Satirical Novels of the Late Enlightenment and the Practice of Fiction. A Methodological Proposal for Investigations Into the History of Fiction

Abstract The paper examines German satirical novels of the late Enlightenment period, published roughly between 1760 and 1790, under the following question: Is there any evidence that the historical practice of fiction (concerning this time and these texts) deviates from the modern practice of fiction as described by institutional accounts of fictionality? First, it is explained what, in this essay, is meant by the ›modern practice of fiction‹. Four ›core rules‹ are identified that, according to institutional accounts of fictionality, characterize the practice of reading works of fiction. These core rules are: You should not conclude that what is expressed by fictional utterances is actually true! You should not conclude that the author believes that what is expressed by his fictional utterances is actually true! You should imagine what is expressed by fictional utterances (make-believe, pretence)! You should (or at least can) make your imaginations the object of higher-level attitudes (for example you can evaluate, emotionally respond to, interpret them etc.)! Then, using the example of German satirical novels of the late Enlightenment, seven features of fictional texts are discussed that may provide clues about the historical practice of fiction and that could give an indication of whether the core rules actually do apply. These features are: assurances of truthfulness by the author or fictional authors/editors; direct thematization of the fictional/factual-text-distinction; fictional reading scenarios; comments by fictional narrators and/or characters on the practice of reading; statements of the actual author in the fictional text; ›that cannot be true‹-passages (intentional mistakes, anachronisms, various ways of breaking the reader’s expectations, etc.); various kinds of reference to the actual world (for example satirical allusions to actual persons or states of affairs). It will be argued that, for the corpus of texts under consideration, there is no convincing evidence that the historical practices of reading works of fiction deviates in any significant way from the core rules of the modern practice of fiction. However, the main aim of this paper is not to provide an exhaustive historical case study. First, the investigation is limited to the exemplary discussion of some (although significant) texts and text passages, so the results can only be considered preliminary. Second, while the satirical novel of the late Enlightenment indeed is a particularly interesting and revealing genre for the study of the historical practice of fiction (arguments are given in section 3), the main purpose of this essay is to make a methodological proposal. A general procedure is provided for finding out whether the historical practice of fiction differs from our modern practice – a procedure that can be applied to texts of other times and genres as well.