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Enacting and exploring ideas in fiction: The Overstory and The Portable Veblen.

Nordberg, D., 2024. Enacting and exploring ideas in fiction: The Overstory and The Portable Veblen. New Writing, 21 (1), 73-93.

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DOI: 10.1080/14790726.2023.2222098

Abstract

Philosophically engaged fiction often employs ideas in ways that reflect the exploitation-exploration dilemma in developmental psychology: by exploiting well articulated theories by enacting their conflicts, or by exploring the uncertainties of puzzling ontologies or moral complexities. We can see this in action in many works, but some novels of ideas seek to defy such categorization, with lessons for readers and writers. This paper analyzes two recent works – The Overstory by Richard Powers (2018) and Elizabeth McKenzie’s The Portable Veblen (2016) – to show how they deal with related concerns and settings through very different approaches. While Powers offers an enactment, its complexity seeks to evade the book becoming a simple polemic. McKenzie’s protagonist explores her muddled identity, philosophy and much else while flirting with the enactment of ideas when she does not comprehend.

Item Type:Article
ISSN:1479-0726
Uncontrolled Keywords:Novel of ideas; philosophical fiction; heuristics; exploration and exploitation; frame analysis
Group:Bournemouth University Business School
ID Code:38721
Deposited By: Symplectic RT2
Deposited On:29 Jun 2023 14:04
Last Modified:29 May 2024 14:00

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