In the Mood of Fiction.

Fiction; Imagination; Religious fiction; Literary interpretation; Historical fiction; Modern literature; Metaphor

Take, for example, the widespread claim that locates the value of fiction in the ethical cultivation of empathy.[44] In the potential mood, fiction imitates this function of the philosophical but it is always with this difference: fiction retains a capacity to withdraw the moral imperatives that it offers. "[41] The rhythmic oscillation of Syrus' deliberations walk the line between the potential mood - "What may I do, or what may I devyse & imagine?" - and the world of "what is" until Syrus understands the constraints of the indicative to be capable of accommodating the imagination of the potential mood. Having broken with more familiar referential uses of language, the potential mood carves out a space for fiction between the historian's indicative and, kissing cousin to the philosopher's "what should be", the imperative mood. As Lynne Magnusson observes, when Sidney places "what may be and should be" over the entryway to poetry, he hangs the signs of the potential mood.[9] By operating in the potential mood, the poet avoids the indicative and its more constrictive mode of affirmation. [Extracted from the article]