subjunctivity

Without going into the full details of the theory, there is a suspension-of-disbelief (a sense that the events “could have happened”) during the reading process that can be disrupted by shifts in subjunctivity level and modality.

What is Literary Fiction? Hal Duncan 2009

Without going into the full details of the theory, there is a suspension-of-disbelief (a sense that the events “could have happened”) during the reading process that can be disrupted by shifts in subjunctivity level and modality.

Archive 2009-05-01 Hal Duncan 2009

Leaving aside the whole question of nature spirits with machines for vessels, prophetic knowledge of the future would be another breach of nomology for many (if not most), potentially invoking another shift in subjunctivity level to "could not have happened".

Strange Fiction in the Marketplace Hal Duncan 2008

Leaving aside the whole question of nature spirits with machines for vessels, prophetic knowledge of the future would be another breach of nomology for many (if not most), potentially invoking another shift in subjunctivity level to "could not have happened".

Archive 2008-02-01 Hal Duncan 2008

They persuade us into a further shift in subjunctivity, from "could not have happened" to "could have happened if ..." where what follows that "if" may amount to a wholesale revision of how the world works validated more by self-delusion than speculation.

Archive 2008-01-01 Hal Duncan 2008

The tension between these two readings, between these two potential levels of subjunctivity, is what makes the sentence a hook.

Archive 2008-02-01 Hal Duncan 2008

They persuade us into a further shift in subjunctivity, from "could not have happened" to "could have happened if ..." where what follows that "if" may amount to a wholesale revision of how the world works validated more by self-delusion than speculation.

Narrative Grammars Hal Duncan 2008

The tension between these two readings, between these two potential levels of subjunctivity, is what makes the sentence a hook.

Strange Fiction in the Marketplace Hal Duncan 2008

In alternative narrative, as Jay calls it, there is a different type of breach in subjunctivity, but it's minimal; where, in private narrative the events are on a personal level, a domestic level, remaining within the confines of a family or a group of friends whose lives would never impact on our own, in alternative narrative the events are on a scale where we would surely notice.

Archive 2006-07-01 Hal Duncan 2006

In what Jay labels private narrative this subjunctivity is never breached, because the events could have taken place without the reader's knowledge.

Archive 2006-07-01 Hal Duncan 2006