Frances: I'm sure that I'm missing much of your point (or inquiry).
However, I would submit that the meaning or category for a work would depend
much on the individual. Are you trying to develop a system which would meet
your specifications, or one which would apply to all judgments?
I expect Northrop Frye would value the Bible, in part, as a work of
literature. I expect that I could find souls who would exclude Anais Nin's
diaries as literature (however many others would admire them).
Geoff C
From: "Frances Kelly" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
To: <[email protected]>
Subject: Stories and Theories (...was "Envisioning") Date: Wed, 29 Oct 2008
12:46:12 -0400
Frances to other lurkers and fellow listers...
Permit me a small side thread to this main topic on what it might
be about the kernel of a "story" that hooks the signer; be the
signer a speaker and listener, or a gester and viewer, or a
writer and reader. My goal here is to invite advice and
correction.
(1)
My tentative assumption is that any stated story can be orally
spoken or cherically gested or literally written, so that as
scribed scripture or written literature for example any orthal
story is merely a statement carried as a kernel in a literal
literary text. To the extent that any story is mainly lingual or
of human verbal language, it is my further guess that any story
is generally best classed as a liberal art in the tradition of
the scholarly humanities, regardless of how senseless or trivial
or illogical the story might be.
(2)
Now, it seems to me that any liberal oratory or cheratory or
literary art can be either fictional or factional, which is to
say fictional or nonfictional. My take on this conjecture is that
fiction is a story, which may be in say the form of a yarn and
tale and lore or a novel and script and book, yet may also be
given as poetry or poesy or liturgy; but that nonfictional
faction is a story or theory, whereby a factional story might be
like a personal diary, and a factional theory might be like an
interpretive history or a speculative philosophy.
(3)
There are several thorns here in this attempt of mine at
categorizing and classifying stories and theories, as well as
slotting the literary arts as the liberal humanities. The least
of these thorns might be whether a diary can be held as a story,
and then as literary art; and if religious writings can be held
as stories or theories, and even as art at all; and if
theoretical philosophy can be held as both artistic and
scientific.
(4)
The further intriguing issue of evocative fictional stories being
posited by signers in nonverbal or nonlingual ways with other
than language signs that are linguistic and grammatic, such as
for example in pictorial depictions or theatrical performances,
might perhaps be put aside for the moment.
(5)
My present position however is that any fictional or factional
story and its posited kernel in any semiotic or linguistic form
would presumably be potentially able to hook any signer, aside
from the absence or presence of any mimetic ambiguity or
cathartic reality or didactic morality that the story might be
found to yield or state.
(6)
This realist stance holds that the story is in the sign as part
of its content, and that the signer is merely related to it in a
common ground of relative reference. It is after all the
objective sign that is held to contain the story and to even have
say beauty in its form, and not the subjective notional mind of
the signer. The same could be said of a thought, which thought is
not in the mind, but rather is in the sign, such as a written
text or a drawn image. It is clearly the mind that is in thought,
rather than the thought being in the mind; as for example the
body is in motion, rather than the motion being in the body.
