Why There Are No One-to-One Correspondences among Fictionality, Narrative, and Techniques: A Response to Mari Hatavara and Jarmila Mildorf

In this essay we respond to Mari Hatavara’s and Jarmila Mildorf ’s critical engagement with our “Ten Theses about Fictionality.” We explain why we find our rhetorical approach to fictionality more persuasive than their approach; more specifically, we explain why we disagree with their claims that fictionality entails narrative and that the presence in a text of techniques conventionally associated with fiction gives that text a hybrid or fictional status. We also explain why we find the large discursive territory covered by our notion of fictionality to be a theoretical advantage rather than disadvantage.