Project Narrative is hosting a hybrid event with Wanlin Li (Peking University).
Current studies of fictionality generally do not pay much attention to the historical specificity of the phenomenon. Even when researches on fictionality are sometimes historicized, they focus mostly on the connections of fictionality with the early modern novel, leaving its expressions in the nineteenth century largely unexamined. My talk discusses a special form of fictionality, namely, pseudofactuality, in association with Edgar Allan Poe’s magazine stories of insanity. Instead of concentrating on the characteristics and signposts of fictionality as previous researchers do, I turn my attention to Poe’s uses of pseudofactuality, particularly his invocation of factual discourses through dissimulative narration, in his stories. I place my emphasis on how the pseudofactuality allows the author to challenge the rationalistic periodical discourses of his times on insanity in a way that restores individuality to the mentally disordered. This contextualized study on pseudofactuality not only reveals the interconnectedness of fictionality and factuality as rhetorical constructions, but also moves us towards a historical poetics of fictionality that investigates its historically varying expressions as well as functions.
Meeting ID: 925 8218 5611
Password: 838658