Told as Known Fact: A Study of David Lewis's 'Truth on Fiction'

There’s more to reading a fiction than meets the eye. Fictions aren’t true: otherwise they wouldn’t be fictions. But it’s true in "Oliver Twist" that Oliver asks for more. It’s certainly not true that Oliver tells lies. It’s true ‒ surely ‒ that Oliver has seen lots of cats. But cats aren’t mentioned in the text. So what’s going on? Evidently, we readers engage in some rather sophisticated language games when we establish the content of a fiction. This thesis investigates some of our games, with special reference to fictions that can interpreted in ways the author hadn’t intended.