| Summary: | The distinction between fiction and non-fiction, between a text that is true and one that is not, is one of the oldest on record. Ever since we have been thinking about the act of narration, we have addressed the related meanings of truth and imagination. This is what Aristotle designated as the difference between the communicative use of language (legein) and its creative use (poiein). For millennia, we have been debating whether there are inherent features of being fictional or whether it is simply a matter of intention, that perhaps there is nothing unique to the language of fictional discourse after all. How do we know when a text is signalling that it is "true" or, by extension, not true? And what might quantity have to tell us about this most elementary of distinctions?
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