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Fiction, History, and Empirical Reality

I begin by asking an engagingly naive question that a layman would have every right to put to us-and often has. Why should we interest ourselves seriously in the once-upon-a-time worlds of fiction-these unreal stories about unreal individuals? It has been a persistent question in the history of criticism-ever since Plato first called the poet a liar-and it is a question at once obvious and embarrassing. It is obvious because, for the apologist for imaginative literature, it becomes a prolegomenon to all further questions; and it is embarrassing because merely to ask it threatens to put literature out of business and, with it, all those who treat it as a serious and world-affecting art. Why, then, should we interest ourselves seriously in fictions? However elementary, it is a question that is more easily asked than answered.