Words That Open a Fictional World

The Imaginary

This flow follows Sartre’s account of reading a novel, where words guide a reader from signification toward imaginative presence and emotional involvement.

increasing

Bearing strength in each event

decreasing

The Novel Begins The Novel Begins from "The Imaginary". Reading Beyond the Sign Words as an entrance In ordinary reading, words can function as signs that direct thought toward meanings.

The Novel Begins from "The Imaginary". Reading Beyond the Sign Words as an entrance In ordinary reading, words can function as signs that direct thought toward meanings.

Reading Beyond the Sign Words as an entrance In ordinary reading, words can function as signs that direct thought toward meanings. A novel, however, invites a broader imaginative attitude: the reader prepares to encounter a world rather than merely decode isolated statements. The text’s words remain visible or silently present, but they guide consciousness toward characters, places, and events that are not physically before it. A distinctive engagement Sartre compares this readiness to a spectator’s anticipation as a theatrical curtain rises. The reader is oriented toward a world that will be constituted through the unfolding text.

The Office Gains a Setting The Office Gains a Setting from "The Imaginary". Knowledge Fills the World Context accumulates A brief phrase can call up a setting whose details have been established earlier in the novel.

The Office Gains a Setting from "The Imaginary". Knowledge Fills the World Context accumulates A brief phrase can call up a setting whose details have been established earlier in the novel.

Knowledge Fills the World Context accumulates A brief phrase can call up a setting whose details have been established earlier in the novel. The reader may place a dispute inside Pierre’s office and locate that office in a larger building and city. Those details are not all stated again in the present sentence. They persist as imaging knowledge that helps the words present a concrete world. A world through signs The text’s signs become a contact point with an irreal setting. The reader’s accumulated knowledge and expectation help give that setting depth without turning it into a perception.

Emotion Within Fiction Emotion Within Fiction from "The Imaginary". Feeling Without Mistaking Affective participation Readers may care about fictional characters while continuing to understand that the events are not real.

Emotion Within Fiction from "The Imaginary". Feeling Without Mistaking Affective participation Readers may care about fictional characters while continuing to understand that the events are not real.

Feeling Without Mistaking Affective participation Readers may care about fictional characters while continuing to understand that the events are not real. Sartre argues that affectivity helps constitute imaginative engagement rather than arriving only as a reaction to an independently perceived scene. The reader’s knowledge of the story and emotional orientation work together to make its world compelling. The limit of absorption Reading can fascinate, but it differs from ordinary action in the real world. The fictional world is present through imaginative engagement, not as a situation the reader can physically enter or control.

During Part II’s discussion of reading

After the novel establishes Pierre’s office

As the reader becomes absorbed in the novel