Books by Benjamin Gittel
Was ist Literatur? Was ist Fiktion? Was ist der Charakter eines bestimmten Genres? Solche Fragen ... more Was ist Literatur? Was ist Fiktion? Was ist der Charakter eines bestimmten Genres? Solche Fragen lassen sich nicht essentialistisch beantworten, sondern es kommt darauf an, die sozialen Praktiken zu untersuchen, in denen Menschen agieren, wenn sie literarische Texte lesen. Eine eingehende empirische Untersuchung der Geschichte der miteinander verknüpften Literatur-, Fiktions- und Genrepraktiken wurde bisher jedoch nicht unternommen. Die Arbeit nimmt sich dieses Desiderats an, indem sie anhand exemplarischer Konstellationen untersucht, wie bestimmte Genrepraktiken charakteristische Text-Welt-Verhältnisse herstellen. Zu diesem Zweck rekonstruiert die Untersuchung auf breiter empirischer Basis Lektürepraktiken von Literaturkritikern mithilfe qualitativ-hermeneutischer und quantitativ-statistischer Methoden. Mit Studien zum historischen Roman, Tendenzroman und Zeitroman sowie zum Schlüsselroman bietet die Arbeit nicht nur eine neue Sicht auf die Beziehung von Literatur und Wirklichkeit in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart; Analysen zu Wechselwirkungen zwischen unterschiedlichen Typen literarischer Praktiken eröffnen eine neue Perspektive auf literarische Kommunikation im Allgemeinen und die Geschichte der Fiktionalität im Besonderen.
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Die Untersuchung versteht sich als Beitrag zu der in der Literaturwissenschaft, Philosophie und W... more Die Untersuchung versteht sich als Beitrag zu der in der Literaturwissenschaft, Philosophie und Wissenschaftsgeschichte geführten Debatte um die Darstellungsformen von Wissen bzw. das »Wissen der Literatur«, geht jedoch in zweifacher Hinsicht über diese hinaus. Zum einen zeigt sie, wie und warum die Forderung nach einer gegenüber wissenschaftlicher Erkenntnis alternativen, literarisch vermittelten Erkenntnis in einer bestimmten geistes- und kultur-geschichtlichen Konstellation virulent wird: in der Lebens- bzw. Weltanschauungsphilosophie von 1870 bis 1930 sowie im Werk Robert Musils. Zum anderen nimmt die Arbeit eine Akzentverlagerung vor. Im Mittelpunkt steht nicht die oft mit unbefriedigenden Ergebnissen diskutierte Frage, ob Literatur generell, sondern unter welchen konkreten Umständen ein bestimmtes literarisches Werk Wissen vermittelt. Die nicht zuletzt mithilfe von Begrifflichkeiten und Einsichten der Analytischen Erkenntnistheorie formulierten Bedingungen, unter denen dies der Fall ist, ermöglichen schließlich exemplarische Analysen von Musils schriftstellerischen Versuchen, eine »lebendige Erkenntnis« zu kommunizieren.
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Wissen ist nicht zu denken ohne seine unter historisch variablen Konditionen realisierte Vermittl... more Wissen ist nicht zu denken ohne seine unter historisch variablen Konditionen realisierte Vermittlung. Erkenntnisse und Methoden werden an unterschiedlichen Orten und mit historisch variablen Praktiken transferiert. Der Band schafft Grundlagen, um die komplexen Vorgänge der Weitergabe, Aufnahme, Adaptation und Modifikation von Wissen zu analysieren. Dazu werden Begriffe zur Beschreibung und Erklärung von Prozessen des Wissenstransfers definiert, Konditionen und Praktiken der aktiven Mediatisierung epistemischer Bestände erläutert, Verlaufsformen der Weitergabe von Erkenntnissen rekonstruiert und eine umfassende Bibliographie der Forschungsbeiträge zum Thema verfügbar gemacht. Aufgrund seiner interdisziplinären Ausrichtung stellt der Band instruktive wissenschaftstheoretische und -praxeologische Einsichten bereit, die nicht nur für die Selbstreflexion der textinterpretierenden Disziplinen, sondern auch für andere wissenschaftliche Fächer wichtig werden können.
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Conceitos como "modernidade" e “modernização” são usualmente associados a uma gradual transformaç... more Conceitos como "modernidade" e “modernização” são usualmente associados a uma gradual transformação em diferentes âmbitos da sociedade e de modos de vida ligados a uma crescente racionalização, industrialização, individuação e secularização. No entanto, as diversas tentativas de definição desse conceito têm demonstrado, antes de tudo, as suas ambivalências, seja nos seus critérios de conceituação, nas dificuldades de diagnóstico de época, ou, ainda, no seu controverso ideal normativo.
A partir da polissemia do conceito de modernidade e da avaliação de processos distintos de modernização, este livro reúne contribuições que colocam em debate o próprio sentido de modernização e de suas possíveis ambivalências. Com uma perspectiva interdisciplinar e transnacional - como nos exemplos do Brasil, da Alemanha e de Moçambique -, o livro apresenta tanto textos-chaves para este debate como ensaios sobre uma variedade de temas que incluem cidade e desenvolvimento urbano, dimensões políticas e culturais de desenvolvimento, processos de modernização no cinema e na literatura. Este leque de temáticas pretende contribuir não só para o debate acadêmico sobre os sentidos controversos de modernização, como também para qualquer leitor interessado nas ambivalências do diagnóstico de nosso tempo.
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Special Issue by Benjamin Gittel
JOURNAL OF LITERARY THEORY, 2020
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Papers by Benjamin Gittel
This paper outlines a project that investigates the generation of implicit assertions in literary... more This paper outlines a project that investigates the generation of implicit assertions in literary fictions, i.e., propositions related to the real world that a respective work of fiction suggests without explicitly formulating them. The project combines questions of literary theory with methods from the field of digital humanities.
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Geographical categories, which are used as codes for certain ideas, concepts, and values in order... more Geographical categories, which are used as codes for certain ideas, concepts, and values in order to negotiate the identity of a culture, are a hitherto neglected phenomenon that shapes extra-literary discourses as much as literary works. This article analyzes the structure and function of such "geocodes" and explores their use in literary works of the interwar period by Alfred Döblin, Hermann Hesse, and Thomas Mann. The focus is on geocodes organized along the East-West axis. The objective is to show, on the one hand, different configurations of geocultural interpretive patterns and, on the other hand, the difference between static and dynamic geocodes, i. e., geocodes changing with diegetic events.
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Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit zwei literaturwissenschaftlichen Sachfragen, die bei juristis... more Dieser Beitrag beschäftigt sich mit zwei literaturwissenschaftlichen Sachfragen, die bei juristischen Auseinandersetzungen um literarische Werke relevant sein können. Wir analysieren (1) Beziehungen zwischen der Fiktionalität eines literarischen Textes und dessen Potential zur Verletzung von Persönlichkeitsrechten sowie (2) zwischen Literatur/literarischen Kunstwerken und der Verletzung von Persönlichkeitsrechten. Zugrunde legen wir dabei Auffassungen, die aus dem Urteil des Bundesverfassungsgerichts zu Maxim Billers Roman "Esra" aus dem Jahre 2007, das inzwischen normierende Bedeutung für die Kunstfreiheit in Deutschland erlangte, hervorgehen. Unsere Überlegungen zeigen, dass die Zusammenhänge zwischen den oben genannten Relata weniger eng sind, als in dem Urteil an verschiedenen Stellen suggeriert wird.
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›Distant reading‹ approaches to investigating literary genre are relatively new but flourishing. ... more ›Distant reading‹ approaches to investigating literary genre are relatively new but flourishing. Not only are new methods being explored but it is also assumed that problems which have engaged literary studies for some time can be fruitfully tackled with these new methods. In this paper, we take a closer look at two influential studies that employ DH methods (›distant reading‹) on genre theory: Andrew Piper’s »Fictionality« (2016) and Ted Underwood’s »The Life Cycles of Genres« (2016). We scrutinize the objectives and results of these studies by asking the following questions: (1) What is the traditional research topic that is addressed, and what are the explanatory targets? (2) How are the explanatory targets addressed, and what results are generated? And finally, (3) do these studies really answer the traditional questions they (explicitly) set out to answer, and are they successful in doing so? In asking these questions, we hope to work out something more general about the potentials of DH methods when it comes to (traditional) genre theory.
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Journal of Cultural Analytics, 2021
Using a custom-designed database of 388,000 first editions of German Literature this paper invest... more Using a custom-designed database of 388,000 first editions of German Literature this paper investigates the long-term development of genre-indicating subtitles over more than 500 years of literary history. This approach adds a social-institutional perspective to recent work in the field of genre theory, and is a first step towards combining historical testimony, i.e. historical actors' classifications, and textual features in a single model. Starting from the fundamental question of how many books have generic subtitles, the paper analyses the use of the most common genre labels, the relation between generic subtitles and genre production, periods of the permanent presence of generic terms (institutional cycles) and periods of generic differentiation. It identifies recurrent patterns in the development of generic subtitles using K-Means-Clustering and Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) and sheds light on literature's changing relation to history and truth, thereby underpinning recent theoretical work on the practices of poetic invention.
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Aristokratismus, 2020
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Journal of Literary Theory, 2020
This issue of the Journal of Literary Theory is devoted to the »History of the Modern Practice of... more This issue of the Journal of Literary Theory is devoted to the »History of the Modern Practice of Fiction«. As this title already signals, the idea for this Special Issue stems, on the one hand, from a certain way of thinking about the phenomenon of fiction developed in literary theory and philosophy and, on the other hand, from research carried out in the historical disciplines.
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‚Enzyklopädisches Erzählen‘ wurde in der Forschung zuletzt als Label für
recht unterschiedliche e... more ‚Enzyklopädisches Erzählen‘ wurde in der Forschung zuletzt als Label für
recht unterschiedliche erzählliterarische Erscheinungen der neueren deutschen Literaturgeschichte in Anspruch genommen: für Texte von Goethe, Jean Paul, Novalis, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil und anderen. Im Zuge der Anwendung des Konzepts auf frühere Epochen wurde jedoch schnell deutlich, dass mit dem Begriff ‚enzyklopädisches Erzählen‘ bzw. ‚enzyklopädische Dichtung‘ im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit vielfach Phänomene beschrieben werden, die verstärkt Fragen nach dem Fiktionalitätsstatus der jeweiligen Texte aufwerfen: Impliziert die Tatsache, dass in einem Text enzyklopädisch erzählt wird, etwas bezüglich seines Fiktionalitätsstatus? Sind Texte bzw. Textpassagen, in denen enzyklopädisch erzählt wird, noch im selben Sinne fiktional wie vergleichbare nicht-enzyklopädisch erzählende Texte bzw. Textpassagen? Und müssen diese Fragen für die Vormoderne anders beantwortet werden als für die Moderne?
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A very influential idea in western aesthetics is that poems convey multifaceted affective states ... more A very influential idea in western aesthetics is that poems convey multifaceted affective states (moods). This interdisciplinary study compares the moods aroused by the poems with the moods the reader thinks the poem expresses. Further, aroused and expressed mood are compared to the mood the professional authors of the poems had intended. An experimental design with a total of 234 participants was employed. Main results are: (1) Readers’ expressed and aroused moods differ on average and between-person variation is somewhat higher in aroused mood. (2) Authors’ intended moods differ from readers’ expressed moods as well as from readers’ aroused moods. (3) Some readers acquire a special kind of experiential knowledge (knowledge-what-it-is-like to be in a specific mood) through the reception of a poem. In an exploratory fashion, the effects of literary education, classification as fiction, ascription of mood to a situation described in the poem, and reading time were investigated.
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Internationale Zeitschrift für Kulturkomparatistik, 2019
Can we learn something from poetry? Can poems convey to their readers insight, knowledge, orienta... more Can we learn something from poetry? Can poems convey to their readers insight, knowledge, orientation, understanding or even wisdom? The paper assumes that general answers to these questions are possible but often lacking in substance. Instead, it is worthwhile to consider (a) different types of cognitive achievements and (b) sub-genres of poetry to which specific cognitive achievements have been attributed in certain aesthetic traditions as well as in literary criticism.
For this purpose, the paper introduces a modern descriptive vocabulary for various types of cognitive significance and advocates an orientation to the concept of “knowledge” instead of more vague terms like “insight” or “understanding”. In a second step, the paper deals with three sub-genres of lyric poetry, whose cognitive value has repeatedly been claimed in aesthetic traditions as well as in literary studies: “didactic poetry”, “philosophical poetry” (Germ. „Gedankenlyrik“) and
“poetry of moods”.
By means of concrete examples, the paper shows how each of the three subgenres privileges a certain type of cognitive significance or a certain “mechanism” of knowledge communication. In a third step, the paper points out which basic features of poetry, such as fictionality, argumentativeness, and literariness, are essential and which are irrelevant to the different types of cognitive significance. Finally, the paper discusses (a) whether the three sub-genres of lyric poetry can be defined without reference to their cognitive functions and (b) whether it would be more appropriate to postulate corresponding practices of reading lyric poetry that are linked but not restricted to these sub-genres of lyric poetry and therefore can basically be applied to every poem.
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Discussions on the history of fictionality often refer to certain genres. Two types of genres pla... more Discussions on the history of fictionality often refer to certain genres. Two types of genres play a central role: fictional, necessarily reality-related genres and gradually fictional genres. The article discusses whether and, if so, to what extent these genre types pose a challenge to systematically oriented fiction theories. This leads to fundamental considerations on goals and adequacy conditions of different fiction theories on the one hand, and on possible relations of fiction-specific and genre-specific practices on the other hand.
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The cognitive value of literature, especially if understood as knowledge acquisition, has been co... more The cognitive value of literature, especially if understood as knowledge acquisition, has been contested since antiquity. The respective arguments primarily concern works of fiction, because several theories of fictionality, despite their divergent vocabularies, agree that fictional sentences are not true about the real world and that fictional utterances are no assertions. However, the cognitive value of a non-fictional text seems strictly related to the fact that it contains true sentences and truth-claims. Researchers who defend the cognitive value of fiction usually try to refute this objection (and several others). My paper will show the limits of this argumentation strategy and, building up on an explication (R. Carnap) of the concept of “knowledge”, answer the following question: Under which circumstances does a certain reader of a specific work of fiction acquire a certain knowledge?
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Although there is an influential strand of modern theory of fiction that distinguishes “fictivity” f... more Although there is an influential strand of modern theory of fiction that distinguishes “fictivity” from "fictionality", it continues to be a common sense belief, even among literary critics, that obvious falsehood of what is represented makes a text fictional or at least contributes to its fictionality. Taking the starting point of the tension between this belief and Truman Capote's controversial genre concept of 'nonfiction novel', which is frequently instantiated as crime novels, this paper addresses the questions of how many facts fiction can 'bear' and whether, in principle, there is incompatibility between certain narrative techniques (e.g. internal focalization) on the one hand and the status of a text as factual on the other. Through investigating a classical example of the 'nonfiction novel' (Capote's “In Cold Blood”), a modern precursor (Alfred Döblin's “Die beiden Freundinnen und ihr Giftmord”) and a related contemporary work (Ferdinand von Schirach's “Verbrechen”) with regard to the authors' intentions, signposts of factuality/fictionality and their reception, this paper points out the potential and the risks involved when literature appropriates real legal cases.
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Literary Studies of contemporary works of literature, in the absence of a canon, are to a high de... more Literary Studies of contemporary works of literature, in the absence of a canon, are to a high degree directed by order-making umbrella terms. Using the umbrella term “new realism” as example the study examines (1) its relationship with poetological discourses as well as discourses of a diagnosis of the present, (2) how the umbrella term’s attractiveness corresponds to its conceptual underdetermination, and (3) which different forms text analytical concepts of “new realism” can take.
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Books by Benjamin Gittel
A partir da polissemia do conceito de modernidade e da avaliação de processos distintos de modernização, este livro reúne contribuições que colocam em debate o próprio sentido de modernização e de suas possíveis ambivalências. Com uma perspectiva interdisciplinar e transnacional - como nos exemplos do Brasil, da Alemanha e de Moçambique -, o livro apresenta tanto textos-chaves para este debate como ensaios sobre uma variedade de temas que incluem cidade e desenvolvimento urbano, dimensões políticas e culturais de desenvolvimento, processos de modernização no cinema e na literatura. Este leque de temáticas pretende contribuir não só para o debate acadêmico sobre os sentidos controversos de modernização, como também para qualquer leitor interessado nas ambivalências do diagnóstico de nosso tempo.
Special Issue by Benjamin Gittel
Papers by Benjamin Gittel
recht unterschiedliche erzählliterarische Erscheinungen der neueren deutschen Literaturgeschichte in Anspruch genommen: für Texte von Goethe, Jean Paul, Novalis, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil und anderen. Im Zuge der Anwendung des Konzepts auf frühere Epochen wurde jedoch schnell deutlich, dass mit dem Begriff ‚enzyklopädisches Erzählen‘ bzw. ‚enzyklopädische Dichtung‘ im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit vielfach Phänomene beschrieben werden, die verstärkt Fragen nach dem Fiktionalitätsstatus der jeweiligen Texte aufwerfen: Impliziert die Tatsache, dass in einem Text enzyklopädisch erzählt wird, etwas bezüglich seines Fiktionalitätsstatus? Sind Texte bzw. Textpassagen, in denen enzyklopädisch erzählt wird, noch im selben Sinne fiktional wie vergleichbare nicht-enzyklopädisch erzählende Texte bzw. Textpassagen? Und müssen diese Fragen für die Vormoderne anders beantwortet werden als für die Moderne?
For this purpose, the paper introduces a modern descriptive vocabulary for various types of cognitive significance and advocates an orientation to the concept of “knowledge” instead of more vague terms like “insight” or “understanding”. In a second step, the paper deals with three sub-genres of lyric poetry, whose cognitive value has repeatedly been claimed in aesthetic traditions as well as in literary studies: “didactic poetry”, “philosophical poetry” (Germ. „Gedankenlyrik“) and
“poetry of moods”.
By means of concrete examples, the paper shows how each of the three subgenres privileges a certain type of cognitive significance or a certain “mechanism” of knowledge communication. In a third step, the paper points out which basic features of poetry, such as fictionality, argumentativeness, and literariness, are essential and which are irrelevant to the different types of cognitive significance. Finally, the paper discusses (a) whether the three sub-genres of lyric poetry can be defined without reference to their cognitive functions and (b) whether it would be more appropriate to postulate corresponding practices of reading lyric poetry that are linked but not restricted to these sub-genres of lyric poetry and therefore can basically be applied to every poem.
A partir da polissemia do conceito de modernidade e da avaliação de processos distintos de modernização, este livro reúne contribuições que colocam em debate o próprio sentido de modernização e de suas possíveis ambivalências. Com uma perspectiva interdisciplinar e transnacional - como nos exemplos do Brasil, da Alemanha e de Moçambique -, o livro apresenta tanto textos-chaves para este debate como ensaios sobre uma variedade de temas que incluem cidade e desenvolvimento urbano, dimensões políticas e culturais de desenvolvimento, processos de modernização no cinema e na literatura. Este leque de temáticas pretende contribuir não só para o debate acadêmico sobre os sentidos controversos de modernização, como também para qualquer leitor interessado nas ambivalências do diagnóstico de nosso tempo.
recht unterschiedliche erzählliterarische Erscheinungen der neueren deutschen Literaturgeschichte in Anspruch genommen: für Texte von Goethe, Jean Paul, Novalis, Thomas Mann, Robert Musil und anderen. Im Zuge der Anwendung des Konzepts auf frühere Epochen wurde jedoch schnell deutlich, dass mit dem Begriff ‚enzyklopädisches Erzählen‘ bzw. ‚enzyklopädische Dichtung‘ im Spätmittelalter und in der Frühen Neuzeit vielfach Phänomene beschrieben werden, die verstärkt Fragen nach dem Fiktionalitätsstatus der jeweiligen Texte aufwerfen: Impliziert die Tatsache, dass in einem Text enzyklopädisch erzählt wird, etwas bezüglich seines Fiktionalitätsstatus? Sind Texte bzw. Textpassagen, in denen enzyklopädisch erzählt wird, noch im selben Sinne fiktional wie vergleichbare nicht-enzyklopädisch erzählende Texte bzw. Textpassagen? Und müssen diese Fragen für die Vormoderne anders beantwortet werden als für die Moderne?
For this purpose, the paper introduces a modern descriptive vocabulary for various types of cognitive significance and advocates an orientation to the concept of “knowledge” instead of more vague terms like “insight” or “understanding”. In a second step, the paper deals with three sub-genres of lyric poetry, whose cognitive value has repeatedly been claimed in aesthetic traditions as well as in literary studies: “didactic poetry”, “philosophical poetry” (Germ. „Gedankenlyrik“) and
“poetry of moods”.
By means of concrete examples, the paper shows how each of the three subgenres privileges a certain type of cognitive significance or a certain “mechanism” of knowledge communication. In a third step, the paper points out which basic features of poetry, such as fictionality, argumentativeness, and literariness, are essential and which are irrelevant to the different types of cognitive significance. Finally, the paper discusses (a) whether the three sub-genres of lyric poetry can be defined without reference to their cognitive functions and (b) whether it would be more appropriate to postulate corresponding practices of reading lyric poetry that are linked but not restricted to these sub-genres of lyric poetry and therefore can basically be applied to every poem.
The mood concept can designate not only affective states of an individual (moods1), but elusive, nuanced atmospheres of objects, places or situations (moods2). The mentalistic paradigm, widespread in psychology and analytic philosophy, generally assumes that moods are mental states with a certain quality of feeling (and physical symptoms). Moods2 are regarded by such approaches, if they discuss them, as a secondary phenomenon based on subjective perception. In contrast, the phenomenological paradigm focuses on moods2 and, if it accommodates moods1 as well, often postulates a characteristic connection between the two: moods1 reveal extra-individual atmospheres (moods2) that are assumed to exist in some ontologically robust sense. Therefore, moods1 can be said to have a world-disclosing function within the phenomenological paradigm.
Researchers in the mentalistic paradigm deal, among other issues, with the difference of emotions and moods1. One way in which moods1 differ from emotions is that they lack an intentional object and it is for that reason that the concept of mood1, at first glance, seems to offer a solution to the paradox of fiction. The paradox of fiction presumes that we have emotions with regard to fictional objects. If it were possible to redescribe the alleged emotions as more subtle mood1 responses without clear intentional objects, this would undermine a central premise of the paradox and dissolve it. However, such a redescription seems not equally plausible for all cases discussed in the debate (e.g. the green slime case). Therefore, moods1 can only be one element of a more subtle ›phenomenology‹ of affective reactions towards fiction and the »paradox avoiding potential« of the mood concept is limited.
The paradox creating potential of the mood concept emerges if one takes into account the outlined complex semantics of the concept »mood« and the postulated world-disclosing function of moods1. It seems possible to construct a new paradox, the paradox of fiction for moods: (a) Only real entities or representations of real entities can evoke moods1 with world-disclosing function (because this mood1 evocation is actually immersion in an atmosphere). (b) Many entities in fictions are not real. (c) Nevertheless, fictions can evoke moods1 with world-disclosing functions (e.g. with regard to places, situations) in the recipient.
The paper argues that the outlined paradox can be dissolved by pointing out that the expression »moods1 with world-disclosing function« in sentence (a) means something different than in (c). While the expression in (a) relates to the idea of grasping an atmosphere (mood2) that somehow is »in the world«, it means acquiring a non-propositional form of knowledge, namely knowledge of what-it-is-like to be in a certain situation, in (c). The idea that it is possible to acquire knowledge of what-it-is-like by means of fiction has often been postulated in the research literature, but rarely been spelled out in greater detail. The paper argues that such an acquisition can occur, among other possibilities, on the basis of mood1 evocation, but that the conditions for the acquisition of knowledge of what-it-is-like by means of fiction are more demanding than under usual circumstances: A recipient of fiction can reasonably be said to acquire knowledge of what-it-is-like to be in a certain situation if the fictional representation evokes a mood1 which is characteristic of a situation S and the recipient understands this mood1 as an affective reaction to a situation of the type S. Please note that moods2 play no explanatory role in the second interpretation of »world-disclosing function«.
Since assumption (a) and assumption (c) concern different world-disclosing functions or, in other words, different mechanisms of world-disclosure, there is no paradox. Although moods1 evoked by fictional representations (with some limitations pointed out in section 4) do not possess a world-disclosing function in the sense the phenomenological tradition postulated, it is possible to ascribe these moods1 a world-disclosing function, even within a non-phenomenological framework: They allow the recipient the acquisition of a knowledge of what-it-is-like to be in a certain situation or in a certain place.
Ultimately, for the paradox of fiction for moods seems to hold what could be said about the classical paradox of fiction as well: Even if the paradox ultimately dissolves, its analysis can be instructive for related research fields like the debate on knowledge from fiction which takes moods rarely into account until now.