propositions belonging to EN do not fulfill the minimal reliability requirement.

7. Literary information and literary truth

Presumably, some readers of this paper will react negatively to my way of evaluating the reliability stretch of literary works. Such dissatisfied readers may indeed point out that it is highly arbitrary to exclude Racine's Phedre from S2-reliability, that is from the reliability of social science texts, while considering some parts of Dok- tor Faustus "as reliable as" S2-texts. Are not Racine's tragedies an inexhaustible treasure of insights into human psychology? Are they not, in a sense, as exact or even more exact than a psychology treatise?

In a certain sense they are. Remember though that I was not evaluating the reliability of Phedre or of Doktor Faustus, but only the reliability stretch of the sets of ersatz propositions corresponding to these works. Such a parameter, far from evaluating the global truth of a work, simply assesses the different types of discourse the writer simulates in order to convey information. As for the information itself, I shall deal with it in a different way.

Let us imagine a reader interested mainly in what is called the moral content of a literary work. Presented with Mar- lowe's Doctor Faustus, this reader will arrive at the conclusion that dealing with dark forces has fatal consequences: the one who sells his soul to the devil is forever damned. Now, the same reader can find some comfort in Goethe's Faust, for in Goethe's view, to play with the devil is only dangerous, but does not necessarily lead to



172 eternal death. There comes, at the most critical moment, the all-forgiving God who, moved by the intercession of "das ewig Weibliche," saves the culprit from the devil's claws. The kind of cognitive conclusions the reader arrives at can be less naive than those just mentioned. There is and always has been a tremendous amount of critical work aimed precisely at discover- ing and formulating in a non-literary language the cognitive conclusions of literary works. And if the matters of moral theology just discussed are obscure indeed, there are plenty of psychological interpretations which reduce these problems to a more palatable cognitive level. Thomas Mann's Doktor Faustus was certainly written as a literary exercise in the psychology of ge- nius. But can one assume that these cognitive conclusions are reliable the way a treatise on psychology is?

A trivial objection would be that poets contradict one another. We saw that the moral conclusions of Marlowe's play are the opposite of those conveyed by Goethe's. It is however well known that the conjunc- tion p. ~ p implies any proposition. So, cognitive conclusions derived from literary works are not reliable. This objection can be answered in at least two ways. First, scientists contradict one another yet their work is considered reliable. Second, literary works do not constitute a coherent field. Cognitive information drawn from Marlowe's play has nothing to do with information derived from Goethe's Faust. Each literary work explores its own, autonomous world. 13

The ontological status of those autonomous literary worlds is as enigmatic as can be. In the previous paragraphs I endeav- ored to describe the reader's reactions toward these worlds, assuming that the actual world can play the role of a stable vantage point with respect to which literary worlds are grasped and evaluated. Let us call this attitude toward literary information the reductionist outlook. There is little to be added from this point of view to the operations sketched in §2-§5. I want however to point to a peculiarity of the reductionist interpretation.

Suppose the reader has constructed the

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set E Q of ersatz sentences derived from the literary work Q. It is unrealistic to assume that EQ contains only simple propositions composed of names of individuals and predicates. There will certainly be some generalizations among the propositions of E . One has to accommodate somewhere sentences like "Frailty, thy name is woman," "Brevity is the soul of wit," "Won- ders are many, and none is more wonderful than man," etc. The sentences belonging to EQ can be evaluated and accepted (or re- jected) as being possible-for-the-reader. Suppose a reader a has accepted the set EQ' which is a subset of EQ. EQ' will contain some simple propositions and some of the previously mentioned generalizations or their equivalent. Now, the reader a is able to assimilate wholly the members of EQ'. The propositions originating in the literary work Q will thus be entirely dissolved into the larger set Pa of propositions a considers possible. They will mix, of course, with sentences already there and a will be able, through various inductive and/or deductive devices, to form new propositions. From "Frailty, thy name is woman" he will form "For all x, if x is a woman, x is frail" and, later, on some occasion, when meeting a woman b he does not know, he will be able to deduce "b is frail." Through inductive procedures, our reader will assume that since Romeo and Juliet both died, love is sometimes unhappy. After reading Proust, or after unhappy experiences with women, he will perhaps generalize further and obtain something like "Love is always unhappy." This way of mixing members of some EQ' with "normal" propositions brings forward the "implied truths" in literature14 and has been presented as the "informative or revelatory" role of literature15. Lit- erary criticism provides us with tentative mixtures of EQ' and commonly accepted propositions. Different trends in literary criticism concoct the mixtures according to different recipes. Among the set of commonly accepted propositions some critics prefer those displaying moral content; others are more interested in blending the members of EQ' with the results of sociology, etc. There are critics who estimate



"Possible Worlds" in Literary Semantics that the mixture should not put together EQ' propositions with extra-literary, commonly accepted propositions, but rather should mix different EQ' sets in order to gain extra-literary insights. A great number of studies about moral or social notions are based solely upon literary examples.

Despite all the differences between schools of literary criticism, however, one thing remains constant: once dissolved into the set of accepted propositions, the set E Q' cannot be recovered. In other words, it is fairly easy to draw moral conclusions from a literary work, but it is impossible to construct a literary work from its moral conclusions. The reductionist outlook succeeds in extracting information from the literary work and even in giving this information a status of reliability, but in achieving this the reductionist is willing to abandon a lot of things belonging to the literary work. The way to sense is a purify- ing one: the deeper the extra-literary senses of a work are explored, the lesser is the interpreter constrained by the work itself. To recognize this, one has only to consider the analogical interpretations of The Song of Songs or, more recently, some unconstrained psycho-analytical interpretations of literature.

8. Ontological perspective and literary autonomy

There are even literary works which appear to have been written with the reductionist outlook in mind. Such "tame" works seem to be incapable of subsisting by themselves, as it were. They are produced only in order to be reduced to some set of reliable information. All ideologically ser- vile literature has, of course, this property. The currently prevalent opinion considers that such works belong to an inferior cate- gory. Now, why do people who usually learn a lot from literary works think that it is degrading for literature to be controlled by an ideology? In what follows I will suggest that the reductionist outlook, of which didacticism and ideological exploi- tation are offshoots, is of less value than other attitudes one can display towards the verisimilitude of literary works.

173

During the previous description of the integration process it was assumed that the reader evaluates each proposition belonging to a literary work Q or to the Set E Q of ersatz propositions derived from Q, by contrasting it individually with the set Pc of propositions which are true in at least one of the worlds H, such as H is an alternative of the actual world G by virtue of the relation R. In other words, the reader will integrate only propositions which are possible with respect to G. Therefore the integration will leave out a great number of propositions which are not possible with respect to the actual world G. What becomes of these impossible-with-respect- to-G propositions? To simply drop them as irrelevant would not do. It would likewise be highly counter-intuitive to imagine anything like a line dividing the literary work Q into two sets of propositions: the ones which are possible with respect to G and the ones which are not. I doubt very much that such a line corresponds to any aesthetic experience. On the contrary, it has always been assumed by artists and critics that one of the sources of aesthetic delight lies precisely in the skillful intermingling of true and imaginary things. And people who read fantastic or incredible narratives are usually so "caught" by the story, that they can hardly distinguish between what is possible in the actual world and what is not.

But this does not mean that while listen- ing to or reading an incredible story, the receiver completely loses the capacity for deciding what is possible and what is not. Consider the case of a person belonging to the modern, post-Bultmannian public, who reads Doctor Faustus by Marlowe. Some of the events of the play are rather incredible when compared with the reader's starting-world. With respect to this world, the "covenants and articles" of the contract between Faust and Mephistophi- lis are inconsequential:

On these conditions following: First, that Faustus may be a spirit in form and substance, ... Fourthly, that he [Mephistophilis] shall be in his [Faustus'] chamber or house invisible; Lastly, that he shall appear to the said John Faustus at all times, in what form or shape soever he please.



174 I, John Faustus, of Wittenberg, doctor, by these presents, do give both body and soul to Lucifer, Prince of the East, and his minister, Mephistophi- lis; and furthermore grant unto them that four and twenty years being expired, the articles above written inviolate, full power to fetch or carry the said John Faustus, body and soul, flesh, blood and goods, into their habitation wheresoever. (II,1)

I must introduce here a distinction which was used by medieval philosophers and discovered again by modern logicians, namely the distinction between the de dicto and de re modalities. A proposition like

(1) The number of apostles could have been 11.

can be read de dicto, as (la) The proposition There are just 11 apostles is logically possible.

or it can be read de re, as (lb) The number that (as things in fact stand) numbers the apostles could have been 11.

(la) is true while (lb) is false for, as Plantinga (from whom these examples originate) puts it, "the number that numbers the apostles is 12 and accordingly couldn't have been 11."16

The same situation holds, for our modern reader, in the following sentence which corresponds to the first condition of the contract between Faustus and the devil:

(2) A human being may be a spirit in form and substance. (2) is acceptable as a de dicto possibility, since there is nothing logically impossible with this transformation, but it becomes untrue if read de re for, as things in fact stand, in the post-Bultmannian universe, a human being cannot be a spirit in form and substance.17

Let us call the set of propositions a person a considers as being either true or possible de re in the actual world G, the ontological perspective of a. The introduction of the notion of ontological perspective requires only one minor change in the semantic system presented in §1, namely we must consider as alternative worlds of G in K, only the de re alternatives. The relation R has to be modified accordingly.

Now, we have already seen that the reader of a literary work is less interested in evaluating the logical possibilities of the

THOMAS G. PAVEL

propositions encountered than in assessing their "real" possibility. Consequently, the contract between Faustus and the devil is not just difficult, or unexpected, or un- usual as compared to most possible worlds seen from the perspective of the reader. Such a contract, even if it is logically possible, is, as things in fact stand, completely outside the set of possible worlds which are de re alternatives of G, the actual world of the reader. From the point of view of its "entropy," the contract thus possesses a maximum subjective unexpectedness18. The contract is so unexpected that its effect on the reader is not limited to rendering him aware of some less explored alternative of G, but rather it takes the reader out of G and its de re possible alternatives, that is, out of his ontological perspective. This uprooting of the reader-some call it rapture-is more radical when the work is written in one of Frye's higher fictional modes19 viz. myth, romance, and high mimetic mode (to which our example belongs), but the effect is felt by readers of low mimetic works too.

It must be noticed however that even after having been removed from his usual surroundings, the reader will still be able to understand perfectly what is happening to Doctor John Faustus, to think up different alternatives to the world where the conditions of the contract are de re possible, to evaluate Doctor Faustus's chances of es- caping from the consequences of the contract, to understand the gravity of the story's ending, and to react emotionally to it. The impossibility de re of some of the propositions found in the literary work does not affect the decision procedure by which a reader can find and evaluate the alternatives of a given world, nor its emotional counterpart, "the emotional identification with the action and situation of the character". 20

So, we are faced with a literary work which contains some propositions possible de re and some propositions impossible de re with respect to the actual world and a reader who, although he can do so, makes no distinction between those two types of propositions. Moreover, at this level, called "the first level of aesthetic perception," by




Jauss, we cannot appeal to any aesthetic intuition which separates the two sets of propositions. On the contrary, there is every indication that the reader takes the work as a whole and that, when evaluating Faustus's actions and chances of success, he does not consider the situation according to his usual ontological perspective, but reacts as if he has adopted a set of new rules under which some of the previously impossible de re propositions have become entirely acceptable.

Aestheticians know well enough the emotional counterpart of this logical experience. Kant's idea of the disinterestedness of art's experiencer refers to the first moment of the logical switch: the abandon- ment of one's ontological perspective. But this is only half of the movement. Under optimum reception conditions, the work Q posits a new "actual" world GQ' and a new relation RQ' of alternativeness. Its reader adopts a new ontological perspective, under which a proposition p is true if it is true-in-Q, possible de re if it is possible-de re-in-Q, etc. This means that for the optimum reader of Marlowe's Doc- tor Faustus the proposition

(2) A human being may be a spirit in form and substance

is true when read de re, because it refers to a state of affairs which belongs to some alternative of G'r. Faustus, the "actual" world posited by this tragedy.

All this suggests that reductionism is wrong, or incomplete, because it fails to see that each literary work contains its own ontological perspective. In this pre- cise sense one can say that literary worlds are autonomous. This does not mean that a comparison between art and reality is illegitimate, nor that literary works are totally isolated one from another. Different ontological perspectives can and must be compared. But any such comparison is logically secondary to the ex- ploration of the unique ontological perspective posited by the work.

An earlier version of the first half of this paper was read on October 26, 1974 at the symposium on Verisimilitude and Fiction at the University of Mon- treal. Some of the suggestions made by Jean-Paul Brodeur during the discussions were incorporated into the present version.

175 Saul Kripke, "Semantical Considerations on

Modal Logic" in Reference and Modality, ed. by Leonard Linsky (Oxford Univ. Press, 1971), pp. 63-72.

2Aristotle. The Poetics, tr. and ed. L. J. Potts (Cambridge Univ. Press, 1968), p. 29.

3 Literary history however uses the term realism in a narrower sense, as a name for one of the major trends of nineteenth-century literature. For a discussion of different meanings of the term see Rene Wellek, "The Concept of Realism in Literary Scholar- ship," in Concepts of Criticism (New Haven and London, 1963), pp. 222-255.

4Morris Weitz, "Truth in Literature," Revue Inter- nationale de Philosophie 9, (1955), 116-129. Weitz ar- gues that questions about the truth of a literary work are inappropriate. The fictional use of language means that "we simply pretend to refer or to talk about something." Notice, however, that even from the naive realist viewpoint sketched here, the reader is not necessarily asked to decide whether some sentence belonging to a literary work is true or false sim- pliciter. Indeed, we can pretend to talk about something and then evaluate the success of our pretend- ing, that is the truth-value of our remarks in some world compossible with the real one.

5It is not difficult to see that the affirmative decision corresponds to the disjunction, "It is possible, for that all a knows, that p, or it is compatible with everything a believes that p." Jaako Hintikka, Knowledge and Belief (Cornell Univ. Press, 1963).

6 According to Francis X. J. Coleman "A Few Observations on Fictional Discourse," in B. R. Tilgh- man, ed. Aesthetics and Language (Univ. of Kansas Press, 1973). "Fictional sentences are either true or false, but we are unwilling to assert that they are true or that they are false" (p. 36). Let us suppose that for the time being our reader has overcome this "truth- value assignment" inhibition. Coleman makes an important distinction between (a) the simple utter- ance of a sentence "without our intending to assert anything" and (b) the assertion of a sentence. Accord- ing to him, while normally fictional discourse contains mostly sentences of type (a), sentences like the one that opens La Princesse de Cleves are to be interpreted as assertive, i.e., type (b) sentences.

7Michael Riffaterre, Essais de stylistique struc- turale (Paris, 1971).

8 See John R. Searle. "Proper Names" in Philosophical Logic ed. by P. F. Strawson (Oxford Univ. Press, 1967), pp. 89-96, and Ludwig Wittgen- stein. Philosophical Investigations, tr. G. E. M. Ans- combe (London, 1953).

9 Danto calls this situation quasi-semantical. Ac- cording to his "Empiricist Theory of Fiction," "a fictional characterization must be true to human behavior, without necessarily being true of the behavior of any specific personage in the world." Arthur Danto, "Imagination, Reality and Art" in Sidney Hook, ed. Art and Philosophy (New York, 1966).

10 Saul Kripke. "Naming and Necessity" in Se- mantics of Natural Languages, ed. by D. Davidson and G. Harman (Boston, 1972) pp. 253-355.

" Kripke, in an unpublished paper, speaks of an "implicit qualifier in the story." The mark of origin I employ should be explicit and should specify not only



176 the type of discourse involved, but the name of the literary work as well.

12 If the reader find that p' is or can be true, p' can be said to fulfill the "accuracy of description"- condition. R. K. Elliott, "Poetry and Truth" Analysis, 27 (1967), 77-85. According to Elliott, "the effective- ness of the poetic sentence depends upon its ability to induce us to pluck the meaning spontaneously from the remembered situation. If it succeeds in this, the poetic sentence acquires a quasi-revelatory character" (p. 81).

'1Friedrich Waismann in "Language Strata," Logic and Language, ed. Antony Flew (New York, 1952) pp. 226-47, develops a similar argument when he writes: "The logic of aphorisms seems to be very peculiar. A man who writes aphorisms may say a thing and, on another occasion, the very opposite of it, without being guilty of contradiction. For each aphorism, as it stand, is quite complete in itself. Two different aphorisms are not part of one and the same communication. Suppose you go to a museum where several paintings are hung on the wall. Would you complain that they are not correlate and do not fit into one and the same perspective? Well now, each painting has a pictorial space of its own; what is represented in two paintings, though the paintings may be adjacent, is not in the same pictorial space. It is the first aim of Art, it has been said, to set a frame around Nature. Sometimes the frame is large, some-

THOMAS G. PAVEL

times it is small, but always it is there. An aphorism is Literature and done with ink instead of colors. Of two aphorisms each is in a frame of its own; hence no clash" (p. 238).

4 John Hospers. "Implied Truths in Literature," Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 19 (Fall, 1960), 37-46.

15 Peter Mew. "Facts in Fiction, Journal of Aes- thetics and Art Criticism 31 (Spring, 1973), 329-37.

16 Alvin Plantinga. "De Re et De Dicto" in Nous 3 (1969) 235-58.

17 Seymour Chatman. "La Struttura della com- municazione letteraris," Strumenti Critici 8 (1974), 1-40. Chatman brings forward an. excellent example of a statement which is possible de?dicto but impossible de re. In Watt by S. Beckett there is a mention of a young woman who has hemophilia. The author adds in a footnote: L'hemophilie est a l'egale de la prostatite, une affection seulement masculine. Mais pas dans cet ouvrage."

18 Teun A. Van Dijk. "Philosophy of Action and Theory of Narrative" mimeo: Univ. of Amsterdam, Department of General Literary Studies.

19 Northrop Frye. Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton Univ. Press, 1957).

20 Hans Robert Jauss. "Levels of Identification of Hero and Audience" in New Literary History, 5 (1974), 283-317.



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"Possible Worlds" in Literary Semantics