Literary fiction as a subgenre of both literature and fiction

There is a tendency in the philosophy of literature, less conspicuous in the philosophy of fiction, to use the terms ‘literature’ and ‘fiction’ interchangeably. This chapter provides a plausible account of fiction before moving on to give a plausible account of literature. Many fictional narratives refer to facts about things that are not made up and describe real people, places and events. In addition, some predominantly factual accounts contain fictional elements. A non-essentialist account of literature sketches vague boundaries which allow for peripheral cases to move between the categories of ‘literature’ and ‘non-literature’. Two examples of movement are ‘ex-literature’ and ‘literature in the making’. There are at least two important aspects to the judgement that ‘literature is well written’. The first concerns what is typical of the kind of writing and the second, related claim, concerns a positive judgement on how the writing is executed. The label ‘literary fiction’ tends to be counted as a sub-genre alongside other sub-genres.