»Der Roman zeigt, dass …«

Abstract Implicit literary assertions are theses about the real world that fictional works of literature suggest without these theses being propositionally present in the works. This paper first compares different theoretical descriptions of implicit literary assertions and introduces the concept of »implicit thematic assertion « for implicit assertions used in literary appreciation to make aspects of the work understandable as a treatment of a theme. The attribution of such assertions in interpretations and reviews as well as their content is then examined based on a diachronic sample corpus. It is shown that implicit thematic assertions have characteristic content properties (genericity, the occurrence of abstracta and collectives as well as non-conventionalised metaphors) which qualify them as propositional components of a worldview. In a final step, the article shows, through the analysis of an exemplary model interpretation, which prominent role implicit (thematic) assertions play in ideology-critical interpretations.