The Routledge Handbook of Fiction and Belief offers a fresh reevaluation of the relationship between fiction and belief, surveying key debates and perspectives from a range of disciplines including narrative and cultural studies, science, religion, and politics.

Alison James is Professor of French at the University of Chicago. Her research interests include the Oulipo group, the contemporary novel, theories and representations of everyday life, documentary literature, and questions of fact and fiction.

Akihiro Kubo is Professor of French Literature at Kwansei Gakuin University. His research interests focus on twentieth-century French literature and theories of literature.

Françoise Lavocat is Professor of Comparative Literature at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle. She received an honorary doctorate in Humane Letters from the University of Chicago, and is a member of the Institut Universitaire de France as well as a member and section chair in the Academia Europaea.

Introduction

Alison James, Akihiro Kubo, and Françoise Lavocat

Part I: Believing in Fiction: Philosophical and Theoretical Perspectives

1 Belief, Imagination, and the Nature of Fiction

Stacie Friend

2 The "Willing Suspension of Disbelief": The Long History of a Short Phrase

Nicholas D. Paige

3 The Fictionality of Games and the Ludic Nature of Fiction: Make-Believe, Immersion, Play

Marie-Laure Ryan

4 Fictional Emotions and Belief

Eva-Maria Konrad

5 Fictional Characters and Belief

Thomas Pavel

6 Fictionality, the Zone of Generic Fiction, and the Allure of Unreliable Narration

James Phelan

7 Belief Is a Mess. That Makes It Good for Fiction. (A Perspective from Cognitive Literary Theory)

Lisa Zunshine

8 Fiction and Historiography

Annick Louis

9 Fiction and Scientific Knowledge

Adam Toon

10 Learning from Fiction

Gregory Currie, Heather Ferguson, Jacopo Frascaroli, Stacie Friend, Kayleigh Green, and Lena Wimmer

Part II: From Fiction to Belief: Social and Political Effects

11 Do Fictions Impact People's Beliefs? A Critical View

Edgar Dubourg and Nicolas Baumard

12 The Impact of Fiction on Beliefs about Gender

Vera Nünning

13 Implicit Bias, Fiction, and Belief

Kris Goffin and Agnes Moors

14 Children's Ideas about Stories and about Reality

Ayse Payir and Paul L. Harris

15 From Suspension of Disbelief to Production of Belief: The Case of Alternate Reality Games

Patrick Jagoda

16 Interactive Environments and Fictional Engagement

Olivier Caïra

17 Fake News and Fictional News

Jessica Pepp, Rachel Sterken, and Eliot Michaelson

18 Trust, Credulity, and Speech

Philippe Roussin

19 Literature on Credit: Fiction and the Fiduciary Paradigm

Emmanuel Bouju and Loïse Lelevé

20 Fifth-Generation Fictionality? Fiction, Politics, War

Henrik Zetterberg-Nielsen

21 Uses of Fantasy Fiction in Contemporary Political Mobilization

Anne Besson

22 Fiction, Belief, and Postcolonial Criticism

Alok Yadav

23 Can Fictions Predict the Future?

Anne Duprat

24 Dystopian Fictions and Contemporary Fears

Jean-Paul Engélibert

25 Fiction, Belief, and Climate Change: Paratexts, Skeptics, and Objects of Care

Erin James

Part III: Fiction and Religious Belief 337

26 Greek Mythology: Discourse, Belief, and Ritual Action

Claude Calame

27 Fiction and Belief: Approaching Medieval Latin Christendom

Julie Orlemanski

28 Literary Fictions, "Fables," and Unbelief in the West

Nicolas Correard

29 Saints, Between Faith, Belief, and Fiction

Barbara Selmeci Castioni

30 The Role of Fiction in Buddhist Hagiography: The Case of Shinran

Markus Rüsch

31 Fiction and Belief in Ancient and Early Medieval India

Isabelle Ratié

32 Fiction, Religion, and Premodern Arab-Islamic Literature (Eighth-Eighteenth Centuries)

Aboubakr Chraïbi

33 Fiction against Belief and Belief in Fiction in Modern and Contemporary Arabic Literature

Ève de Dampierre-Noiray

34 On Jewish Fiction and Belief: Duplicity, Parables, Confession

Sarah Hammerschlag

35 Religious Uses of Fantasy Fiction

Markus Altena Davidsen

36 Fake Cults, Hyper-Real Religions, Virtual Beliefs at the Crossroads of Fiction, the Sacred, and Technology

Lionel Obadia