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At this point the semantic disclosures are irreparably mixed with inferences at the narrative level. And both send the reader back to box 10 (world structures and different propositional attitudes creating possible worlds). |
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A text is not a 'crystal'. If it were a crystal, the cooperation of the reader would be part of its molecular structure. |
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At this point Figure 3 becomes very stiff vis-à-vis the flexibility of movements presumably accomplished by the reader. |
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In box 8 I am considering Greimas' actants and actantial roles. Similar structures (at slightly different levels of abstraction) are envisaged by Burke (1969) (agent, counteragent, and so on), Pike (1964) (situational roles), Fillmore (1970), and others. At this level the fabula and every other narrative structure are by a further abstraction reduced to pure formal positions (subject, object, sender, and addressee) which produce actantial roles. These roles are manifested at the inferior levels by actorial structures (the actantial roles are filled up by concrete actors, elements of the fabulabut already manifested at the surface intensional level of discursive structures). |
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At this point the reader has many tasks to perform. He must verify his forecasts apropos of the fabula, so facing the world structures of the text. He must recognize what the text accepts and mentions as 'actual' and what has to be recognized as a mere matter of propositional attitudes on the parts both of the reader and of the characters of the story (a character believes p while p is false; the reader believes that q is the case, while the next state of the fabula disproves his expectation). Thus the reader must compare these world structures with each other and must, so to speak, accept the textual truth. |
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But at the same time the reader has to compare (if he has not yet done so) the world such as is presented by the text with his own 'real' world, that is, the world of his (presumed) concrete experience, at least such as it is framed by his own encyclopedia. In other words, should the reader have put into brackets the problems aroused by box 5, now he has to deparenthesize his suspension of disbelief. Even if the text is a fictional one, the comparison with the 'real' world is indispensable in order to acknowledge the 'verisimilitude' of the fabula. |
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All the operations encompassed by box 10 are so complex, involving as they do problems of modal logic, that they cannot be dealt with within the framework of the present overview. Chapter 8 is devoted to this matter. |
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