An investigation of how life and fiction relate to each other, showing how stories can create and contribute to reality.

Fiction is generally understood to be a fascinating, yet somehow deficient affair, merely derivative of reality. What if we could, instead, come up with an affirmative approach that takes stories seriously in their capacity to bring forth a substance of their own? Iconic texts such as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein and its numerous adaptations stubbornly resist our attempts to classify them as mere representations of reality. Friederike Danebrock shows how these texts insist that we take them seriously as agents and interlocutors in our world- and culture-making activities. Drawing on this analysis, she develops a theory of narrative fiction as a generative practice.

»A rich, compelling, extremely intelligent, at times overly dense treatise on the ways in which stories are not only part of but indeed co-constitutive ofthe world.With its deep commitment to theory, the book demands from its reader a readiness tojoin the tour de force that it embarks upon and this is no doubt a highly rewardingand stimulating exercise in pure speculation.«

Autorentext
Friederike Danebrock hat am Institut für Anglistik und Amerikanistik der Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf promoviert. Neben der Beschäftigung mit Psychoanalyse und/als Materialismus liegt ihr Forschungsschwerpunkt im Bereich der Erzähl- und Fiktionstheorie.