Hilary P DannenbergCoincidence and Counterfactuality
Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction
List of Figures
Preface
Introduction
1. Convergent and Divergent Plots and Character Trajectories
2. A Brief History of Approaches to Plot and Related Theories
3. A Guide to this Study and its Research Contribution
Part I: Plotting Time and Space in Narrative Fiction
1. Cognitive Plotting: Crossing Narrative Boundaries and Connecting Worlds
1. Liberation and Belief in Narrative Fiction
2. World Construction: The Plotting Principle
3. Narrative Suspense and Liminal Plotting
4. Conclusion: Possible and Impossible Worlds
2. Ontological Plotting: Narrative as a Multiplicity of Temporal Dimensions
1. Plot as the Sum of Alternate Possible Worlds
2. Counterfactual Worlds
3. Counterfactuality, Transworld Identity, and World-Blending
4. Ontological Hierarchies in Realist and Other Fictions
3. Spatial Plotting: Paths, Links, and Portals
1. The Spatial Mapping of Time and Narrative
2. The Cognitive Schemata of Bodily Orientation in Fictional Space
Part II: Theorizing Coincidence and Counterfactuality
4. The Coincidence Plot
1. Coincidence in Literature and Science
2. The Traditional Coincidence Plot in Narrative Fiction
3. Analogical Coincidence
5. Counterfactuals and Other Alternate Narrative Worlds
1. Counterfactuals Across the Disciplines
2. A Theory of Counterfactuals in Narrative Fiction
3. Key Forms of Counterfactual in Narrative Fiction
4. Beyond the Counterfactual: Multiple Alternate Worlds
Part III: Coincidence and Counterfactuality in the History of Narrative
Fiction
Introduction
6. The Metamorphoses of the Coincidence Plot
1. Discordant and Euphoric Recognition in the Renaissance Romance
2. Recognition and Identity in the Developing Novel
3. The Hyperconvergence of the Fictional Victorians
4. Analogous and Traditional Coincidence in Modernist Fiction
5. The Postmodern Renaissance of the Coincidence Plot
7. The Narrative Evolution of Counterfactuals
1. From Renaissance Rhetoric towards Realist Counterfactuals
2. Autobiographical Counterfactuals in Eighteenth-Century Fiction
3. Counterfactuals in Eighteenth-Century Heterodiegetic Narration
4. Alternate Lives and Loves in Nineteenth-Century Fiction
5. The Multiplication of Time: Alternate History in Nineteenth and
Twentieth-Century Fiction
6. Counterfactual Fantasies, Metafictions, and Metahistories in
Twentieth-Century Fiction
Conclusion
Glossary of Key Terms
Works Cited
