Bohumil Foft

Institute for Czech Literature,

Czech Academy of Sciences and Masaryk University

How Many (Different) Kinds of

Fictional Worlds Are There?
Since 1989 many literary theoretical books connected with the heritage of the socalled Prague School have been published in the Czech Republic. Also, books we
could consider primary sources of Czech structuralism, such as Jan Mukafovsky's
selected works (two volumes of his Studie) and Felix Vodicka's books Pocdtky
krdsne prozy novoceske and Struktura vyvoje, have been either republished after
decades or newly edited. Furthermore, there are now several books written by their
students and followers, who, under the communist regime, could hardly publish or
could not publish at all. The scholars of this generation of Czech structuralists,
those who stayed in Czechoslovakia in the seventies and eighties, were allowed
neither to officially educate a new generation of their followers in universities nor
to influence them by their work. Some of the members decided to leave the
communist state and live abroad. Thus, we speak about the Czech branch and about
the foreign branch of this generation of Czech structuralism. Nevertheless, after
1989 books of Miroslav Cervenka and Milan Jankovic (i.e., of those who stayed)
appeared in Czech bookstores next to books hy Jiff Veltrusky, Kvetoslav Chvatfk,
or Lubomir Dolezel (i.e., of those who left the country)some of them originally
written in Czech and others translated from foreign languages. The authors pursued
different approaches, methodologies, and strategies in their studies of literary
works, but these differences can still be seen as variety inside a relatively consistent
framework of structuralist thought. They share some theoretical problems, such as
text and its structure, structured meaning, stylistic analysis, and so on. Some of
their books were originally written before 1989, but some are much more recent,
usually reflecting their authors' long continuing development of theoretical
thought. An example of such a work is the 2003 Czech translation of Lubomir
Dolezel's Heterocosmica, which first appeared in English in 1998 and which
introduces the most recent elaboration of a new and influential trend in
contemporary literary theoretical study: possible-world semantics.
In this study I would like to highlight, first, the connection between
Heterocosmica and the Czech structuralist tradition and, second, its place in the
contemporary Czech theoretical environment. In this particular case, I would like
to single out one important book that stemmed from this enviroment, Miroslav
Cervenka's Fikcni sv^ lyriky {Fictional Worlds of Lyric Poetry, 2003), and to
present a general comparison of the concrete theoretical results both books leave
open for further literary investigation.
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Dolezel's Worlds
The Czech translation of Heterocosmica is significant specifically for two reasons:
first, it introduces the Czech reader to the results of work that Dolezel has been
involved for more than twenty years; second, the translation given by the author
himself provides Czech readers with completely new theoretical terminology. The
book is organized around the crucial notion of fictional worlds. It must be
mentioned that the concept of fictional worlds is not considered new. At least in
Czech structuralist tradition it was, to a certain extent, used by Mukafovsky as well
as by Vodicka. This kind of usage was, so to speak, theoretically innocent.
Mukafovsky and Vodicka speak purely about a world within a work; the world
itself is not subject to much discussion.' In their discussions the world of a work of
art is not considered a referential framework of fictional semantics. This does not
surprise us when we bear in mind that it is foremost the lack of reference that is
considered one ofthe weakest points of the Czech structuralist school (see Dolezel,
Occidental Poetics). Both structural analysis of particular texts and structuralist
aesthetics as a part ofthe wider philosophy of art omit any deeper exploration of the
notion of text reference.
Generally speaking, Dolezel has been involved in the topic of fictional worlds
for several decades, whereas Cervenka offered the idea of fictional worlds of lyric
poetry relatively recently and did so directly under Dolezel's influence. As early as
the 1980s Dolezel published some particular articles that anticipated several topics
and aspects of his narrative semantics of possible worlds. Since then his efforts
have been concentrated on the development of an integral semantic which uses the
notion of a world produced by the semantic potential of narrative texts, as its crucial
term. Cervenka, on the other hand, belongs to the set of prominent structuralist
theoreticians of lyric poetry and verse, though his contribution to the general
semantics of literary texts cannot be overlooked. Dolezel's Heterocosmica,
published in 1998, has significantly contributed to the recent discussion of fictional
worlds as possible worlds. Heterocosmica is so far the only book that successfuly
combines deep theoretical research and explanation of fictional worlds and their
semantics with an analysis of particular fictional texts. Thus Heterocosmica is the
most comprehensive study ever written on possible-worlds semantics and devoted
to research and analysis of narrative texts and their worlds. Unlike Dolezel,
Cervenka in his Fikcni svety lyriky deals with a rather rare idea of fictional worlds
based on texts of lyric poetry. To some extent Cervenka offers an application of a
well-developed semantics of narrative texts to texts of lyric poetry, though this
application does not follow the narrative semantics in every way, partly because of
the different object to which the semantics is applied and partly because of his
different theoretical approach to textual reference itself.
Dolezel's narrative semantics of possible worlds is established on two levels.
The first level pertains to the verbal (stylistic) properties of fictional texts and the
way and extent to which they participate in the construction of fictional worlds,
whereas the second level identifies fictional worlds as specific semiotic entities

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with a specific narrative potential. Needless to say, the very notion of fictional
worlds is based on the possible worlds of logical semantics. The term developed
and used in modern logical discourse is not completely applicable to the field of
fictional worlds. Nevertheless, both concepts share important characteristics. Both
kinds of worlds are semiotic objects made of entities with a specific ontological
status. Narrative semantics thus uses the achievements of logical investigation to
establish a base for fictional reference. Fictional worlds, like possible worlds in
modal logic, are established through semiotic channels. Their ontological status is
substantially different from that of our actual world. The main distinction between
the possible worlds of logical systems and fictional worlds consists of two essential
features: fictional worlds are finite and incomplete, whereas possible worlds of
logic are infinite and complete. This opposition derives from their different
backgrounds: possible worlds are atomically constructed by distinctive logical
procedures, while fictional worlds are given by already existing fictional texts.^
The structured distinction between the two kinds of worlds has been explored
exhaustively, and some scholars have been working on the problem for several
years. Aside from Dolezel, I have to emphasize names like Umberto Eco, Barbara
Partee, Thomas Pavel, Marie-Laure Ryan, and Ruth Ronen.
I have mentioned that Dolezel's model of narrative semantics consists of two
levels. The first level, which is in general based on text theory, in particular on
stylistics, can be viewed as semantics of foundations and formation of fictional
worlds. It is obvious that textual meaning as a whole is a complex structure; general
semantics has proved the fact sufficiently. The fictional-world structure seems to
be no less complex. The fact that every expression has two semantic components,
extensional and intensional meaning, sometimes presented as reference and sense,
seems now to be generally accepted. Following this idea, Dolezel points to two
components of narrative texts. His fictional worlds are purely semantic entities and
thus involve extensional and intensional structures. In short, the extensional
structures consist of paraphasable semantic elements, the explicitly and implicitly
given sequences of the narrative's plot, agents, settings, and so on. On the contrary,
the intensional structure of a fictional world is firmly connected with the intension
of the text; for this component of the textual meaning the very form of expression,
the texture, is of crucial importance. According to Dolezel, intensional functions
arise from the texture and form thus the intensional structure of a fictional world;
they are functions "from the fictional text's texture to the fictional world"
{Heterocosmica 139).
There are several functions connecting narrative texts to their worlds; Dolezel
precisely elaborates on two of them that seem to be crucial for a fictional-world
intensional structure: authentication function and saturation function. Generally
speaking, the authentication function is connected with the notion of fictional
existence, its status and its distribution within the fictional world, whereas the
saturation function controls the fictional world's density, its structuration and its
distribution. Nevertheless, the intensional functions cannot be investigated

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otherwise than in an indirect way: 'The method of indirect analysis . . . identifies

intensional functions by uncovering the global 'morphology' of texture, its
formative principles, its stylistic regularities. Intensional function is redefined as a
global regularity of texture that affects the structuring of the fictional world" (139).
According to this presumption the only way to grasp the intensional structure of
fictional worlds is through a thorough stylistic analysis of fictional texts.
Dolezel's idea of the authentication function was inspired by J. L. Austin's
theory of performative speech acts; these acts can carry a specific illocutionary
force, meaning that they become a part of the action itself, under specific felicitous
circumstances that depend on the speaker's authority. Dolezel adopts the idea of
performative speech acts for the purpose of narrative, and he connects it with the
fictional existence itself. Fictional existence differs entirely from our actual
existence because fictional entities are brought into existence by fictional texts:
"To exist fictionally means to exist in different modes, ranks, and degrees" (147).
The status and degree of fictional existence depend completely on the
authentication power: "We conclude then, that the speech acts of fictional persons
in the binary type have, potentially, a performative force, but its origin is different
from that of the authoritative narrative. The narrator's authority, let us repeat, is
given by genre convention and is analogous to Austin's performative authority; the
fictional persons' authority rests on consensus and coherence and is analogous to
the pragmatic conditions of natural discourse" (150-51).Thus the structure of
fictional worlds is fundamentally formed by the intensional function of
authentication: "The two different origins of fictional facts in the dyadic
authentication leave an intensional trace, which splits the factual domain of the
fictional world into two subdomains: fully authenticated, by authoritative
narrative, and collectively authenticated, by consensual fictional persons'
accounts. As to the virtual domain, the domain of possibles that remain
nonauthentic, it divides into private domains, the beliefs, visions, illusions, and
errors of individual fictional persons (Don Quixote's giants, Emma Bovary's
Paris)" (151).'' However, apart from the classical (dyadic) narrative modes we can
consider various narrative modes and strategies that challenge this dyadic model,
for example, subjectivized r-form and impersonal /c/i-form. In the case of the two
narrative modes we must employ a different authentication scheme, graded
authentication: "We have to introduce a generalized, graded authentication
function that can express formally the world-constructing force of all available
narrative modes. The function assigns different grades (degrees) of authenticity to
fictional entities, distributed along a scale between 'fully authentic' and
'nonauthentic' Consequently, it provides world constituents with different ranks
or modes of fictional existence" (152). Detailed analysis of these narrative types
and of the narrative types that subvert authentication (self-voiding narrative, skaznarrative, self-disclosing narrative, impossible worlds-constructing narrative)
belongs to important achievements of Dolezel's book. It must also be emphasized
that his approach combines a deep study of formal features of narrative modes and

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a functional point of view: narrative modes are speech acts with specific functions
within narrative structures.
The intensional function of saturation structures fictional worlds in a different
way: it projects the density of the fictional text onto the fictional world by
determining its saturation. According to this assumption the texture ofthe fictional
text is of three kindsexplicit, implicit and zeroand this division splits the
fictional-world structure into three domains:
The explicit texture constructs the determinate domain, the implicit texture the
indeterminate domain, and zero texture the domain of gaps.... The determinate domain
represents the solid core ofthe fictional world, its determinate facts. Thanks to their triode
of constructionexplicit textureall fictional facts are ofthe same semantic status. The
core is supplemented by the fuzzy domain of indeterminate facts. Because the
indeterminate fictional facts are constructed by implicit texture and have to be recovered
by a relativized procedure of inference, their semantic status cannot be uniform. (182-83)

In Dolezel's conception, gaps are of a special significance: they cannot and they are
not supposed to be filled. Unlike historical narrative, fictional narrative lacks
cognitive procedures that would be able to fill gaps in fictional worlds, because
there is nothing that could be inserted into the gaps, no witness, no evidence, no
new discovery. Gaps are just an inevitable part of fictional-world structure. As we
can see, there is still enough room for individual reconstruction of fictional
worldsthe reader's inference of implicit meaning based on specific inference
procedures. The development and use of these procedures are idiosyncratic
features of the reader's participation in the fictional world creation; the
prerequisites of these procedures are the reader's actual and fictional
encyclopediasthey are individually differentiated.
Ofthe two levels of Dolezel's system of narrative semantics, the first is based
on detailed text-linguistic and semantic studies. If we consider the linguistic and
literary theoretical achievements ofthe Prague School, it becomes clear that a large
part of its heritage is reflected in this level of Dolezel's theoretical investigation.
The survey ofthe structure of narrative texts and ofthe way the structure ofthe texts
influences the structure of narrative fictional worlds is thus part and parcel of a new
development in narrative grammar. Dolezel offers his specific project of such a
grammar, which is primarily based on the results of the theory of action.
According to Dolezel, fictional worlds are semantic entities of a special
ontological status, and they are constituted by the mutual relationships of particular
elements. Several elements are usually involved in the structuring of fictional
worlds: natural forces, inanimate objects, persons, their mental lives, actions, and
interactions, and so on. First, some fictional entities are chosen to enter a fictional
world; second, the macrostructure of the fictional world is governed by global
restrictions, which are imposed on all elements of a fictional world and constrain
the possible actions and interactions of its persons. Dolezel distinguishes four types
of global modal restrictions: alethic, deontic, axiologic, and epistemic. As a rule,
one of the modalities is placed in a dominant position in a particular fictional world
and determines its potential for generating atomic narratives (stories).

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Cervenka's Worlds
I will turn now to Cervenka's Fictional Worlds of Lyric Poetry. Its publication was
rather unexpected because Cervenka had primarily been involved in the theoretical
investigation of verse and lyric poetry. The book is outstanding for two reasons.
First, in the field of literary theory so far there have not been many theoretical
works dealing with the semantics of fictional worlds ofthe lyric genre. Second, a
general lack of primary Czech works dealing with fictional-worlds theory still
remains."* Cervenka was known as a scholar whose major contribution to literary
theory was deeply rooted in the structuralist tradition of the Prague School. As we
will see later, Cervenka's roots in the Czech structuralist tradition do not contradict
his involvement in fictional world semantics, although this connection is not a
matter of course.
In contrast to Dolezel's book, Cervenka's does not offer the reader a fully
developed system of a comprehensive semantics of fictional worlds of lyric poetry.
The main contribution of the book consists in the attempt to apply the theoretical
system to an analysis ofthe genre of lyric poetry. Thus Cervenka's study overlaps
only a part of Dolezel's book, but this part is an essential base for a comprehensive
analysis of the fictional worlds of lyric poetry. Cervenka tries to define the very
notion of fictional worlds of lyric poetry. In the case of a lyrical text many
procedures for establishing fictional worlds differ from the procedures establishing
fictional worlds of narrative. Texts of lyric poetry and of narrative function in
different ways. It is obvious that even the extensional and intensional functions
structure those fictional worlds in different wayssome of the functions are
different and some of them operate differently.
In Cervenka's conception there are two important innovations in standard
possible-worlds fictional semantics: the notion of fictional worlds itself and their
placements. Above all, Cervenka links,the notion of fictional world to the notion of
the subject of a lyrical work; he suggests regarding the subject of a poem as a
fictional world itself: "A fictional world of a lyric poem is represented by its
subject" (23). Two important influences have led Cervenka to draw this
conclusion. First, there is a strong influence of the structural semantics of the
Prague School and its notion ofthe "semantic gesture," which is directly connected
with the notion of the subject of a literary work. Second, Cervenka does not
consider fictional worlds to be the ultimate frameworks for a literary work's
reference: he views fictional worlds as objects of a make-believe game of the
work's subject, who is placed above the fictional world.
The subject of a lyrical work has a privileged position in the structure of the
work. This implies that we can view the subject from two different perspectives.
From the perspective of a creation of a work, the subject of the work (and this
applies to all literary works) guarantees the unity of the construction of meaning of
the work. Derived from the idea ofthe "semantic gesture," the work's subject is the
ultimate base for a unified meaningfulness of the workunsurprisingly if we take
into consideration that the meaning of a literary work is firmly connected with its

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originatorthrough its author. Thus, in a wider sense, the author of a work is

represented by the work's subject. From another perspective, a work's subject
plays a crucial role in the act of the work's reception: during the act of reading,
during the accumulation of the work's meaning, the reader reconstructs a
hypothetical originator of the work. The category of the work's originator is
necessary for reader's perception of the work's meaning: "The semantics of a work
necessarily refers to a subject who created the work" (43). Thanks to this category,
the reader can rely on a core of meaning he or she uncovers during his or her act of
reading. The reader's belief determines and leads his or her partial interpretations
during the whole act of reading.
At this point the question about the relation between a work's subject and the
author must be raised. For the purpose of literary theoretical investigation it is
necessary to distinguish between a work's subject and its author. There is an
ontological gap between a physical human being, the author of the text, and the
subject of the work's unified meaning, even though the latter is essentially
dependent on the former: "It is necessary to keep in mind the permanent border
between the real person of the author, on one hand, and the being set in the reader's
controlled references, a semiotic construct 'without a body'" (45). As we can see,
Cervenka presupposes that the mental construction of a hypothetical originator is
an integral part of the reader's reception. On the basis of the ontological difference
between the real author and a work's subject, we can say that whereas the author
belongs to our actual world, the subject belongs to a world of a different ontological
status.
The subject of a work is not the only subject "presented" in lyrical poems: a
lyrical subject is another example of an integral part of a work; it is actually a voice
speaking to other voices or to the reader: "We imagine the lyrical subject as wholly
included in the fictional world constituted by the work; at the same time, the lyrical
subject embodies the fictional world by itself (50). Nevertheless, a lyrical subject
is a purely internal textual quality; it usually involves parts of narrative fictional
worlds:, Ich- and r-form narrator's spheres as well as an /c/i-form fictional
character's sphere.
At this point Cervenka puts forward an important suggestion: a lyrical subject
is firmly fixed in the fictional world, is an embodiment of it, whereas a subject of
the work is situated beyond the borders of this world. The work's subject is not an
internal textual quality, but, as quoted above, the work itself refers to a creative
subject "that cannot be a constituent of the work's fictional world" (43). The
work's subject thus keeps a position external to the fictional world. Where is then
the work's subject supposed to be situated, if not in its fictional world?
The question about the placement of a work's subject is not, in Czech
structuralist theoretical environment, anything we could consider new: it does
belong to the basic topics of the Prague School's investigation. The Prague School,
from its very beginnings, differentiates between a work's author as a
psychophysical human being and a work's subject. No doubt, a subject, considered

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a general text's strategy, is connected with its psychophysical author, but the
relationship between the author and the subject remains concealed. Due to the lack
of available theoretical tools necessary for investigating the relationship between
two entities of a different ontological status, we can only say that one "speaks" in
the real world, the other one "speaks" in a fictional one. The prominent theoretician
of the Prague School, Jan Mukafovsky, already in his study of 1946 shows us the
importance of a theoretical investigation of a work's subject's placement:
A subject is something different from a particular individual: strictly speaking, one
cannot speak ahout a perceiving suhject and about a subject-as-originator. From the point
of view of the work itself, under the notion of subject we can understand neither any
particular mind nor even any actual individual with particular qualities, original or
gained, etc. When we stay inside a work, the subject is a mere noetic assumption, an
imaginary point. In case of a concretization this point can be filled with any individual,
no matter if this individual is an originator or a receptor. In any case, this individual is an
entity which stays outside the scope of the work.
{Studie 1307-08; see also 14-15)

This quotation presents two important theses: (1) a work's subject is a noetic
assumptionthe work's story has to "belong" to someone; (2) "actual" individuals
stay outside works, regardless of what role these individuals play in literary
communication. If we consider the fact that Mukafovsky in his study of 1946 did
not have at his disposal the modern conceptual tool of the fictional world, we are
not surprised that he places subjects outside their works. On the other hand,
Mukafovsky stipulates that the subject differs from the psychophysical author, so
we can assume that a subject is not placed in our actual world either. But to what
domain does the subject belong?
To answer this question Cervenka uses a theoretical solution suggested by
Kendall L. Walton, who differentiates between a fictional world constituted by a
literary work and a fictional world that involves the former and uses it as an object
of a game:
There are fictional worlds of games of make-believe, fictional worlds of representational
works, and fictional worlds of dreams and daydreams. . . .
Among game worlds are the worlds of games in which representational works are
props. If Richard is a viewer contemplating La Grande Jatte, there is the world of his
game. We must be careful not to confuse this world with the world of La Grande Jatte
itself, and in general not to confuse the worlds of games that appreciators play with
representational works with the worlds of the works....
But we must insist on distinguishing between the two worlds. If work worlds are not
distinct from game worlds in which the works are props, how are we to decide which of
the worlds of the various games that different appreciators or appreciators on different
occasions play with La Grande Jatte is to be identified with the world of Z.a Grande Jattel
If this cannot be decided nonarbitrarily, we are forced to regard the world of the painting
as a world over and above those of appreciators' games.
Moreover, although there is considerable overlap between the propositions fictional
in Richard's game and those fictional in La Grande Jatte, some of the former are not
among the latter. It is fictional in Richard's game, I will argue, that he sees a couple
strolling in a park. But this is not fictional in the painting. Richard is not among the
characters in the painting he is looking at. So the two worlds are distinct.
(Walton 58-59)

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At first glance, the notion of the worlds-of-game is quite similar to the notion of
fictional worlds used by narrative semantics of fictional worlds. In this case,
Cervenka brings up an additional fictional world to accommodate elements of the
meaning-constitution of a literary work that, according to him, do not belong to the
fictional world itselfthey are thus accommodated in a superior fictional worldof-game that keeps the work's fictional worlds as an object of the play: "Exactly
here, not in the spectral domain ofthe fictional world of a work, but in the domain
of dealing with the world, at the border between the realm of extratextual and
intratextual, we find a place to locate the work's subject as a carrier of the creative
activities leading to the origin of the work" (43). Cervenka calls the domain "a
sphere of play and contemplation, of playful contemplation, of contemplated play"
(43).

Comparison
As we can see, there are several distinctions between Dolezel's and Cervenka's
conceptions. The first difference is in the basic notion of fictional world. According
to Dolezel, who employs the term for analyzing narrative works, it is an entity that
functions as the ultimate frame of semantic reference of a literary work; all the
semantic qualities of the work's text participate in its structure. For Cervenka, the
fictional world of a lyrical work is equal to the work's subject. However, when we
consider the difference between narrative and lyric poetry, both conceptions can be
viewed as similar, at least to some extent. A lyrical subject, being the horizon for
a lyrical text's reference, is apparently part and parcel of a literary work of lyric
poetry and corresponds to particular constituents of narrative fictional worlds. The
work's subject is a term equally applicable to both, narrative and lyric poetry, and
refers to the general meaning-unifying factor. Second, for Dolezel all the elements
of a work's meaning-construction refer to one particular framework, and they
structure this framework on different levels and in different ways. Unlike Dolezel,
Cervenka multiplies the number of referential realms and thus multiplies the
number of fictional worlds of lyric poetry; he differentiates between the fictional
world of a work and the fictional world of a game, which is superior to the former.
Obviously, the crucial point ofthe two theoretical approaches lies right here.
My purpose here is not to resolve the crucial disagreement between two
prominent theoreticians in a way that one would be declared true while the other
one false. We cannot do so because they hold different positions in their theoretical
conceptions. However, one can always raise the question whether, for example,
Dolezel's system has been elaborated with sufficient validity and depth or whether,
in the case of Cervenka's project, one could not have applied the so-called principle
of Ockham's Razor. But I will ask another, purely pragmatic question: Which,
approach is more suitable and more efficient for an empirical study of literature? I
will try to show that, in spite of the evident differences between the two
conceptions, they both hold the same promise for further empirical literary
investigations.

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Dolezel's notion of fictional worlds provides us with a rare comprehensive

system of all levels ofthe fictional text's reference. All the meaning-constituting
properties of a fictional text participate in structure of a fictional world. Following
Cervenka's differentiation between a fictional world-of-work and a fictional
world-of-game, we see that the two kinds of worlds overlap: the subject of a literary
work is already involved in the structure of his world. If we agree with the
suggestion that a work's subject is an ultimate guarantee of its semantic unity, it
seems that nothing can prevent us from accepting the idea that the unity is a part of
the global world structure. This idea does not seem to contradict Cervenka's
suggestion that a work's subject is an entity dependent on the psychophysical
author who crossed the ontological boundary of the real (actual) and became a part
of the fictional. In this case, Cervenka places the unity of the work's meaning in a
wider context of the author-work, relationship. Nevertheless, it seems to be very
difficult to separate a work's subject from the world's structure and to state what
particular features of a literary text refer to the subject, to an entity being situated
somewhere beyond a particular fictional world. Cervenka explains his reasons for
separating the worlds of works from worlds of game and placing the work's subject
in between them: "The semantics of an artwork necessarily refers to a subject who
created the work and thus cannot be a part of its fictional world. Also the
relationship between a fictional world and the actual world, which, after all, also
refers to the originator of the work, has a highly significant indexical value;
nevertheless, neither is this relationship naturally is a part of the fictional world"
(43).
It is obvious that Cervenka is inspired by and follows the example given by
Walton (quoted above). On the other hand, it seems that they are of different
opinions when considering reasons to multiply fictional worlds: they refer to
different aspects of the process in which a work functions as a specific object of
communication. Walton seems to be more concerned with the work's perception
and thus refers to different readers' realization of a fictional world creation. I think
that it is possible to say that Walton refers to different concretizations in different
perception acts of a work. His model receptor (appreciator) is not and cannot be
situated in the fictional world of a work, because this world is just an object of his
perception. From my point of view, Walton only describes the basic fact of
perception of a literary work using different words. However, Cervenka is more
concerned with the opposite side of the literary communication process, with the
work's creation. Cervenka insists that the relationship between an author and his or
her work, which obviously does not belong to the work's fictional world and which
resembles the relationship between Richard and Le Grande Jatte, is a part of the
work's, meaning constitution and is embodied in the subject ofthe work. We can
see that there is no such element in the work's reception that could be reciprocal to
the work's subject of creation. The work's recipient does not influence the work
itself at all; he or she participates only in a particular concretization of the work. A
work's creator, who belongs to the real world, turns into the work's subject in the

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world of the work. Both the originator as well as the participator have to approach
the work's fictional world as something that is situated beyond them and that can
be viewed as an ohject of a game.
The subject of a work, which is, according to Cervenka, placed between the
fictional world of a game and the fictional world of a work, seems to occupy this
particular space to create a link between the semantics of fictional worlds and the
process of literary communication. A subject placed between the two worlds thus
becomes ontologically ambiguous: it belongs neither to the fictional world nor to
the real one. Needless to say, Cervenka's incorporation of lyrical structures in
fictional-world semantics contributes not only to a better understanding of the
relation between the classical structuralist approach and possible-world semantics
but also to a deeper comprehension of the way lyric poetry is involved in the whole
phenomenon of literature.
Which conception provides us with a more efficient system for a deep and
exhaustive analysis of literary artworks? I hope that this study has indicated an
answer to the question by dealing with both conceptions, showing their
backgrounds, presumptions, strategies, aims, and purposes. In general the choice
of one of these conceptions is a matter of preference and opinion, as both of them
represent the leading trends in contemporary theorizing about fictional worlds; to
prefer one to the other means to follow one's own intuition rather than to be more
or less rational.

Notes
' Mukafovsky, in his 1925 study of the Czech author Bozena Nemcova, speaks
of "the plot environment" {Studie II240), a term that can be viewed as antecedent
to the teun fictional world; in his 1939 study of Karel Capek, Mukafovsky refers
to a "narrated reality" {Studie 7/463). In a famous and controversial aesthetic study
from 1936, he explains that literary works can produce an alternative reality for the
reader {Studie 1132). Vodicka then directly refers to "a fictional world" when he
speaks about genres and literary types (484).
^ Reading them means viewing the fictional worlds.
' For fictional worlds see also Pavel; Ronen; and Ryan.
* The most important exception is the work of Zuska.

Works Cited
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Dolezel, Lubomir. Heterocosmica: Fiction and Possible Words. Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins UP, 1998.
. Occidental Poetics: Tradition and Progress. Lincoln: U of Nebraska P,
1990.
Mukafovsky, Jan. Studie I. Brno: Host, 2000.

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Walton, Kendall L. Mimesis as Make-Believe: On the Foundations of the
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