Abstract

Beatrice. Jane Tennison. Elizabeth Bennett. Arya Stark. Katniss Everdeen. None of them is real. All of them appear not only to engage our interest but also to move us. Some of them might even be thought to affect us further—to inspire us to do things, or at least to regard things in a different light. The set of problems typically grouped under the designation “paradox of fiction” raises questions about an apparent contradiction, about our responding emotionally to entities and events in the existence of which we do not believe. The kind of ontological incorrectness to which the paradox draws attention can be directly and indirectly related to a number of interesting explanations and corollary claims about our..