Defining Fiction: Metaphor, Hypothesis, Myth and Counterfactual
Hans Vaihinger, The Philosophy of “As If”
Wolfgang Iser, The Fictive and the Imaginary
Thomas Pavel, Fictional Worlds
Frank Kermode, The Sense of an Ending
Kendall Walton, Mimesis as Make-Believe
George Lakoff and Mark Johnson, Metaphors We Live By
Mathmatical and Technical Fictions
Euclid, Elements [An example of classic geometrical fictions like "Let A be a line..."]
Paul Nahin, The Story of
[Are imaginary numbers fictions?]
Brenda Laurel, Computers as Theatre [Is a computer interface a metaphor? a fiction?]
Fictions in the Physical and Social Sciences
Lucretius, De Rerum Natura [The attempt to imagine the end of the universe through hypothetical events]
Francis Bacon, The New Organon [The classic empirical rule excluding "idols" when doing science]
Ernst Mach, The Science of Mechanics [Galileo's use of instinctive experience when studying gravity]
Sigmund Freud, Totem and Taboo [The imagined primal scene of murder that underlies human society]
James Clerk Maxwell, Theory of Heat [For Maxwell's demon]
Albert Einstein, “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies" [The continued use of hypothetical situations in hard science]
Eric Berne, Games People Play [Social behavior as a game]
Brigitte Nerlich, et al, “Fictions, Fantasies, and Fears” [On the use of science fiction in debates about cloning]
Historical Fictions
Tom Wolfe, “The New Journalism”
Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences [Selecting among historical events in terms of interest and interpolation]
Thomas Desjardin, These Honored Dead [Myths that have grown up around Gettysburg]
Ann Uhry Abrams, The Pilgrims and Pocahontas [Pocahontas as a fantasy figure]
Edmund Morris, Dutch
Maureen Dowd, “Forest Gump Biography” [The remaining works in this section are responses to Morris]
George Will, “A Dishonorable Work”
Edmund Morris and Leslie Stahl, Interview
Warren Goldstein, “‘Dutch’: an Object Lesson for History and Biography”
Legal Fictions
Quintilian, Institutio Oratoria [The need for lawyers to draw on fictional examples]
Martha Nussbaum, Poetic Justice [The importance of fictions rather than simply facts for understanding law]
Arthur Machen, “Corporate Personality” [Corporations as persons]
Page Keeton, Prosser and Keeton on the Law of Torts [On hypothetical futures used in tort awards]
Economic Fictions
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations [The "invisible hand of the market" fiction]
Karl Marx, Capital [Coins as fictions]
Cornelius Castoriadis, The Imaginary Institution of Society
Catherine Gallagher and Steven Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism [Novels and "credit"]
Political Fictions
Ernst Kantorowicz, The King’s Two Bodies [On the body politic]
Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
American Political Art [Uncle Sam, Rosie the Riveter]
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities
Jacqueline Urla and Alan Swedlund, “The Anthroponomy of Barbie” [for "average American"]
Lennard Davis, Factual Fictions [On ideology, doubt, and the novel]
Fictions in philosophy
John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding [On real and "fantastical" ideas]
Leibniz, “Discourse on Metaphysics” [hypothetical-heavy definition of the universe as "best of all possible worlds"]
Nelson Goodman, Ways of Worldmaking [The "trouble with truth" and worlds as versions]
Nietzsche, “Truth and Lies in the Extramoral Sense” [Philosophy as army of metaphors]
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice
Literary fictions
Plato, The Republic
Aristotle, The Poetics
Henry James, “The Art of Fiction”
E.M. Forster, Aspects of the Novel [Specifically, the novelist vs. historian comparison]
Daniel Defoe, The Further Adventures of Robinson Crusoe
Samuel Johnson, The Rambler
Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin [Afterword providing specific historical people as the basis for characters]
Henry Fielding, Joseph Andrews
Nathaniel Hawthorne, House of the Seven Gables
Jorge Luis Borges, “Pierre Menard”
Phillip Dick, “Who is an SF Writer?” [How are scientists and SF writers doing different things?]
Mary McCarthy, “The Fact in Fiction”
Deidre Lynch, The Economy of Character [For the character/caricature distinction]
Salman Rushdie and Günter Grass, “Fictions are Lies that Tell the Truth”
Media Fictions
Daniel Boorstin, The Image [The modern media "pseudo" news event]
Scott McCloud, Understanding Comics [For realistic vs. iconic characters]
Jean Baudrillard, “Simulacra and Simulacrum”
Roland Barthes, “The Brain of Einstein” [Example of real people taking on mythological importance]
Rhona Berenstein, “Acting Live” [On early TV shows and dependence on stars as real people]
Fictions in Autobiograph and Everyday Life
St. Augustine, Confessions [For time as a fiction]
Jay Martin, Who Am I This Time? [Hypothetical selves in everyday life]
bell hooks, “Writing Autobiography” [Inventing pasts in autobiography]