Abstract：Abstract: In the second decade of 21st century, fictionality has become one of the hot topics in the arena of Western narratology. Taking its point of departure from the dialogue between Ian Watt’s The Rise of the Novel (1957) and Catherine Gallagher’s “The Rise of Fictionality” (2006) across time and space, this article attempts to map the geneology of fictionality from the area of fiction studies to narrative studies. It argues that if fitionality were to be divorced from truth in fiction, it would necessarily follow that the studies of fictionality should go beyond the genre of novel. It is in this sense that such rhetorical theorists of narrative as James Phelan, Richard Walsh and Henrik Skov Nielsen consider fictionality as a rhetorical resource, which regrettably neglects the existence of fictionality as narrative aim and narrative effects. Against this backdrop, this paper reexamines fictionality at both the story level and discourse level so as to reveal the means, signals and effects of this concept. The article concludes with a few tentative suggestions for further exploration of this topic in the future.
Key words: fictionality; narratology; fictional narrative; nonfictional narrative
