Richard Walsh's paper persuasively argues that fiction supports the communicative, rhetorical function of literature. Fictional plots and characters do indeed help us see the ways of the world and formulate value judgments about particular matters as well as about human condition in general. Epics, novels, plays, and movies tell stories that do not fully belong to the real world that surrounds us in order to make readers and spectators realize that human existence is not exactly what they thought it to be and, at the same time, recognize and better understand things they always silently sensed to be the case. When we attend a performance of Shakespeare's The Tempest or read the play, Prospero's unheard-of magic powers astound us and, at the same time, invite us to sense how deeply usurpation and exile hurt their victims. As readers and spectators, therefore, we neither trust fully nor entirely mistrust fictional stories....

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