Convincing Fiction

How does fiction make itself seem like fact?
Professor John Mullan begins where novels begin: with Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, which showed every novel that followed how to make a ‘strange surprising’ story seem entirely ‘probable’ (the word that eighteenth-century pioneers of fiction liked to use). He will explore the tradition of factuality in the English novel, ending with the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro and examples of recent auto-fiction.
A lecture by John Mullan
The transcript and downloadable versions of the lecture are available from the Gresham College website:
www.gresham.ac.uk/lectures-and...
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[@josie_posie808]

Great lecture. I get excited when I can recognize the offspring of original writings before he points it out. Like detective work 🥰

[@Notmehimorthem]

Gresham College is doing well. It needs to be noticed. Itv wil be if it it celivers like these.

[@themise1416]

Very interesting lecture. thanks. i've been off fiction for a while. Maybe my interest will get rekindled by your lectures.

[@jonrutherford6852]

Thanks for providing food for days of thought. Now I need to pick up reading Knausgård again. And...I hate to admit it, but I always thought "Journal of a Plague Year" was non-fiction. (Gulp...)

[@ant7936]

Excellent discussion, thanks.

[@suzannetevlin8439]

These are wonderful lectures. We read the same books;-)))

[@Happyheretic2308]

C.f. George Macdonald Fraser’s Flashman Papers

[@ellie698]

This is fiction of no interest whatsoever!