Fiction and Representation

Abstract

Abstract According to artefactual theories of fiction, fictional characters are contingently existing abstract entities. One comparative advantage of artefactualism over its rivals is its conformity with our pre-theoretic views about the createdness of these entities. Artefactualism has also its own limitations: there are specific contexts in which it is apparently wrong to think that characters are created abstracta. In this paper it is argued that these limitations can be circumvented if the ontological status of characters is explained in representational terms.