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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ondath" data-source="post: 8624883" data-attributes="member: 7031770">Well put! And this is actually a big problem in literary theory, with which I had a few sparring sessions in the process of my PhD. For instance, the distinction you're making between two different senses of Realism implies that what is real in the real world and what's real in the fiction can be separate. In contrast, Dr. Stacie Friend argues that we subconsciously adopt what she calls The Reality Assumption, which means that "everything that is (really) true is fictionally the case, unless excluded by the work." If we take this to be what's behind the notion of realism in fiction, then two senses of realism that you just described melt into one: Realism does mean "looking and behaving like the real world", except when the work explicitly adds different assumptions, in which case realism means "being well-grounded in established rules that do not change for light and transient reasons".The problem with the Reality Assumption is that I hate it and how sturdy it is. It made my PhD thesis's work way harder than I thought it would be, and although I feel like there are obvious cases where we do not just assume everything in real life translates to all works of fiction unless stated otherwise, it's a really solid theory that is really difficult to disprove. And as long as it is difficult to disprove, it looks like the two senses of realism must be blended to a certain extent. Which might also be why I value verisimilutude over realism when it comes to fiction — verisimilutude explicitly interests itself with a feeling of things being plausible instead of conforming to reality.</blockquote>

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