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Verisimilitude: Difference between revisions
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An example of the term, verisimilitude, would be if an author writes about a man who falls off a cliff and he dies, it is believable. It is logical that a person can believe an event or character in a fiction story is real so, a story can have a degree of verisimilitude in fiction stories as well as non-fiction stories, as long as the reader feels that it is real (Wheeler)<ref name=Ref1/>. | An example of the term, verisimilitude, would be if an author writes about a man who falls off a cliff and he dies, it is believable. It is logical that a person can believe an event or character in a fiction story is real so, a story can have a degree of verisimilitude in fiction stories as well as non-fiction stories, as long as the reader feels that it is real (Wheeler)<ref name=Ref1/>. | ||
Fantasy novels and science fiction stories that discuss impossible events can have verisimilitude if the reader is able to read them with suspended disbelief (Eagleton)<ref name=Ref3/>. To say that a work has a high degree of verisimilitude means that the work is very realistic and believable--it is "true to life" (Harris)<ref name=Ref2/>. | Fantasy novels and science fiction stories that discuss impossible events can have verisimilitude if the reader is able to read them with suspended disbelief (Eagleton)<ref name=Ref3/>. To say that a work has a high degree of verisimilitude means that the work is very realistic and believable--it is "true to life" (Harris)<ref name=Ref2/>. | ||
==The Problem With Verisimilitude== | |||
While verisimilitude is considered of a method of making an event or set of circumstances believable, with some magnification, there is a problem with the theory behind verisimilitude. The reader or viewer is given a set of circumstances are plausible in that ficitonal universe. The argument is that one false theory may be closer to reality than another. This begs two important questions; | |||
"Can we explain how one theory can be closer to the truth, or has greater verisimilitude than another?" | |||
"Can we show that scientific change has sometimes led to theories which are closer to the truth than their predecessors?" | |||
== Works Cited == | == Works Cited == | ||