ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that this account of literature and truth is seriously at variance with the way writers, critics and readers behave in the real world. In Truth, Fiction and Literature, Peter Lamarque and Stein Haugom Olsen defend a no-truth theory of literature, and argue that the concepts of truth, knowledge and insight play no ineliminable role in accounting for literature's value. Lamarque and Olsen claim that general propositions asserted by authors are only very rarely discussed by literary critics and that this shows that the truth-value of such propositions is not relevant to the aesthetic assessment of literary works. Lamarque and Olsen largely concern themselves with general propositions in novels, but even here their arguments do not seem wholly convincing. Three important factors relevant to the significance of falsehood in evaluative criticism remain to be discussed: when the false assertion was made; why it was made; and the genre that contains it.
